I originally set out to defend the writer of the letter, thinking I could very well have written it myself. But as I wrote, I realized that if she has no answer for the nosy souls who annoy her with their questions, she very probably is doing nothing at all, and will soon become bored with it. For the short period when I really did nothing but manage the house (despite having a household that really does have to be managed – staff, accounting, inventories, receptions, etc – again, all due to husband’s job, and not something we have much of a choice about), I complained about the same thing. I hated answering that I had no job, though, and soon came to miss having my own story to tell when my husband told me about his day. Well, something other than “he ate all his peas, but dropped his milk. Oh, and he hasn’t been to the potty yet.”

I have an MBA from a prestigious school and speak even more languages than this lady. I worked for several years after my MBA, went back to work (teaching at another prestigious b-school) shortly after my son was born, but now stay at home. Due to my husband’s job, we move countries every 2-3 years, and I can’t necessarily get a work permit everywhere. We have twice moved overseas with one month’s notice. He travels for a couple of days, sometimes longer, almost every week. Schools in this country are morning-only, and the only daycare centers use a language my son does not yet understand. Even if I could have a full-time job anywhere, my son would pretty much have to be raised by a nanny. Yes, I would have loved to continue my carreer, but that would have meant living halfway across the world from him, and my son would see his father once or twice a year. So maybe I don’t have a job, but I do work from home, doing translations (at least I use my languages – thank technology for the Internet), as well as occasional research for the university I worked for. I do volunteer work here and there, fly airplanes as a hobby, and am now flying as much as possible in hopes of staring my own charter company someday, once my son hits the age where I can leave him on his own, and once we can settle in one place. So now, when people ask me what I do, I tell them, and quite happily. No, I don’t really have a job, but I have a very full, interesting life. That continues a conversation. Can you really blame her “friends” if they have nothing much to say when she says she is a stay at home mom (see peas, milk and potty phrase above)?

All that to say that finally, you’re right. She’s not doing anything special, and I hope she will become bored sooner rather than later. The few women I know who did not go back to work or go do something else with their lives ended up lonely, bored and bitter, and the relationships with their kids actually suffered as a result. Too close for comfort? Oh, and time is unkind – can you say empty nest syndrome?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.