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M Is For Mama - making quiverfull look modern


Iamhispurity

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@slickcat79 I get what you are saying.  My husband worked in trades for several years in both Ontario, and later Alberta.  He did very, very well while he was working.  But we had an oil bust last year, and the half the province suddenly found themselves out of work.  There are so many skilled tradesmen right now without jobs and no work prospects.  And we found out that any job that isn't a trades job won't hire anyone without a degree.  It can be a completely useless degree, but without a degree, you are simply not competitive in the job market.  

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On 9/15/2016 at 1:37 PM, slickcat79 said:

Drifting back to the actual thread topic, I think Abbie has a unique perspective on "learning a trade" because nearly all of their obviously healthy household income has come from her husband's tech job. If you have a natural aptitude for in-demand skills, you may not need higher education to maximize your experience and income, but that doesn't mean everyone can become the next Zuckerberg. The only thing about her comment that I kind of side-eye, though, is the idea that the kid can go to college if "it makes sense". Maybe she's sincere in saying that, or maybe it's kind of like when the Duggars say that all their kids CHOOSE to enter a courtship instead of dating because their parents make the alternative impossible. 

That reminds me of when I was in high school in the 90s on Long Island, we had guidance counselors and teachers drilling it into us that we either went to college or would end up flipping burgers, Contrast that with our parents' generation who eked-out upper middle class lifestyles working in trades, civil service, utility companies, or starting their own landscaping business... as well as a generation of grandparents who busted their humps and drilled it into us that we needed to "work with your mind, not your back" (ie. go to college). LOL, turns out they were all mostly wrong. Sort of. The jobs of our parents' generation don't pay anywhere near as well now and are less secure. Our grandparents' generation was right in the sense that, while a college degree no longer jettisons a person into a middle class lifestyle, it is necessary to get the jobs our parents got with a high school diploma or less. Honestly, in our pushing-age-40 peer group, the only ones who are making it (regardless of education) are the ones whose parents pulled some strings and got them into a job before retiring, set up trust funds with their deferred compensation, and/or supplied a 6-figure down payment for a starter home. 

But on the other side of the coin, I came from a family of highly-educated people who made very little money in their day jobs, but still valued that education because it was a symbol of knowledge and personal enrichment. For example, my father had a PhD in American History and worked as a mechanic; his brother attended college in Europe (Germany, I think?) on a music scholarship as a classical pianist, but worked as a carpenter. Their expectation was that the next generation in the family would do the same, but the trouble was that college was a lot more expensive for us, so taking out loans for an "impractical" degree just wasn't feasible. Hence, why I majored in Accounting instead of Archaeology, and my brother became a corrections officer instead of an artist :my_undecided:

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Re "learning a trade" - I feel this is a lot different for boys/young men than for girls.  While some brave girls do go the building, plumbing, working on the oil rigs etc etc, *in general* it seems like "trade" for men are things they can make a great living from in general, and a really fantastic one if they're entrepreneurial, but for women, it's childcare, beauty therapy, hairdressing, which generally have a much lower wage.  For sure, running a string of Nurseries and Hairdressers can be lucrative, but in general, "women's trades" are minimum wage, and just not comparable to men's.

 

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In Germany, learning a trade is still a much valued option. There are roughly 450 jobs that count as trades, regulated by the old medieval guild system, working with the education system and very much socially accepted as a good thing to do. It includes such things as doctor's surgery nurse, optician, banker, insurance broker, anyone working in hospitality, hairdresser and orthopedic cobbler. It opens up a whole world of possibility without debt - you earn, albeit very little as an apprentice, and then start in a paid job much earlier than your studying counterparts. A friend of mine is 6 months older than me and bought a house five years before me - simply because he had 10 years on me when it came to saving! He's a lathe engineer, I'm a teacher. There are advantages to both, but I think the Anglophone world in particular has some weird chip on its shoulder about trades. If I hadn't gone to uni, I would have applied for an apprenticeship to become a patissier/confectioner. ^^

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The Big 4 were definitely what the guidance counselors at my high school pushed on the college bound girls. Not that there were many of us (small rural Southern high school)  A great many of the girls in my class got married right after graduation. Most of them were divorced within 2-8 years. Then they were single moms with no higher education, no skills, and no work experience.

The guidance counselors really pushed the Secretary option hard to the girls who were going on after high school -- as it required only 2 years at the local community college  (AA degree). You'd think they were getting kick backs from the school -- they were that pushy.

No one ever mentioned that there was more out there than the Big 4 for women.  I had a really close friend -- a math genius -- who was pushed to become a math teacher.  She could have worked for the NSA, but instead she's been teaching high school algebra for 25 years.

 

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2 hours ago, smittykins said:

The "Big Four" when I was growing up were teaching, nursing, secretary and librarian.

It's interesting, because in the UK, we'd need a Degree to be a teacher or a nurse, and librarian posts are so super-competitive that definitely needs an academic qualification - so to get to be one of those, one has to go to university and get a Degree, definitely not go to "trade school".  I don't know what it's like in the USA, though.

ETA:  Obviously I know this wasn't the case in the past, and IMO, it's fantastic that so many "women's jobs" (ugh, I hate that phrase) are now seen as professions, with rigorous training and qualification needed.   But it always means that the roles left to girls at "trade schools" (in the UK, going to into Further Education not Higher Education, or a College over University) means that the "girls' roles" are the ones that are much lower paid than in the past, when they could include teaching, social work, nursing etc etc.

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31 minutes ago, Lurky said:

It's interesting, because in the UK, we'd need a Degree to be a teacher or a nurse, and librarian posts are so super-competitive that definitely needs an academic qualification - so to get to be one of those, one has to go to university and get a Degree, definitely not go to "trade school".  I don't know what it's like in the USA, though.

There are exceptions to all of these but typically in the US

Teacher- 4 year BA, possible Masters

Nurse- Lots of kinds of nursing qualifications from certificate programs to PhD but an "Registered Nurse of "RN" would be 2-4 years of College/Uni

Secretary- High School, though an Associates in business/book keeping would probably boost your hourly pay and hireability

Librarian- So much different in the digital age than it used to be. Very few jobs and a highly specialized skill set these days.

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20 minutes ago, Lurky said:

It's interesting, because in the UK, we'd need a Degree to be a teacher or a nurse, and librarian posts are so super-competitive that definitely needs an academic qualification - so to get to be one of those, one has to go to university and get a Degree, definitely not go to "trade school".  I don't know what it's like in the USA, though.

You need them here too. At this point, librarian jobs are so competitive that even an MLS will not guarantee you a job, although of course it wasn't always like that. I think the point about the Big 4 was that those were the professions/educational paths open to women who wanted non-service industry careers. At one time, you might have been able to classify nursing or secretarial training as a "trade" for women, but it would be hard to find even a decently-paying job in those fields today without some higher ed. 

We don't really have a quality apprenticeship program in place, except for select jobs like doctor, which also requires heaps of additional education. It would be nice if that could be fleshed out some.

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Totally agree on librarian jobs being super-competitive, though from the experiences of friends/family (in Canada) you don't need an MLS for most jobs in libraries (though I don't know anyone above a shelver who doesn't have an undergrad). Most jobs at the library are NOT librarian roles; they're things like pages, program co-ordinators, branch assistants, etc. An MLS is usually only needed for things like a reference librarian role or a school librarian.

That said, all the positions are still VERY competitive, to the point where people with MLS degrees are applying for jobs that don't require one. My mom's a Senior Branch Assistant, and she got the role over applicants with MLS degrees because of her accounting background.

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