SAHM and job training

[YPestis]

I was going on another website where I saw an interesting comment. It was surrounding a typical discussion of whether moms should stay home or not. It was intermixed with discussion of girls who get their MRS degrees and whether that's ok (people decided no one can say for sure who is there for MRS and who isn't).

Anyway, what caught my eyes was the comment that in fact, MRS degrees are extremely counter intuitive because those whose ultimate goal is to be full time mothers should be the most in need of career training. The reasoning goes like this, a single gal can slump through lowly paid jobs and go go back to school (in theory) more easily in the future. It's not ideal, but single gals just have more flexibility to retrain or move for jobs, having nothing to tie them down. Married gals are more likely to have children who depend on them. Rather than thinking of college and career as optional, it should be more imperative that the mother has an education and career training because she is now 3 D's away (death, divorce, disability) from having to support young children!

It made me pause to think again on that reasoning. We've always argued that women should get an education on FJ. Society has historically shrugged their shoulders on the college/career thing for the MRS girls wishing to exclusively stay home. People just say, "well, she's going to stay home anyway". Plus, if the girl "marries well" (to borrow a phrase from the a few decades back), it was considered even less necessary to worry about her future.

However, I see that it's even more imperative that mothers are prepared to be providers than single girls because a mother has children to care for now. This is hypothetical off course. Single gals have elderly parents to care for or other family responsibilities. However, every young mother has children that depend on them financially. Mothers are tied down with responsibilities that makes it harder to go back to school, retrain or move for jobs. Hypothetically, single girls don't have that "baggage".

There are many fundies we know who argue the exact opposite. Anna T comes to mind. A Jewish-fundie who is, even in the last few blog posts, deploring the lack of homemaking education for modern girls, instead they are educated for careers which are so, so detrimental to the family unit. When commentators in the past brought up the issue of her husband's 3 Ds, Anna (in a way only fundies can), hand waved it and said women can do home businesses and support their kiddies while staying home! Off course, it's just that easy. I feel many fundie women kind of hand wave the 3 D's as well, which makes it easy for them to make fun of college and career training for girls. Only those spinisters need to have education or jobs!

Why can't people, and not just fundies, see that there is no conflict between education/careers and SAHM? Yes, if you train to be a surgeon, you probably aren't angling to stay home. However, if you are planning on staying home and having kids, your priority should be no less urgent to have an education in something that allows you to provide for a family. If the most important job is caring for children, that doesn't just mean learning to cook and change diapers, it also means knowing how to put food on the table in case the designated breadwinner is unable to.

All this talk about staying home because kids need that emotional support forget that kids also need financial support. I feel that even mainstream conservatives sometimes handwaves this concept. They may encourage their daughters to go to college but I feel it's more of a formality, in case she doesn't find the "right one" and need to support herself a few years. Or worse, it's a meat market for her to find Prince Charming. That's not too different than the fundies idea that a young women's years should be spent in homemaking and playing the harp.

In fact, I think this argument that it's even more urgent that future mothers should focus on career is far more logical. I've heard of some girls who "only want to be moms", who boo-hoo the career route because they'd only do that if they want to work fulltime. Well, I can now say I have at least two college friends who always wanted to stay home who are currently fulltime working mothers of young children, one of whom is the family sole breadwinner. And no, I don't think it was by choice. Yeah, the economy sucks.

I'm not sure there will be much discussions here on what I just spoke on. However, I am a married gal with no kids. For mothers, working or not, any comments or perspectives you can bring to the table?

[bbtlover]

I think that an education is essential no matter what your plans are for the future. I am a SAHM, but I understand that in a moment I could be the only one around capable of taking care of my kids. It wouldn't be easy to find a job in this economy and in my area that would make enough to keep our standard of living, but I would move if it was necessary. I stay home b/c I want to and what I used to make would have been eaten up by daycare costs. We figured it out and we would be in the hole for full-time daycare for 2 kids.

[August]

A generic degree is probably the worst sort of pre-SAHM education. To be your fallback you need some sort of education, training or experience that gives you skills which you can neglect for five or ten years and then after a quick refresher, take back up again. On second thoughts a basic degree might be best for that, then you can do some shirt graduate course to get back into the workforce.

But, thus is why I think there needs to be a safety net, so young children and their oarents don't starve or end up homeless (buses totally count as homes).

[salex]

On my father's side if my family, my great grandmother sent her daughters to college. My grandmother got a degree in chemistry, married an educated man and they bought and ran a farm--that was from what I can tell, successful. Great grandmother said "Here I sent you to college and you have 5 children!?!) (Later 6)

On that side of the family, every woman born into the family--since my grandmother has gone to college. (this spans the last 100 years) with the goal of a degree. Among these female siblings and cousins are many with masters degrees and phds and other advanced/professional degrees. I didn't realize until I was an adult that even women my age were not directed to college as much as their brothers, and in some families, they were refused family support.

Since education is promoted in the family, the male cousins also have gone to college, and I am thinking only a few of the women who married in didn't have a degree. But, the wives didn't all work. Some stayed home with their kids, others worked part time, or after their kids went to school, some worked full time their whole lifetime. But they all had far more opportunity to find work since they were educated.

And, more to the point that was key in my family-- education is never wasted. Learning how to learn, learning the history of things, learning more about people in general--all things that a college / university education should provide--are important things in a person's life. And while not every person will fit into a college academically, etc, the other options-- tradeschool, vocational training, etc should be part of life because all these things teach people that they are capable of more--

Saying "we don't need to educate this person because (sex, race, religion, whatever) is not only a disservice to the person, it is a disservice to the society as a whole.

[Stephers831]

I can't imagine not getting a specific degree. Even in the 60's women we encouraged to either get a nursing or teaching degree so they'd have something to fall back on if something happened to their husbands.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Education is important even if you plan to be a SAHM, especially because you make these decisions about college when you are 18, but when youre older and actually do have a kid, you might decide being a SAHM is not for you and want to go back to college, and it will be harder with a child to look after on top of college work. I wanted to be a SAHM when I was a teenager and had no ambitions for what I wanted as a job and I regret it now.

Its also good to be prepared as well, because sometimes things dont go as planned. What if your husband dies, or becomes disabled and unable to work? What if he divorces you and runs off with someone else? Someone has to support the family. What if your husband loses his well paying job and has to take on one that pays far less, and youre struggling to feed your kids. It would help if both of you were working then. What if you cant be a SAHM because you cant have children? What if you dont get married straight away, its not like all parents can afford to have their adult child sit around doing nothing until they get married. What are you going to do when your children have all grown up and you dont need to look after them anymore?

I think all children, whatever gender they are, should be raised with the expectation that they will have a job when they are older, even if when they have kids they decide that they want to stay at home and look after them. I think Anna T is somewhat right in the way that there seems to be more children nowadays who reach 18 without knowing how to cook, clean or use the washing machine, but I dont think it is because theyre being trained for careers. Its mainly because their parents dont teach them or dont expect them to help out. This doesnt mean the answer is telling girls that they dont need jobs, they just need to learn to cook and clean. People who have jobs also need to clean their houses and cook their meals.

I think all children, by the time they reach adulthood, should have some idea of what they want to do when theyre adults (even if this changes over time) and be thinking of how to reach that goal, and have some idea of the process of getting a job. It is also important that they listened in school and have a decent knowledge of the world around them. They should also know how to cook, clean, manage money and use various household appliances. It doesnt have to be one thing or another.