They are discouraged from entering teaching because it’s a field that pays abysmally relative to the qualifications required. Traditionally teaching paid poorly because it was the province of single women or married women whose husbands brought in the primary salary.
If you think the pathway to life satisfaction and happiness is money, there is a great chance you’ll be disappointed.
@TomSrOfBoston, the US native-born fertility rate is actually lower than the Sweden native-born fertility rate so you’d need to come up with some other theory.
^True. Having money won’t make you happy, but not having it can make you unhappy.
I have a few female colleagues (not in law) who can be “all in” because their male partners only work part time or are self employed with flexible hours. I once picked up a boy on my son’s sports team and saw my colleague coming out of his house. Turned out she had never gone to a practice or game in years and I had no idea the mother and son were related. It turns out I am more judgy about this for women than men.
Employers who want the best talent may need to be less greedy.
A case in point is my daughter’s current employer. The company used to forbid working from home except under extreme circumstances (e.g., blizzards). Then the company decided to move into a new line of business and needed to hire top tech talent to do this successfully. And they found that they couldn’t attract some of the people they wanted to hire because of this policy. So they implemented a more lenient policy on working remotely. And now everyone is happier.
Flexibility is a big perk, and not just for parents. Some employers know this. When my son and his girlfriend moved in together, they discovered that they never had any time together except on weekends because her workday started and ended two hours before his. After a year of this, they each asked their employers for a one-hour change in work hours. And both employers (one a tech firm, the other a local government agency) said yes. There was a time when people didn’t dare to ask for such things and employers wouldn’t react favorably if they did. But now, in some workplaces, it’s considered reasonable.
Of course there are limits. My own employer (a government contractor) is extremely flexible about work hours and working remotely. But managers and certain other people whose jobs involve extensive contact with other team members or with clients find it necessary to mostly work at the office and mostly work conventional hours. Independent contributors have greater flexibility. One guy starts work very early and ends work very late but takes two long breaks during the day to go walk his dogs. And nobody objects.
The computing field was never dominated by women. At its post WWII peak, it was about 35% female.
Another factor in this discussion that I don’t think has been mentioned explicitly is the timing of marriage.
In the 80’s and 90’s, at least in my neck of the woods, mothers would advise kids not to get married so early. I assume because of personal regrets?
My current view is that this is completely wrong. College is the ideal place to meet a mate, and the benefits from income and emotional support when first starting out are huge benefits.
How do other parents feel about the urgency to find a mate during college?
I met my husband in grad school, fortunately. I was such an introvert that I think it would have been hard for me to find a spouse after college.
I wasn’t pushed into STEM, but I did choose it over piano performance because I knew I wasn’t good enough to be a solo pianist and I wasn’t cut out to be a piano teacher.
There were more girls in my HS calculus class than boys. We went into a wide variety of fields, from engineering to math to music to history. My two best girlfriends never had children, interestingly enough.
@OhiBro, kids who marry young tend to have a high divorce rate for all sorts of reasons.
If you’re trying to move back to the '50’s, a lot of women stayed in a marriage back then not because they wanted to but because any other option was far worse for them.
And if you want that type of thing, you’d need a strong economic system for all tiers of society. Not the fairly laissez-faire jungle-style capitalism that has led to exploding inequality and most of the lower half of the economic spectrum treading water or losing ground in the US.
It’s never been fair or easy. There always have been tradeoffs. I think the choices are better than they were 50 years ago when my peers, and we, DH and I, were faced with much the same choices.
It’s not just a matter of staying home with the children. Having two high powered careers means no one minds the house, the down time, the together activities, family, friends, pets, community, if neither person has the time to devote to all of that. It wasn’t just a matter of childcare that was the issue for us. We chose to center our social lives, our free time with our children and family, but that is not always the choice. But to do things well, someone has to be the point man (or woman ) in choreographing all of this.
At our 40th college reunion, which was well attended, many of our classmates were highly successful monetarily and career wise. Many have contributed greatly to history in a global way. But what was apparent (and then statistically verified by a classmate who works with the National Archives and statistical agencies), few children, few intact marriages, and the women in particular were single, more do than averages would predict. Single and with no children. We were the outliers with our large family.
I’m watching the next generation struggle with these same choices. These are choices of privilege, but difficult nonetheless to those embroiled in them.
@MaineLonghorn Yes! Especially important for introverts to find a mate in college.
@PurpleTitan Are there stats to suggest marriage at a younger age results in more frequent divorce? If so, does it separate instances where marriage was hurried vs not hurried?
Regardless, my personal experience is that early marriage usually leads to more success and happiness. Maybe because engineering is generally pretty conservative socially.
I wouldn’t advise my kids not to get married young because of a higher chance of divorce. Would you?
Divorce is not necessarily a bad hing. Being married, people will either grow together or grow apart. But either way, they will grow.
@OhiBro, people will grow whether they are in a marriage or not.
And while I have never been through a divorce, I have seen men who have. It is wrenching. Even though they all love their children, I don’t believe there is a single one who would say they would have chosen getting married and divorced over staying single.
So yes, I would not advise my sons to marry if I think there is a high chance of them becoming divorced.
For me, the article brought up the idea of whether we need greedy jobs at all, where the greed is greed for long hours. Certainly corporate lawyers are going to be well paid, but does it make sense that employers demand 60 hour weeks for these jobs? The jobs could easily be just as well done with two people each working 40 hours a week instead of one working 60 and one working 20.
The article gives the example of obstetricians. Previously, they worked long hours, but now, many are on salary and work 40 hours a week. Babies still get born. And contracts still would be written, clients still would be serviced if hours were more balanced in Big Law.
@OhiBro I’ll start worrying about young women being forced into STEM once I see women having equality in STEM fields. I’m still not seeing it–either in the high schools or the colleges.
I’m a little miffed by the “this is old news” attitude of so many on this thread. I think the point is that it’s a shame that this is STILL going on, and it doesn’t seem to have improved much at all in the last fifteen years. Didn’t you hope or want it to be different for the next generation than it was for yours?
I think that the FIRE movement is actually partly in response to people’s frustrations with the society that the article describes. Many young people I know imagine that the best way to make a life is to work like crazy and save up money for fifteen years, and then have kids, enjoying a slacker-esque existence. I think that’s probably a fantasy that won’t really pan out. It would be disastrous if it did work on at any scale. For society, that is a major loss if our most educated people drop out of the labor force in their late 30s and early 40s. Those same people will be using lots of services, too, as they will probably qualify many benefits to low-income earners, even if they are low income by choice. One recent article I read profiled a FIRE couple who live in a rent control apartment in Manhattan, send their kids to a specialized public school, and will probably get financial aid at selective colleges. They have truly learned to work the system, and they were being lauded for it in the article. I see it as just a massive waste of resources. But the solution is NOT to tell women not to get advanced degrees! Geez.
I don’t know any men who are interested in marrying at 21, so the whole issue of finding a mate in college is moot for us. Who would you possibly find, even if you wanted To?
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but it IS old news.
@royalcroftmom - I got lucky. DH wandered around the country, including Alaska, during his 20s. When he came down to UT for grad school and we met, he was 30 and ready to get married. 
Regarding marriage, i’m 50 and during high school almost all of my friends’ parents were married early and divorced.
Seems to be a conscience effort for my generation now to wait to get married (late 20’s, early 30’s) and very few families that I know of have divorced. In my situation, both my wife and I wanted to establish our careers first, then buy a house before even thinking about having kids.
Interesting enough, my W is a lawyer, now works part-time for the city government and has a full time job raising our kids. In general, wife’s and mother’s have to be “super women” to keep it all together. They are the bedrock of most families and don’t get enough credit for everything they do to raise the next generation.
@OhiBro, it’s hard to tell people when to get married because a lot depends on when the person becomes involved in a relationship that has the potential to lead to a good marriage.
I would not have wanted my daughter to marry the guy she dated during the latter part of college. They were at an appropriate age to make a commitment, but the relationship had problems. Their eventual breakup was a good decision, even though it left both of them unattached at graduation.
I wonder what would have happened, though, if their relationship had been better and they had stayed together. They certainly would not have made the career decisions that they made as single people. In real life, both of them were lucky enough to get jobs that they were very pleased with right after graduation. Hers was on the East Coast. His was in California. That wouldn’t have happened if they had still been a couple. There would have had to be some kind of career compromise for at least one of them to enable them to stay together.
That’s one of the downsides to early marriage – the geographic limitations it imposes, which can have an impact on both people’s careers. Of course, everyone who marries has to deal with the geographic issue eventually, but it can be particularly difficult for those just out of college, who might need/want to move frequently to progress in their careers or go to graduate school.
My advice to my kids is no marriage and no kids. There is no having it all for either gender. Have great relationships, no need to sign any documents. Maintain financial independence. Don’t believe anyone can have it all.