I’ll echo your first bucket about STEM. I don’t know anyone in the arts. I know many people who are in STEM of some kind, who entered the field some 30-50 years ago, depending on who you look at. Very few people have regrets going down the path. Even at this older age, many of these people have not lost their love for STEM related things. This is not to say they don’t have love for the arts. But the love for math and the sciences is a life long phenomenon. And we discuss STEMy things amongst friends on a fairly regular (weekly) basis – new things people are discovering etc. Naturally we would like the kids to be excited by the same things that excite us. These are exciting times.
And we would also like the kids to be excited by everything else as well. For example, my son is taking a creative writing class by a famous author next semester. He is considering a grad philosophy seminar with a famous philosopher. I am excited for him. We are equal opportunity excited.
The thread asked about better paying jobs, but in my old age I think job security is important too (can’t outsource a plumber!) And things like lifetime/low cost healthcare benefits.
That said, we did not tell our kids what to major in. Like others upstream, there is the expectation that they will graduate debt free (us and them) and they will become independent, productive members of society.
One is majoring in a very employable, good paying field, the other in art. But I am not worried (at least not now). They are both hard workers, are good savers and investors, and have somewhat of a handle (what they can at this age) of real life stuff like insurance, expenses, etc.)
Plumbing is a great field. Technical (it’s not so simple these days) and inexhaustible demand it seems.
I know many plumbers and it’s really hard to get into for structural reasons and to get the lucrative commercial plumbing jobs or to run a successful residential plumbing business - not simple at all.
I’m not trying to impose my value system of who is successful or unsuccessful. Just observing what is being said by people in different types of jobs and whether they consider themselves successes and also whether they would encourage their children to do the same.
But one of the reasons why this question seems so strange to me is that it seems like the discussion is often framed between choosing to be an engineer who makes a lot of money and choosing to be an artist struggling to make a living through the performing and visual arts. So we end up comparing two super distinct professional paths on opposite ends of a spectrum. And of course engineer (or things like doctor/lawyer/investment banker) are going to be more practical and more likely to result in financial success than artist.
The reality is we only need a finite number of people in all of those professions (engineering and performing arts). Society wouldn’t be functional if everyone studied the same handful of things and went into the same handful of professions (practical or not). There are so many other interesting careers that are necessary for communities to function well and so many additional ways of making a real positive contribution to society than being an engineer or an artist. Some of those are highly paid careers and others are not. But we do need people who are willing and interested in doing them all regardless of level of pay. So why ignore those careers in these discussions as if they are merely consolation prizes to either a practical profession or a passionate one?
It just feels like a false discussion to pit these two very different types of majors against each other as if the only choices out there are high-paying practical careers vs. low-paying, passion-filled arts careers. Or as if most engineers would actually have the skills to be artists and would have preferred to study the visual or performing arts but were forced into engineering by parental pressure and monetary concerns. Similarly, why would we think that most artists actually had the potential to be engineers and that they only ended up studying the arts because they were too impractical or too silly to think ahead about ROI or that their parents didn’t teach them enough about money management? Maybe those two paths are pitted against each other because it is easier to discuss what seem like extremes than to discuss the many gradations in between.
Both of my girls were accomplished dancers and the younger one was also a very good violinist. At one point or another they have expressed interest to become a professional ballet dancer. I was not in supportive of it. I told them that they had to get a college education no matter what.
If they had been insistent about their choices, I would tell them to give themselves a time frame to achieve their dreams, and they should always have a back up plan.
You can’t be a starving writer/actor/dancer for the rest of your life. At some point you should know if you have the right talent/luck to make it.
My older one is a senior banker and younger one is a first year associate at a law firm. The older one is subsidizing the younger one (pays for her dinners, trips and presents for mom) until she gets her law school loans under control.
I didn’t tell my kids what to major in or what profession to go into. The only thing I told them was that Mom Bank was closed after college and they should make enough to support the lifestyle they want.
Nature takes care of it, by ensuring there’s a diversity of talents in all different areas, and by the natural mechanism for restoring equilibrium when we humans become too overly enthused by one societal function at the expense of another.
It would never have occurred to me to influence my kids’ choice of college majors or career fields. I believe in pursuing what interests you. You’re likely going to be doing it for a lot of years. Society needs people in all fields. And yes, my kids knew the parent bank closed after their graduation day.
I have two kids with vastly different intellectual and social capabilities. I made different suggestions to each. I did not require or push either one of them in a certain direction.
The only things that I had any requirements about were that my daughter take no more loans than the federally subsidized ones. And for my son that he take no loans at all. I knew that my daughter would be able to figure out how to repay them, I was a lot less sure about my son figuring out how to repay them. I refused to co-sign loans or to take any parent loans.
As a result, my daughter worked 20+ hours a week while being an RA and taking 18 credit hours a semester. She also maintained the necessary grades to keep her merit scholarship for the entirety of her BA work. My son found ways for agencies to pay his tuition for the first year or so and now he is working full time and taking one or two online classes at a time to finish his AAS.
The only direction I gave my daughter, who wanted a very competitive grad program, was that she have a back up plan in case she did not get into any grad school for her desired program. I asked her repeatedly what did a good 2nd choice look like to her and could she support herself with it? She came up with a doable plan, then got admitted to the grad program of her choice.
With my son, he just wants to complete the degree he started in order to say he finished. I am not sure he will do anything with it. There is something to be said of having goals and having the persistence to follow through. Those are skills that are appropriate for most, if not all, jobs and careers.
ETA My daughter’s BA has nothing to do with her grad degree, in fact her BA is in a language and she has a stem grad degree.
Here too. But we do gift our kids things because we want to and can…and because we would rather see them enjoy our gifts while we are alive.
Our college tuition bank ended after undergrad school, but we did help with living expenses for grad school for both our arts major and our stem major. But they chose their majors. And both live well within their means…which is important.
I’ll push back on this a bit … Why can’t you be a “starving” writer/actor/dancer for the rest of your life? You said the Mom Bank was closed after college and that the should make enough to support the lifestyle they want. Maybe being an artist doing what they love and living within their meager means is what they’d prefer. I mean, if they aren’t asking you for money, what’s the harm?
I think that’s what drives some parents to push their kids. Because they think that their kids wouldn’t be happy frugal in the future even though they say they would be.
I know 2 potters. Both went to good schools. The one who got an MFA lives a most frugal life. The other person had a father who was a professor in business. He encouraged his son to leave his area, move to another state and apprentice. A year or so later, to move to another apprenticeship. By then, his work was being shown in galleries.
The young man will have a fulfilling life. He learned from true artists, and had parents who knew how to aim towards sustainability .
I think job security is important too (can’t outsource a plumber!) And things like lifetime/low cost healthcare benefits.