#1. Now one of the reasons I'm so ambivalent about the question of children is because I have serious doubts that I'll ever be able to afford the things I think a child should have -- specifically a good education like the one I got.
i think there are lots of very sound and true financial reasons for thinking good and hard about having children and their affordability factor in your life, but i don't think worries about their educational costs are necessarily that realistic or should be barriers to any plans you'd have to procreate on their own. my parents are self-employed and over the last two decades have had collective take-home incomes of between $30K and $45K. now that's less than my roommate and i make between the two of us if you figure my loan allotment and her hourly wage. plus my parents' means of self-employment is inventory-heavy, and therefore constantly cash-light, so those wages of theirs are real. my parents still instilled in me from birth high values, personal ethics and morality, a voracity for learning, integrity and a practically endless desire to and love of work, bottomless academic curiosity, and an appreciation of the privilege that my education gives that far trumps any socioeconomic enjoyment i've lacked my entire life. i still complain, but i'd bet you if my parents made two or three times what they did and do (which would be putting them solidly in the middle class and i think in the salary range of a two-worker household you're imagining would be traditionally able to send kids to college), all of those qualities that are ingrained in me would've been a harder sell. my parents waited ten years after they were married to feel financially solvent and able to have kids before i was born and you know what? i bet my parents will NEVER be financially solvent. because they do what they want and love for a living and don't have a bottom-line kind of life (this is different from post-college floundering whiny "but i'm waiting for EXACTLY the job i want" kind of bullshit that many of my friends are doing and that whole twixters scenario does involve, by which, i'm sorry, i just can't and won't abide). and from a very young age i knew that would affect me and my economically-determined realities forever... so i busted my ass, worked hard in high school, started looking for scholarships my sophomore year, and got a full ride to my very respectable and academically-sound state school, where i continued, for free, to work as hard as i possibly could, take every educational opportunity that looked at me sideways, and dumped my life into learning all i could and giving myself a good education that i refuse to squander by waiting for some imaginary great thing to come along while living in my junior high bedroom and eating easy mac and sleeping until 1 pm, but also don't see as a source of entitlement to some fabulous, vaulted, perfect-jobbed existence. so i don't think the lack of economic soundness on the part of the parent bars the child's possibility for a great education. if anything, properly used, it can foster those opportunities.
#2. When our parents were our age, if you didn't want to go to college, you could still get a decent job and have a house and a family. ... Not that a college degree, or where it's from, really means much anymore.
yeah, it means a lot: because you have to have it to get a $10/hr job. however, what it is in or where it is from or what kind of grades you got or what kind of things you did there are all 1000000% meaningless for anything but self-puffery in interviews and referential use in high-faluting conversations with peers and friends. i probably say this particularly because i am in a non-first tier law school, the great equalizer if there ever was one, where i sit there with my triple major with distinction and honors from a public university with a girl from yale on my left and a girl from a six-year plan at a community college and then a CSU school on my right. it's all arbitrary, but if you want to direct calls on an eight-line phone for 40 hours a week like my roommate does, and you don't know anyone, a BA sure is the basement requirement.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-02-11 10:07 pm (UTC)i think there are lots of very sound and true financial reasons for thinking good and hard about having children and their affordability factor in your life, but i don't think worries about their educational costs are necessarily that realistic or should be barriers to any plans you'd have to procreate on their own. my parents are self-employed and over the last two decades have had collective take-home incomes of between $30K and $45K. now that's less than my roommate and i make between the two of us if you figure my loan allotment and her hourly wage. plus my parents' means of self-employment is inventory-heavy, and therefore constantly cash-light, so those wages of theirs are real. my parents still instilled in me from birth high values, personal ethics and morality, a voracity for learning, integrity and a practically endless desire to and love of work, bottomless academic curiosity, and an appreciation of the privilege that my education gives that far trumps any socioeconomic enjoyment i've lacked my entire life. i still complain, but i'd bet you if my parents made two or three times what they did and do (which would be putting them solidly in the middle class and i think in the salary range of a two-worker household you're imagining would be traditionally able to send kids to college), all of those qualities that are ingrained in me would've been a harder sell. my parents waited ten years after they were married to feel financially solvent and able to have kids before i was born and you know what? i bet my parents will NEVER be financially solvent. because they do what they want and love for a living and don't have a bottom-line kind of life (this is different from post-college floundering whiny "but i'm waiting for EXACTLY the job i want" kind of bullshit that many of my friends are doing and that whole twixters scenario does involve, by which, i'm sorry, i just can't and won't abide). and from a very young age i knew that would affect me and my economically-determined realities forever... so i busted my ass, worked hard in high school, started looking for scholarships my sophomore year, and got a full ride to my very respectable and academically-sound state school, where i continued, for free, to work as hard as i possibly could, take every educational opportunity that looked at me sideways, and dumped my life into learning all i could and giving myself a good education that i refuse to squander by waiting for some imaginary great thing to come along while living in my junior high bedroom and eating easy mac and sleeping until 1 pm, but also don't see as a source of entitlement to some fabulous, vaulted, perfect-jobbed existence. so i don't think the lack of economic soundness on the part of the parent bars the child's possibility for a great education. if anything, properly used, it can foster those opportunities.
#2. When our parents were our age, if you didn't want to go to college, you could still get a decent job and have a house and a family. ... Not that a college degree, or where it's from, really means much anymore.
yeah, it means a lot: because you have to have it to get a $10/hr job. however, what it is in or where it is from or what kind of grades you got or what kind of things you did there are all 1000000% meaningless for anything but self-puffery in interviews and referential use in high-faluting conversations with peers and friends. i probably say this particularly because i am in a non-first tier law school, the great equalizer if there ever was one, where i sit there with my triple major with distinction and honors from a public university with a girl from yale on my left and a girl from a six-year plan at a community college and then a CSU school on my right. it's all arbitrary, but if you want to direct calls on an eight-line phone for 40 hours a week like my roommate does, and you don't know anyone, a BA sure is the basement requirement.