Miss Manners! NOOOOOO!
Published by Lisa Kansas May 21st, 2008 in Family, What would we do without such great advice?
Miss Manners (left) after becoming a pod person.
Miss Manners is the greatest. I wanna be Miss Manners…except that I don’t see myself getting less lazy as the years go by and her advice always seems to require that one exerts extra effort and boy howdy, dealing with people daily already whups my butt. Seriously. However, I adore the ascerbity, justice and wit of her replies to her many Gentle Readers.
Therefore, I was horrified when I spied this headline on msn.com.
Miss Manners: She’s Not ‘Wasting’ Her Education By Staying Home With Her Daughter
YEARRGGGHH! Say it ain’t so! Oh Miss Manners, you cannot break my heart by becoming a conservative wingnut spokeswoman! You can’t leave the fold of clear thought to join the likes of, say, the Schlaf or Coulter or Malkin! NO!
Dear Miss Manners,
I am a 40-year old housewife with a 2-year old daughter. I have a bachelor’s degree from a prestigious private college and also a master’s degree and I speak three languages with a fair degree of fluency. When my husband and I socialize with college-educated people, the question frequently comes up in conversation, “Where did you go to school? What did you study?” Often when I tell them about my educational background, I get comments to the effect that all my education is being “wasted” now that I do not have a career outside the home, or “Don’t you want to do more than stay at home?” or “Wow, you could have xyz impressive career, why don’t you?”I love caring for our daughter, and my husband has an extremely demanding job, so my being at home full time to keep the household running smoothly is a huge help to our family.
When did it become deviant behavior to want to raise one’s own child and spend time with one’s family? I find this question insulting on so many levels, and am really at a loss how to reply without being rude myself. Please help!
I hardly dared peek out of one squinched-up eye at her response:
Gentle Reader,
It became deviant behavior for mothers to stay home with their children immediately after the decades in which it was deviant behavior for mothers to work. Picking on mothers seems to be a national pastime.
Pent-up breath released in a gusty sigh of immense relief! As usual, Miss Manners hits the nail on the head (courteously, of course). Oh thank you, Miss Manners, for not caving into the pressure! Which leads us to, what is up with that headline..? A little misleading? Ya think?
Now, though, this letter is very interesting on several levels. On one level, I at least can sympathize with the writer. People really have no business saying to someone they’ve just met at a party, “Don’t you want to do more than stay at home?” A very condescending and nosy question, no different in its intent from “Don’t you want to stay home and take care of your children?” Unlike Miss Manners, I have no problem advising a rude response to either query. But then, you know, I start to smell a rat–
so my being at home full time to keep the household running smoothly is a huge help to our family
Well, yeah, runnin’ the farm with the 12 kids is DAMN hard–oh, wait. She said she has one (1) two-year-old child. And she has…a house. Now, I don’t know anything else about her life. Maybe she has a houseful of servants to manage. Maybe the house is a fixer-upper. Maybe..? But the most likely scenario is that it’s a typical house, which means that it doesn’t require “running,” just standard cleaning and maintenance, plus such things as laundry and bill-paying and vehicle care thrown in, which I hesitate to dignify by referring to this work as running a household. I do it when I am, get this, a single mom with two kids! And I’m lazy! And I didn’t find it an unbearable strain, certainly not enough to justify, when I last remarried, a sudden need to stop all paying outside work to stay home to handle it properly.
Then the smell of rat got stronger–
When did it become deviant behavior to want to raise one’s own child and spend time with one’s family?
So by this definition, her husband couldn’t be considered as raising his own child or spending time with his family? Since working outside the home means you aren’t doing these things..? Or, ho ho, of course, silly me–when a woman works outside the home she can no longer be considered to be raising her own child or spending time with her family. All men have to do to get that level of credit is donate the sperm, marry the recipient and fork over a joint bank account card!
Backing up further in her letter–
I have a bachelor’s degree from a prestigious private college and also a master’s degree and I speak three languages with a fair degree of fluency.
And some people at parties, upon discovering this, say:
“Wow, you could have xyz impressive career, why don’t you?”
This is not an odd question at all. That level of education requires a considerable amount of money and time invested–beyond those who had to take out loans to get it and therefore must work to pay them back, most people who devote that kind of time to their education do want to use it. There is of course nothing wrong with education for the sole sake of acquiring knowledge, but usually there is also a corresponding passion to use that knowledge. It is odd that suddenly someone for whom that was a consuming passion (since clearly she doesn’t have to work now, so her reasons weren’t monetary for pursuing it) suddenly finds perfect intellectual fulfillment in changing poopy diapers and color-coordinating bedspreads and draperies. And yes, it is a waste of that level of education. You do not need it to be a nanny, housekeeper or home secretary. It’s a shame she can’t seem to breathe through her haze of offense, cause I would really love to hear her answer to that one question…why did you spend all that time and money on all those skills that you are now avoiding any situation where they might be used..?
I do support the right of anyone to choose, without being subjected to nosy personal questions and moral judgements from strangers, any life path their little heart desires. However, I admit that I find women who couch their personal choice to become a full-time nanny/housewife in terms of “because I want to raise my own child!” judgmental and wildly sexist. I also have a hard time taking seriously any woman living in a typical, modern-day house who claims that her efforts in taking care of said house are some kind of major achievement and that it’s a real load off her husband’s mind to know that she’s there switching on the dishwasher and writing out the check for the cable bill…the reason people who do stuff like this as outside-the-home jobs get paid minimum wage to do it is because that’s about what those jobs are worth. The supply of people who are capable of doing them far outweighs the demand. Yes, I respect your right to choose your own life, but no, I’m not going to enable your deception, self-directed or otherwise, that what you’re doing is in any way special or noble or even very hard work. It’s just what you chose to do, no more, no less. You shouldn’t suffer intrusive queries about it nor sneers, either! but neither should you expect to be praised nor should you get offended when your behavior does not elicit admiration. Frankly, you aren’t doing anything that spectacular to deserve it.
why did you spend all that time and money on all those skills that you are now avoiding any situation where they might be used..?
To be perfectly fair to her, you don’t know they’re not being used, only that they’re not being used in paid employment. To me, this whole letter doesn’t reads like she’s basically showing off - “hahaha, i’m SO SMART and i don’t even have to WORK because I have this GUY who has SUCH A GOOD JOB and-” Yeah. I smell class at work (I think you smelt it too - dunno about yourself, but I grew up in a home that had neither dishwasher nor a cable subscription, and that was just a lower middle class, single parent home. We know she’s nowhere near short of money, because her letter’s been damn sure to convey that). So people are questioning her exulted status and she goes crying to Miss Manners, I reckon.
I dunno how that ‘doesn’t’ got in there, but it wasn’t meant to. :/
I don’t know, Thene, I think she makes it pretty clear that she does not stir from the home and that all her energies are devoted to caring for her daughter and running her household. I could be wrong, though…her classism is interestingly expressed in one place, too–when she “socializes with college-educated people.” Does she ever socialize with non-college-educated people, and if she does, do they fall all over her congratulating her magnificent mommy-and-wife devotion, unlike those degree-holding sneerers..?
And yes, it is a waste of that level of education. You do not need it to be a nanny, housekeeper or home secretary.
Lisa, I luv ya and your posts, but I think you’re wrong here.
No, you don’t need it to be a nanny, etc.- but it can only be considered a waste if you define yourself solely along those lines.
Sorry, but I’ve got a huge problem with denigrating someone for getting a higher education just for its own sake.
I’m a returning student, an undergrad history major. I chose this because I love history, and I want to try to make some sense of the world. Since I started back to school at age 39, I’ve been telling people, and believing it myself, that I was really doing this so I could go to law school. But the closer I get to finishing the BA, the less interested I am in applying- now I’m thinking that I’d like to teach. Or go for a Master’s. Or get a second Bachelor’s in Poli-Sci. Or learn to speak, read, and write in Spanish fluently. Or Japanese. Or both. Or do anything but go to law school, even go back to driving trucks for a living. Or get married and become a stay-at-home dad.
The point is, I will never consider all this time and money I’ve invested in getting my degree to have been wasted, even if I end up doing “nothing” with it. This experience has fundamentally changed the way I think, immensely broadened my view of the world and my place in it.
What else would I have done if I hadn’t gone back to school? Gotten $3/hr more than I was making three years ago? Maintained currency and proficiency with the latest video games? Continued believing things to be true that were flat wrong? Smoked more and better weed?
Not going back to college would have been a huge waste of my time, I think. Even if I don’t go to law school.
There was a thread recently on Lance Mannion’s blog about “wasted” higher education that had me too mad to comment. (It was the first, and likely last, time I ever visited that blog- a post linked by hilzoy, I think.) It was extremely disheartening to read so many otherwise intelligent people, academics even, go on and on about higher education as nothing more than a career-building exercise.
Apparently learning a subject to a deep degree isn’t worth a thing unless someone is going to pay you for it. Not a single commenter there even considered the possibility that someone could study something, even at great personal sacrifice of time and money, simply because they loved it. I’m still a bit steamed about it, which is why I’m ranting at you now. Again, sorry.
But seriously, speaking three languages is a waste unless it’s related to a profession? You don’t really believe that, do you?
I think you kinda missed where I specifically said “There is of course nothing wrong with education for the sole sake of acquiring knowledge.” I think it is a reasonable question to wonder, though, “but usually there is also a corresponding passion to use that knowledge. It is odd that suddenly someone for whom that was a consuming passion (since clearly she doesn’t have to work now, so her reasons weren’t monetary for pursuing it) suddenly finds perfect intellectual fulfillment in changing poopy diapers and color-coordinating bedspreads and draperies.” As you see, I’m not wondering why she didn’t run out and get a job specifically doing that–what I’m wondering is, where did her interest in (whatever it was she got both her degrees in) go? That’s a lotta work and devotion in (whatever) to be simply chucked out the window overnight.
So when you say, “But the closer I get to finishing the BA, the less interested I am in applying- now I’m thinking that I’d like to teach. Or go for a Master’s. Or get a second Bachelor’s in Poli-Sci. Or learn to speak, read, and write in Spanish fluently. Or Japanese. Or both. Or do anything but go to law school, even go back to driving trucks for a living. Or get married and become a stay-at-home dad.” Are you REALLY back in school because your clearly defined goal is to go on to become a truck driver or as a stepping stone in your journey to get married? Or are you there because you’re really into what you’re studying, ie, it gives you intellectual and emotional fulfilment? Would you be offended if, once you graduated and then began driving trucks, if people wondered where your passion for the subject went, because driving trucks probably isn’t fulfilling that?
Now, most people don’t have the luxury of not going on and making a career out of whatever it is they chose to study in school–unless Moms and Dads paid for said degree, there’s usually some loanage to be paid back, among other things, and for the rest, there usually isn’t a sugar daddy (or momma) waiting in the wings to pick up living expenses. Now, if either of those things ARE true and you can afford to not put to use your education, there’s nothing either wrong or not-wrong with that if it’s what you want to do…but still–my post doesn’t really have anything to do with whether or not anyone gets a high-paying job with their education. It has to do with, what about hanging with a two-year-old all day and polishing the furniture compliments the horizons you broadened while in school..? If you “studied something with a great personal sacrifice of time and money because you loved it” THAT much…where did that love go?
Oh, now, where did I say anything about learning to speak another language being a waste unless it’s related to a profession? That’s a fair stretch of my post, man. Try again?
To be perfectly fair to her, you don’t know they’re not being used, only that they’re not being used in paid employment.
I dunno, Thene, since she was so defensive, I’d think the letter-writer is the type of person who would say, “It’s not like I’m not using my education…I volunteer as ABC or freelance as XYZ” or something like that.
But seriously, speaking three languages is a waste unless it’s related to a profession? You don’t really believe that, do you?
It’s a waste if you have no one to talk to. And this woman gives no indication that she’s doing anything but running a typical suburban household, which is not exactly an diverse life filled with opportunity to show off your impressive language skills.
I have this argument all the time with my ex, who also likes to study things that have no hope of paying him back his investment. Which is fine. But my rule is, you have to do something with that. It doesn’t have to be profitable, but it does have to be useful. Even if you’re just sitting in a hut in the jungle, serving as your village’s living history textbook, at least you’re performing a service. Research is something - maybe no one will ever pay you for your thesis, but if you’re half the scholar you fancy yourself, it will add something to our general body of knowledge, and that’s something.
There is way too much work to be done on this planet, in every possible subject, to let people spend years mastering subjects without any intention of using it in any way. If this woman really spent 7 or more years and 100G to get a Bachelors and a Masters and become fluent in three languages (probably 4, including English, the way she phrased that) and she quit to do a job that is routinely used as the reason we don’t need to educate women at all (Does the College Girl Consider Herself too Good for Housework?) then yeah, that’s a waste. I suspect that somewhere life handed her some lemons and now she’s rationalizing that she never wanted lemonade in the first place. Whoever that husband is, she must really like him.
Ruh-roh. As I’ve learned in the past, even feminists generally believe that criticizing or questioning the tradition of housewifery—even gently asking why it’s 99% female—is nothing short of question the very existence of motherhood. Even though I know from watching my own mother that housewifery was not really her free choice, and she finally buckled under the pressure and went back to work.
But there does remain an interesting moral question: Do women who don’t use their fancy degrees realize that they took a seat at their fancy universities that someone else might have used? I’m not a Pollyanna enough to think that someone poorer or non-white would have taken the seat for sure, but if I were the housewife who got the degree as a class marker to show I’m worthy of my well-educated husband, then I’d probably feel a nagging guilt about that.
RobW, I have to say that while I think everyone should be learning all the time, education and going to college for a degree are different things. And in the latter case, you have to justify why you’re taking up a seat that someone else could use. If you’re not using the degree to improve you career or give back to the world in some substantial way, then probably the person who’d have your seat in your lieu is. There are two ways around this, I’d say: Become an autodidact or go to a non-competitive college or community college that will give you a comparable education and could use your tuition money to stay alive providing education to the community.
I’ll bet $20 this woman went to a competitive university, maybe even one in the Ivy Leagues, taking up a seat someone else really needed.
I am surprised I haven’t been yelled at by now–just one very courteous disagreement!
I really should start my own blog, rather than use others’ spaces to work out my own issues… It’s a real punk-ass thing to do, I know. That said, here goes:
Lisa: I think you kinda missed where I specifically said “There is of course nothing wrong with education for the sole sake of acquiring knowledge.”
You’re right, I did miss that part. I probably should read more carefully and edit my own posts, even at 3am. I just have heard too many questions lately about what do I plan to do if I don’t apply, or get accepted, to the law school and I’m way too defensive about it.
I ought to have posted this rant over at Lance’s since that’s the thread that really put me off my feed- your’s was just a trigger, really. Please accept my apology.
But yes, I likely will be offended if I end up going back to driving a truck and someone questions why I got my degree at all. Driving trucks or fixing cars is what I’d be doing to buy groceries and pay rent, not to fulfil any intellectual passion. The question reveals a stark philosophical difference in the point and value of higher education. I’m in it to improve my mind; if my career improves as well, great, but that’s not really why I’m in it. It was at first, but now it’s not.
My point is that before going back to college, I didn’t really have much of an intellectual passion at all. I believed that I knew enough and considered myself “street-smart.” And I had a lot of assumptions that I thought was knowlege.
Amanda mentions being an autodidact, but that’s not any solution if one hasn’t yet learned how to learn: how to evaluate ideas, how to judge sources, how to critically examine other people’s research.
I spent 20 years of adulthood thinking I was just that: a self-taught intellectual. Problem was, most of the stuff I taught myself was wrong. There’s a lot of terrible information out there, presented in a way that seems convincing to the uneducated. A minimum level of education in required to even understand genuine scholarship. Pop psychology, pop history, pop politics did not help me understand much, just like reading Discover magazine doesn’t make one a scientist.
I really can’t overstate how much going back to school has changed me. The changes are permanent and valuable and are not really related to practical, or impractical, career choices. It has made me a better person, in part by being a catalyst for other changes.
Thene:”To be perfectly fair to her, you don’t know they’re not being used, only that they’re not being used in paid employment.” This is really what I’m getting at. “Using” one’s education in the context of paid employment is not the same thing as “using” one’s education as self-improvement and a means of personal growth.
Kyso: The reason she’s coming across as defensive is because she is defensive. People who she respects are giving her crap for her life choices and judging her for not doing what they think she ought to be doing. Yeah, she’s priveleged to make those choices, and her tone reeks of classism. She doesn’t give any indication of awareness of her privelege. But I do understand the defensiveness. I empathize here because it seems like people are making assumptions about her situation based in large part on information that she doesn’t provide.
For example, the languages thing: “It’s a waste if you have no one to talk to.” You are assuming that she does not. You are forgetting the whole world of literature, film, and internet communications- for all we know, she has dozens of friends all over the world with whom she communicates in their language, friends that she wouldn’t have otherwise. She may live in a major metropolitan area, where (even in the suburbs, believe it or not) there are people from all over the world.
Maybe she teaches these languages to her own children. Maybe her experience or knowlege of other cultures rubs off on them in the form of a general tolerance for and curiosity about other people.
Your rule about everything your ex studies being useful is your rule. He can choose to accept it and live according to it or not. If not, you can try to impose it on him through judgement, rejection, what-have-you. But it’s still your rule and not everyone else’s. That’s the kind of judgementalism to which I reacted in the first place.
How do you define “useful” anyway? That’s the real question. Is, “this gives me joy,” insufficiently useful?
It would seem so- but looking at your minimal examples (village teacher, obscure researcher), that doesn’t seem to be a problem. Your idea of “use” seems to be something that gives to others- a social usefulness? So, doesn’t that which makes me a better person, more understanding of others, more critical of bullshit, more able to publically counter the daily misinformation machine have a positive social effect? I interact regularly with people who are neither educated nor curious. I know that my enthusiasm has rubbed off on at least a few of them.
But being of social use isn’t necessarily the only motivation: I ride my motorcycle because it gives me joy. It also gives me 40mpg, costs little to insure, and can park anywhere. But I ride it because it gives me joy, not because it’s a more socially beneficial choice than an SUV.
Amanda:
I have to say that while I think everyone should be learning all the time, education and going to college for a degree are different things.
The latter is a subset of the former, actually. It is a means of getting an education in a specific field with a high level of guidance and structure. Which, for some of us, is necessary to achieve the former.
And in the latter case, you have to justify why you’re taking up a seat that someone else could use.
I don’t think I have to justify a thing- despite my ridiculously long attempt here to do so.
If you’re not using the degree to improve you career or give back to the world in some substantial way, then probably the person who’d have your seat in your lieu is.
Nope, I’m not going to feel the least bit guilty for taking the seat of someone who may or may not make different choices post-college. We all have plans and dreams. Some of us change our plans along the way often. That’s life- go ahead and judge me for it, I don’t care. Well, obviously I do, since I’m wasting an hour writing this.
I qualified for admission. I pay the tuition. I do the work, I’ll get my degree. I probably will end up doing something “useful” (still undefined) with it, but if I don’t that’s my problem.
Also, I see no evidence that whoever would take my seat in my absense would “probably” be more likely to make better social use of it. Perhaps the person who takes my seat would continue on to law school and becomes a M&A lawyer, a hedge fund manager, or a GOP oppo researcher, or a disciple of John Yoo in President-for-life McCain’s Justice Department. Or quit and be a full-time parent.
A lot of the people I see in college seem to have no sense of social obligation at all either. These are the ones who see the degree exclusively in terms of career advancement. The entire Business school is filled with nothing but these types.
There are two ways around this, I’d say: Become an autodidact or go to a non-competitive college or community college that will give you a comparable education and could use your tuition money to stay alive providing education to the community.
Autodidact: tried that. Bad idea (see above). The second choice: where do you think I’m going, Harvard? Stanford? Where do you think 39-year-old truckers and mechanics go when they choose to return to college? Community college followed by state university, unless we get so discouraged we quit.* I am the community to which these schools provide education. To what end? Well, that brings us back to the question of the point of education.
(There’s no evidence, btw, that the letter-writer went to a “competitive” school or an Ivy-league. She could have gone to just another publicly funded 2nd-rate state school like mine.)
*I’ve started and dropped out of college three times, beginning with right out of high school. Among the reasons: doubt about the real value of education, huge self-doubt… including doubt as to whether I deserve it. It is worth it, I can do it, and I do deserve it. Fuck anyone who thinks I’ve “wasted” it if I don’t do something with it of which they approve.
Anyway, sorry for the thread-jack. Every once in a while, something that’s been bugging me for a while (what am I going to do after I get the BA, which is frighteningly close) combines with something else (do something useful with it or you’ve wasted your time) and I snap. A barely-related topic becomes “all about me.” Pardon me.
Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far. Again, my apologies for using up your bandwidth to work through my own problems… but thanks for providing it.
I’m a huge fan, and daily reader, of Punkass and Pandagon. Thanks to you all.
:)
Rob, are you a housewife? Because I believe the question here is whether or not it’s good to take a seat at a prestigious university to be a trophy wife. You’re acting like you’re attacked.
The fact of the matter is that college degrees aren’t just about education, or even necessarily mainly about. They are social currency. They are the primary–and for most people only—way to gain entrance to the middle class. They’re mandatory to be a member of the professional class.
I worked for an extremely prestigious MBA program, and I saw with my own eyes how getting in or not was, for a lot of people, the difference between making $35K a year and $80-$100K a year. And you had a mix of people that were coming from the professional class background and people clawing their way up from the working class. I would have been really sore to see someone from the latter group not make the cut because they lost out in a squeaker to a woman who intended to “use” her degree by marrying and becoming a housewife for someone actually using his degree to make money.
Why is going to college and becoming a “trophy wife” different than going to college and becoming a truck driver or a hedge fund manager? I suspect that the specter of the “trophy wife” who takes a valuable seat at a college is both sexist and classist.
I think it’s sexist because there are an awful lot of men who don’t use their degree to get anywhere near their income potential, but there’s no comparable stereotype for them. Granted, fewer men choose to work for absolutely free after graduation, but there are plenty of men who are legal aid attorneys or public school teachers who are almost working for free, after student loan expenses. Absent societal pressure, many men might make the choice to “manage a home” professionally after they graduate college. (NOTE: I’m not saying that the letter-writer isn’t overstating her job description a lot. But it’s hard for me to find someone who DOESN’T do that, including myself.)
I think it’s classist because I really don’t see how a hedge fund manager creates any more social good than a “trophy wife” - it’s just that one gets paid more. What if the hedge fund’s profitability is based on the backbreaking labor of slaves? Should a college be really proud that they produced someone to perpetuate the transfer of wealth to the rich, rather than someone like the letter-writer? Adding to graduates’ social currency is a nice side benefit to a college education, but it’s not the only factor or even the most important factor. Social good IS really important.
I think about this stuff a lot, because I work as an academic advisor at a college. I constantly have to justify to students and parents why a liberal arts education is worth the time and money. (Often, I doubt it myself.) I can’t really point to income potential, because while college grads usually do better than high school grads, it’s certainly not enough of a difference to make it an automatic ticket to middle class security. Many times, even a grad degree doesn’t do it. (An MBA is an exception, if the student takes a typical corporate job.)
So why go to college? I think the Rob hits the nail on the head. A free society needs to ensure that a good percentage of the population can process the world in a certain way. We don’t have a church to tell us the answers, or a totalitarian state. We want thinkers who can evaluate evidence, use logic, draw on historical examples, seek out more information when necessary, express themselves clearly, etc., etc.
Why can’t this be done on your own? Well, sometimes it can. However, it’s unlikely. There’s so much information that it’s hard to decide what information to prioritize and how to digest it. College curricula are designed by groups of people (professors) who have studied subjects in depth and know what’s important to develop critical thinking. They choose each and every requirement very carefully, then they pass their ideas through a chain of approval (often going to the state legislature, if it’s a public school) to make sure their ideas are sound. Hopefully, this will result in graduates who can make informed decisions. Sometimes, it fails. But when it works, although not every grad will come to the same conclusions, they will (hopefully) be more immune to the sound-bite crap on TV news and be able to participate in society in a more reasoned fashion. I don’t think the opportunity to become a critical thinker should be restricted to those who will use it to make a fat wad of cash. Using your education for cash is what trade school is for. Want to rule the world? Become a union electrician.
(A side note: I’m not disturbed that college admissions committees might admit someone who doesn’t want to use the degree. I’m disturbed that they’re biased toward admitting students who don’t want to use their brains. Their main criteria often is a standardized test, for cryin’ out loud!)
As for the letter-writer, I think she’s getting a dose of sexism and classism and giving it right back. “You think I’m just a dumb housewife? Well, real women RAISE their kids THEMSELVES and let hubby pay all the bills!”
I do think the questions being asked of her are different than the ones asked of me when people look at my grad degree and ask why I’m an advisor. People are interested in my loss of interest in my field, while they’re interested in her life of “leisure” and “mindlessness” - and she senses that. If I were her, I’d start grilling her supposed friends on everything they learned in college - and how often they use it on a daily basis. Or, I’d get friends who weren’t douchebags.
I’m a rather sporadic blog reader and rarely ever post a response, but here is a subject that I can’t resist. I am a stay-at-home mom with a graduate degree. Did I waste my education? Nope, I spent a decade working at my chosen career. I use a good bit of what I learned in college while caring for my daughter (I speak another language with her, and we spend time in museums and doing art projects; I used my knowledge before quitting my job, and am still using it now). And–like the woman who wrote the letter–who’s to say that I won’t go back to my career? My child hasn’t started kindergarten yet. and she’s still only in school a few hours a day. So, I’m taking a big break from my career. That certainly doesn’t mean that someone else deserved my place in college more than I did!
Please don’t assume that the mother in question sits around eating bonbons while taking breaks from scrubbing every inch of her home to gleaming perfection. There is just not enough information in the letter to assume she is a vapid person who wasted her education and is wasting her life. For all we know, she provided medical care to refugees before having her child (she’s 40! Surely she did something worthwhile before having a kid!) and now spends her free time volunteering for the local Amnesty International chapter. Why do you assume that because she is at home with her child, because she can afford cable, because she sometimes socializes with college-educated people (who certainly don’t seem to be her friends, the way they speak to her, and BTW, she didn’t say she ONLY socializes with these people, only that they are the ones who question this particular life choice), she is a shallow person who contributes nothing to society?
I am not a housewife (as anyone who has been in my messy home can tell). I am a mother. While I know some fabulous nannies, my child is getting the benefit of my years of education and work. Her experience is much broader than some of her friends who were raised by nannies who sit in the house with the TV on all the time and never visit a museum or farm or even another neighborhood where they might experience something different. While in the workforce, I made a difference in the lives of the people I worked with; now that I am at home with my daughter, I am making a difference in her life. With all of these efforts, I hope that she will grow up to make a difference in this world.
Hi Rob, Actually I like it when people write nice looooong comments, cause you know, it gives me a chance to hop on my soapbox. A day in which I do not pen at least one 50-word sentence is a day wasted. Really! I love the sound of my own voice, even in text format.
You say: “But yes, I likely will be offended if I end up going back to driving a truck and someone questions why I got my degree at all. Driving trucks or fixing cars is what I’d be doing to buy groceries and pay rent, not to fulfil any intellectual passion. The question reveals a stark philosophical difference in the point and value of higher education. I’m in it to improve my mind; if my career improves as well, great, but that’s not really why I’m in it. It was at first, but now it’s not.”
See, the thing that I don’t get is, why don’t people pursue a job that, as well as paying the bills, also fulfills them on other levels? I can understand if your passion is for something that really can’t support you financially, not also getting a job in the field, but in your case that isn’t the case–you could live off a job that you could get based on your education. Why does a “job” have to be defined as something you do to get money, nothing to do at all with what you love? Why would you be offended if someone was surprised that you deliberately chose to not get a paying job in a field you had studied and loved? It isn’t getting your degree that’s the question, it’s why wouldn’t you rather do something you loved with your brain and soul every day and have the added benefit of getting paid for it?
Also, re the letter writer–she does specify that she attended a prestigious private college.
Hi Becca, It’s true I don’t know the letter writer, and I definitely don’t make any assumptions about anything she was doing before she had her child, or what she may do someday in the future. What assumptions I make now are based on what she says about her life now–I think it’s likely she doesn’t do anything outside the home, because she makes such a big deal about how her life revolves around raising her daughter and caring for her house and husband.
I personally, as I said, have absolutely zero problems with people who decide to be stay-at-home parents, and I fully support their right not to be accosted at parties and given the third degree about their lifestyle choices. However, I am not going to participate in the (what I think is) bizarre deification of motherhood, especially stay-at-home motherhood, that so inundates our culture. It’s not special. It’s just a personal choice, with no greater value than the choice to not be a stay-at-home mother.
I’ve been more or less raising babies and children nonstop since I was ten years old (oh, thank God yes, the End Is Finally In Sight!). I suppose because of that I have a different perspective of motherhood–parenthood–than a lot of people, especially people that didn’t get started til their thirties at the earliest (older than the age I am in now many cases).
You say: “I am not a housewife (as anyone who has been in my messy home can tell). I am a mother. While I know some fabulous nannies, my child is getting the benefit of my years of education and work. Her experience is much broader than some of her friends who were raised by nannies who sit in the house with the TV on all the time and never visit a museum or farm or even another neighborhood where they might experience something different. While in the workforce, I made a difference in the lives of the people I worked with; now that I am at home with my daughter, I am making a difference in her life.”
Well, I’m a mother, too. Neither of my children had nannies (that was far, far beyond my means); they had in-home daycares when they were babies and as soon as they were old enough to give a crap about visiting museums and farms, I put them in excellent daycares that organized those kinds of trips on a regular basis. My children have benefited all their lives from my years of education and work and still continue to benefit. I can say with complete surety that there is no positive difference it would have made in their lives had I stayed home all day with them from the ages of 6 months to 6 years, and frankly can’t imagine how it would be a positive difference in any other kids’ lives either. There are benefits and drawbacks to both working outside the home and staying in the home and strictly speaking from the child’s welfare point of view, I don’t think there’s an overall advantage or disadvantage to either one.