<p>RedEye, I’m trying to follow your train of thought. What do you mean when you say unstructured socializing? What do you consider to be a problem about unstructured socializing?</p>
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<p>Although I may be getting this wrong, I think Redeye is saying that many who prefer unstructured socializing tend to assume or worse, insist others have/should set aside plenty of time for such socializing.</p>
<p>I saw some of this in an aunt from the non-academic business/professional side of the family whose insistence on her children/nearby relatives to attend her long weekend dinner parties EVERY WEEKEND was such that a couple in PhD programs were tossed out for “not being serious/dedicated enough to their field” in the written words of one of their advisors. </p>
<p>Frankly, I felt it was ridiculous even as a young adolescent in middle/high school. While I love parties/unstructured social time myself, if one’s in college/grad school…that comes first. </p>
<p>A reason why by the time I was applying for colleges, no one begrudged my making it a point to avoid applying/attending colleges within a 2 hour driving distance of her family. Heck, the scholarly side of my family strongly approved my foresight to head off a potential impediment to academic success.</p>
<p>Thanks, Cobrat. The PhD in the family was busy studying a lot when I was growing up. I wouldn’t have been interrupting to ask about such things had I been thinking about this at the time. ;)</p>
<p>Watch good will hunting haha</p>
<p>Sseamom-- that is me, but fianc</p>
<p>I think it’s unfair to say that someone might not value education. Rather, that person might be using their talents to the best of their ability and it might be a talent not taught at Harvard.
Case in point. We attended the wedding of a relative a month ago who is a machinist, very talented, hard working and owns his own business and his new wife who is a teacher educated at a very prestigious Eastern college. They are best friends and so much in love. When I found out the situation, initially I admit I wondered. Like wow, will there be a divide there that might widen through the years. He is just like his father…no college but can literally do anything like gardening, carpentry, electrical work etc. Again, very talented. Has a beautiful home. I pray it works out and it never becomes an issue.
Not everyone is cut out to go to college and many of those people literally make the world go 'round for the rest of us on a day to day basis. And I appreciate them.</p>
<p>I’m a little bit of a pig. I was watching House Hunters the other day and the wife was a decade older doctor (attractive) married to a very attractive firefighter. I don’t know what his educational attainment was, but I know what his hotness quotient was, and I was very pleased on the wife’s behalf. >>>>>>>></p>
<p>LOL, I saw that one, too and did give her a high five. Admittedly though, she was very attractive and young looking. IMO.</p>
<p>It was a bit of an issue with my first love as someone else mentioned here. Long story short, as a mature adult he did obtain a college degree and I was pleased for him.</p>
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<p>Valuing of education has little to do with one’s occupation or whether one is a college graduate or not. </p>
<p>I’ve known plenty of non-college grads in blue-collar occupations who highly valued education/educated people and insisted their children attend and make the most of their college educations not only as job training, but also to expand their intellectual horizons. Some have followed suit themselves as was the case of a friend’s mother who ended up getting her college degree the same year as her younger D. </p>
<p>Conversely, I’ve known many college graduates…including some in my own extended family who view a college education solely as a means of punching one’s ticket to getting a lucrative/prestigious job and have some contempt for those whose visions of a college education go beyond that. Some of them have degrees from elite/Ivy universities.</p>
<p>I only know of two relationships where there was abusiveness. One was physical and the husband went to jail, the other is mental and emotional and they’ve been married 50 years. </p>
<p>In both cases, the abused spouse is a phd and the husband who went to jail has an 8th grade education, the emotionally abusive wife has a 6th grade education.</p>
<p>These are real life extremes. They don’t work out as far as I can tell.</p>
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<p>This has nothing to do with valuing / not valuing education, and everything to do with the fact that normal adult boundaries weren’t observed in your aunt’s household, because grown children are not “obligated” to attend their mother’s dinner parties. Normal adult relationships don’t work like that, cobrat. Normal mothers are able to extend invitations to events and normal adult children are able to take them or turn them down as their schedules and lives permit. This situation that you’ve described is odd, and I hope you realize how very odd it was.</p>
<p>My H and I both value education in the sense that we went to fancy-schmancy colleges, worked hard, have professional jobs, made it a high priority to save for our children’s education and were equally committed to giving them the gift of a good higher education. But he was always more pragmatic about what he was in college for (=to be premed and become a doctor) whereas I was much more of the “oh, I just love learning, I could be a perpetual student” type. I’m a lot more conceptual and intellectual than he is; he has a lot more common sense as well as what I’ll call mechanical sense (fixing things, etc.).</p>
<p>Frankly I think drive / work ethic is really important. We are well matched on that dimension.</p>
<p>"Should people who want to be stay at home parents really not even bother with college? "</p>
<p>Well, of course they should go to college if they want to. I stayed at home for a dozen years when my kids were little. I didn’t really use my education much, but it came in handy after the divorce…</p>
<p>My point, as I said above, is that if anyone plans to not use their degree in the traditional sense (like staying at home) I don’t think they get to call someone without a degree but who works hard, “lazy”. What someone does for a few years of their life sometimes has little to do with the REST of their life-as you have seen. So for me, as long as the parents can agree on how they will support their kids, HOWEVER that is done, the problem doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>Assuming someone without a degree is “lazy” and therefore might not support a college-bound kids is just…I don’t know. My sister is dyslxic and barely made it of HS. Her H is a truck driver, no degree. Their kid is 2nd in his HS class aiming at a service academy. Their lives revolve around making sure that he gets whatever support he needs to get there. I think MOST people are like that-supporting their kids. You don’t need a piece of paper to prove that’s what you’ll do.</p>
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<p>I disagree in this respect as in addition to what you said, her behavior also demonstrated her disrespect/lack of valuing those cousins’ education sufficiently to respect their need to make it #1 while they’re enrolled. Admittedly, our disagreement is probably mostly semantic differences…but it’s a distinction which I feel is relevant considering her side of the family’s general attitudes towards higher education. </p>
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<p>I not only know it’s odd, it’s short-sighted and idiotic IMO<em>. On the flipside, she feels I take education/higher education “wayy too seriously.” *Eyeroll</em></p>
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<li>It’s the same perception I have of SOs who complain their boyfriend/girlfriend doesn’t have enough for them because they’re enrolled in grad school and/or working a demanding job. Mentally, I’m wondering WTH were you expecting…grad school or such jobs demand much of your SO’s time and part of being a good supportive SO is to be cognizant & understanding of that so you don’t badger them for more time they most likely can’t spare. I usually suggest they may want to consider taking up an interesting activity to assuage their needy tendencies.</li>
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<p>Believe it or not, cobrat, I agree with you. When my H was in med school / residency, I had plenty of free time to myself after my day job was over. So I started my MBA to fill the time. I didn’t whine that he wasn’t around. We knew what we were signing up for.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen a relationship like that to last more than 2 years, so probably not.
I personally could not imagine dating someone who doesn’t value knowledge and thinks school is a waste of time. I couldn’t imagine dating a guy who isn’t ambitious and doesn’t care to make something of himself.</p>
<p>I so agree with you, PG and Cobrat. The wife–it is almost always a wife in fiction–who leaves the hero because he spends too much time at his job despite the fact that they love each other is SUCH a cliche. I am SO tired of it. (Of course, one reason it is so common in fiction is that the cliches of the hardboiled genre demand that Our Hero be Alone.:rolleyes: ) People who fail to make time to be involved in their children’s lives are another matter.</p>
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<p>Real life offenders IME tend to skew more male than female. More whiny boyfriends who’d think I’d be sympathetic as a fellow male. That is, until I ask them whether they considered their GFs are straining to spare what little time they have for them and be more understanding, taking up a new hobby, and that such whiny neediness is a bit unseemly and they need to stop acting like needy immature kids/young adolescents*. </p>
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They shouldn’t take on so much student loan debt that they cannot afford to stay at home with their kids, but there’s little reason that they shouldn’t ‘bother’ with college. </p>
<p>Two of my best friends are stay-at-home moms who have always wanted to be stay-at-home moms. Both graduated summa from their respective colleges (and one of them went to an Ivy, to boot). But they structured their lives and their expectations so that they could afford to live on one income.</p>
<p>ariesathena makes a very good point that people who anticipate being stay-at-home parents should avoid taking on too much debt.</p>
<p>The same applies to people who anticipate working in professions that don’t pay high salaries, such as teaching.</p>
<p>But a college education is certainly worth the trouble for the future stay-at-home parent, and not just for education-for-its-own-sake reasons. It’s important for job-related reasons, too. </p>
<p>It’s important to remember that raising a child takes only 18 years. Adult life lasts a lot longer than that. A person who anticipates being a stay-at-home parent will still spend a large proportion of his/her adult life in the workforce, both before and after the child-raising period. Some will also work part-time during some of their parenting years. These people have careers, just like everyone else. The only difference is that they may not progress as far in those careers because they devote one period of their lives to something else.</p>
<p>And then there are the unexpected things that tend to crop up in some people’s lives. The person who always anticipated being a stay-at-home parent might end up never having children. Or the parent who planned to stay home may end up needing to work full time because of divorce or because the partner has died, become disabled, or is faced with a prolonged period of unemployment. The best-laid plans don’t always work out.</p>