@bjkmom Great post and I can identify with pretty much everything you mentioned you’ve experienced - seizures, cancer issues, anxiety issues (had that Friday again), kids with horrid home lives, and more. Oh, then there’s math/science to teach, college guidance to offer, and general keeping up on their lives - those aren’t stressful though.
Tomorrow we get to teach students (again) how to deal with an Active Intruder. I learned fighting and evading skills back in my AF days - never once thinking I’d be teaching them to high school students. In the AF we had folks who already had a natural “fight” mentality. In high school we have the whole gamut of “fight, flight, and freeze,” yet it’s an important life lesson in this day and age. Bummer TBH. The one thing I assure each class I go through this with is that we’re either going to survive or I’m going to be the first one (from our class) to die trying. My own family knows this too.
I don’t know about other women at all, but I was a Structural Engineer for 7 years and it was not that great. It is an extremely stressful profession. I worked a lot of hours and never gained much confidence. The work was often so tedious I thought my brain would atrophy and decay into dust. I was laid off 3 times. Glad to be out of that.
@sylvan8798 I come from a family of engineers, including my mother who ran a division in the aerospace industry. She’s a smart, tough woman for whom sexism was more stressful than the work. Twice she questioned why men in parallel positions earned more than she did. Finally, she implemented a system of keeping track who did how many projects and finally got salary parity when she could prove to upper management that she was outperforming the men. But she too was laid off a couple of times, leading her to be very down on the profession which demanded a lot of work in college and in the office, but which treated engineers as disposable property.
I disagree. Young women and men at roughly the age of 18 can think for themselves. Things may actually be better for young women now. In this day and age there are now role models, as well as cautionary tales when it comes to pursuing a STEM career.
I stand by the belief that ‘encouragement’ is not the same as ‘being forced’. People with an aptitude in something are often encouraged to pursue it in some form. I would be much more concerned with young people being discouraged from pursuits based on some kind of gender expectation.
Btw, my husband said he saw many male engineers who wished to leave the profession too. Quite a few left to pursue an MBA. Turnover, in general…you may call it a revolving door…seems to be more common across many professions.
@OhiBro I would also appreciate it if you could explain what you mean by
I’m hearing stories that millennials are fighting for a better work-life balance. I don’t know if there’s any data backing it, but I do meet a lot of young people who are working remotely in larger numbers than their peers a couple of decades ago. That may be due to technology which allows it. But also I think it’s becoming more common to expect a certain amount of flexibility. Something my generation did not have in the least.
Many SAH parents stay home bcos they can, and they believe it is in the best interest in their child’s development. (Can’t wait for the studies on Harvard admissions to analyze how many legacies had a SAH parent and how many of the unhooked had a SAH parent.)
As someone who did exactly that…stayed home because I could, I absolutely recognize the benefits of at home parents. However, I would not want it to be linked to specific outcomes like elite college acceptances. I once had an argument with someone trying to tell me I was making a poor choice because studies showed that kids of working parents and kids of SAH parents had the same “outcomes.” I countered that I was not doing it for any specific outcome. I did it because it was good for all of us in terms of happiness, stress, enjoyment and fulfillment. I have no illusions that what I did or did not do caused my children to get into any specific tier of school. I wouldn’t care if it did. It made us all happy while i was doing it and thats what counted for us.
@bjkmom and I’ll go one step further to say that anyone doing a poor job in any profession is probably in a low stress environment.
My husband has been an elem teacher in a poor school district for almost 30 years. I WISH more was done to get men into elementary schools because almost all of these kids have NO positive male role models in their lives. You want stress? He has had to deal with kids whose siblings were murdered in front of them, parents who pimp out their kids, parents who steal their Xmas presents under the tree for drugs, beat their kids. And then you wonder why there are discipline issues like kids throwing desks and computers, kicking (pregnant) teachers in the stomach, performing sex acts on one another (yes, in elementary school). I don’t think anything could shock him (or me) at this point. It’s not just a random odd case. It’s constant in almost every classroom, every year. And that’s just the elementary school level. The stories my kids bring home from the HS are mind boggling. (we had our kids in private school until high school when there are no good options.)
And then on top of dealing with those and normal issues, you’re supposed to get the kids to pass standardized tests? Are you kidding? And what happens when you school fails? The higher ups implement more and more busywork that has no positive impact on the classroom. The more you fail, the more work must be done. The schools now have veteran teachers of 20+ years who literally sob at their desks at the end of every day. My husband used to say that he would continue until I could retire, but now he says he is done after 30 years. Teaching is NOT easy.
On the flip and more positive side, we can’t go anywhere in this town without former and current kids coming up to hug him. Teachers do make a difference.
Yes!! More male elementary teachers would be a positive in my opinion. And while we’re at it, let’s advocate for more male nurses!! When my father was hospitalized a few years ago, he had a fantastic male ICU nurse. We would talk with this nurse and he said there was a great need for more men, especially with patients/Americans getting larger. He said he’s often asked to assist because of his strength compared to some of his female peers.
D1 is still working 12+hr day as a director at an IB. She travels few days a week. Sometimes when she has an Euro deal she would be at work 2-3am (9am European time).
D2 was an intern at an US attorney’s office for 2 years. She often was at the office all night when they had trials. I think she probably worked 60-80 hrs regularly and she fully expects to work those hours when she is out of law school.
In speaking with my kids’ friends who are working they are all working very long hours, so I don’t necessary think the millennials are having better work-life balance than us. Many of those high tech companies provide food, dry cleaning, babysitting services, etc on campus to keep their employees working as long as possible.
@oldfort would you be willing to share how you feel about your daughters’ work hours, both now and if they continue to work those kinds of hours after having children?
I ask because I know you have a demanding career yourself, so I think we would all benefit from your perspective.
I’ll just say different strokes for different folks. Nothing seems worth working 60 to 80 hours a week. I’d never encourage my children to follow that path either.
I’d never suggest my employees do that either. I can’t imagine how long you could keep that up before burning out.
My niece worked for a major accounting firm, the hours were insane and their business model included a tremendous drop out rate. She left for saner hours and more money.
I know D1’s plan is to cut back a bit after she has children (maybe 50 hrs week) and her husband would do the same. They will get necessary in home childcare for their kids. They are making a choice of living 30 min commute from work so they could get home quickly if necessary (no plan of moving out to the suburb after the kids are born). All of that should help them to have more time with their kids some day.
I worked with a woman who was head of sales at a major bank few years ago. She had 4 children, 2 nannies and a housekeeper. She volunteered at her kids’ schools like other parents. She had a driver who would take her to the school and brought her back to work in few hours (out on a client call was what everyone else knew).
I managed to go to all of my kids’ parent/teacher conferences, ballet recitals and many of school’s activities. It took a lot more planning, but I had quite a bit of leeway at work because of my seniority by the time I had my kids. I had a nanny for the kids from 7-6, a housekeep few times a week and my parents were available if we had to travel. There were times when it was difficult (schedule wise) and there were days when it was hard to leave my kids, but in hindsight I am glad I stayed with my career instead of staying home.
I tell my girls to pursue their careers, cut back while kids are young and be prepared it may impact their careers, but they could catch up after their kids are older. I live in the same city as my girls, so I will be able to help out when needed.
We’re definitely in the “avoid the rat race” crowd ourselves. The only one who differs is middle son considering he’s becoming a doctor. Once he’s finished with that rat race part - completely done with residency, etc - then it will be interesting to see where he ends up going and what he ends up doing.
Oldest works from home (for a company - IT).
Youngest will be changing jobs shortly as FDIL just accepted a job, but he's definitely not hunting "rat race."
H works for himself - owns the company - has always been there for our lads growing up (he went with them on their school field trips, etc) and sets his own hours. He can also work remotely allowing us plenty of travel time. He dropped having employees years ago (economic downturn?) and works with subcontractors - pretty much like many in his field.
I've been part time most of my working life only accepting temporary full time positions when it fits our schedule and I like the actual position. I have a standing offer for full time if we had ever needed it, but we haven't.
To each their own, but we’ve enjoyed our family time with our kids growing up and plan to continue enjoying our laps around the sun until we don’t have anymore. For us it’s a combo of having jobs and having flexible time to enjoy things or be there for folks when necessary.
Everyone gets to make their own choices. We don’t “owe” the country/world something. It’s like saying “everyone could work 12 * 7 = 84 hours a week - what a brain drain for our country that we are not all doing so.” Yeah, maybe people want to have a life, in addition to or instead of working until they drop.
Then, let’s start by firing poor performing teachers. At the high end, the estimate is only 85% of students graduate HS, and there’s lots of reasons to think that number is inflated. That type of failure rate would not be tolerated in any other industry.
Kids drop out of high school for reasons totally unrelated to teacher performance. One certainly can not blame the teachers for the students with utterly dysfunctional family lives, poverty, addiction, and no interest in ( or sometimes aptitude for) school work. That is on the student, the family, and the community.
My kid attended a title 1 school for one week as an exchange student. She was a freshman. A girl in her class moonlighted as a stripper (at 14), several boys were in gangs, several had already been in juvenile justice facilities. Not one student lived with both parents, many lived with no parent. Many came to school just to eat the free meals. During roll call, kids absent were presumed to have dropped out, been arrested, or dead. As the principal noted, there was no saving many of these kids. So do not blame the teachers for failing the kids. Their families, and greater society, are responsible for that .
@sylvan8798 and @katliamom , thank you for relating your experiences. Engineering can be a soulless profession. Many women want more personal interaction.
@88jm19 , when I say there are huge financial incentives for women to enter STEM for politically-motivated reasons, I mean the well-known hook that can favor admission and merit aid for girls in STEM. The political motivation comes from the Yogi Berra logic that “there aren’t many women in STEM, which is why we need more women in STEM.”