For my family, we have a dual career household. Compared to our college peers/friends, my husband and I married (23) and had kids relatively young (25 and 28). The advice I give both my daughter and son is to keep yourself open to what life may bring you and highly consider the path the gives you the most options. Neither my husband and I are in the fields we had originally studied for, after finding out that the skill sets we gathered in college could be applied is so many more different careers that we had originally known. Having a family while pursuing a career for both my husband and I required a number of things to line up – supportive spousal relationship, family friendly workplaces, careers with high enough income to have a choice to pay for either childcare or a stay-at-home parent, and high quality childcare. Two things to remember: 1) there are always trade-offs, and 2) there is rarely only one right option.
@californiaaa, my D who lives in NYC pays her PT sitter (really a mother’s helper) $20/hr; she has twins. Her BFF is paying $17 an hour for someone FT in DC. Cash.
My D is paying for someone who speaks English fluently, lives in the area with her family including kids, has experience with multiples and shares her values in raising kids.
We had good experiences w employing au pairs.
Full time nanny, in NYC, quite some time ago – we paid on the books something like $50,000. year, with 2 weeks paid vacation. I was a highly paid professional then (not anymore), so we could swing it. There were bidding wars over the best nannies.
I don’t have a daughter, but if I did, I hope I’d give them advice along the lines of – pursue your dreams, your goals, a true partner will respect your accomplishments and support you. As your career and family life evolve, there will be sacrifices and trade-offs, and you won’t know in the moment if they are the right decisions. Some people have children in their 20s and will be empty nesters in their 40s, others don’t have kids until their mid-to-late 30s and are getting closer to 60 and still paying college tuition. There is no “best way” – we are all just figuring this out the best we can, every moment.
And, you make choices. I would have loved a larger family, but we knew we could only provide financial security, including substantial savings towards college, for two – and there we stopped.
You do not take risk when it comes to children. You make sure you are able to support your children before you have them. Relying on free food and heating grants are not good back up plans. My priority has always been to make sure my children were well taken care, which meant I could afford to have food and heat to keep them warm.
Yes, that’s all nice and good but stuff happens.
We were fine when I was born. Dad owned his own business and made good money. Mom kept working part time and was able to go back to full time when needed.
Dad was plagued by multiple severe illnesses and then became disabled after being hit by a drunk driver. Mom went to work full time.
Mom developed an autoimmune disease. Probably the result of having a permanently disabled spouse and working multiple jobs to make up the short fall. She lost the ability to work.
I went through high school and college with two disabled parents. I have been on medicaid, food stamps, cash assistance, federal financial aid, etc. And you know what? I am not ashamed of a thing.
I am SO SICK of seeing the narrative that people who are poor and/or otherwise need to rely on assistance are lazy good for nothings who made poor decisions. It’s so nice that so many people here have everything in a row and have never needed to ask for help. Never had the sudden and unknown horror of having a spouse becoming permanently disabled overnight.
Grandparent help? My mom’s parents died when I was 3. One on my third birthday and the other less than a week later. My dad’s mom abandoned him and his dad lived across the country.
Good god. I guess my parents shouldn’t have had me because somehow they should’ve known that not just one but BOTH of them would lose their ability to work in their 40s. Yup. Should’ve been psychic.
^It is possible to buy disability insurance. It’s also possible to buy under/uninsured driver car insurance.
Everything in life comes with risk. You do what you can to minimize it but we all take risks every single day.
There is a big difference in having random bad things (illness/accidents etc.) happen and in simply having kids and expecting others to help you. While I tell D to plan for a career and being able to support herself and her family, I recognize that there are sometimes situations that are not under ones control. There are people who do plan, work hard, do all of the things that they should, but find themselves in situations where hey need help. I know people who have had this happen and I do not look down on them or begrudge their needing assistance.
Wow, romanigypsy eyes, thank you for your post. Our family had a similar situation (illness,injury)…but more importantly, I have seen great parenting happening in public housing projects or rural areas considered poor. Love and time with your children is more important than material wealth. And poverty is not planned or anyone’s fault. There are safety nets, yes, and it is okay to use them if needed.
Nannies are way out of the question for many people, because the cost exceeds earnings. Some are lucky to have relatives to help with kids. Security and trust are important developmentally, early on, and can be achieved in many ways.
And, again, most people are not in the kinds of careers discussed here, the kinds with tracks that need to be followed in order to succeed. The work world is big and wide and diverse and it is possible to stay home with kids for whatever time is needed, and still get a job.
Hearkening back to the original poster, after reading this, there are many paths to take, and some choices depend on values, some on finances, some on your significant other or parents, some on your kids’ or your health, some on chance. I think the main message is to be flexible. If you plan too much in advance, you can actually interfere with opportunities.
A decision on grad school should be made based on an intense interest, in my opinion. I mean, the choice should be clear. If it isn’t, I would try to find a good job now and see how you like working in whatever area you find a good job in. With an undergrad degree as a sort of platform, you can go to grad school hen kids are older, before kids, when kids are older, or when nest is empty. I do like the idea of “sequencing” personally: having it all but not all at the same time.
It is fine to have more than two kids. We did it on a modest income (due to health needs of one child) and all of our kids have done fine: great colleges and busy with good work. We never went to Disney World or whatever, don’t own a boat, never renovated our house, bought cars in cash, used, cooked all meals at home, and were quite happy. The one thing we did pay for was education in the arts, in the city, but only for the last two years of high school (most kids went for years) and one daughter helped clean the studio for a discount.
I have tried to teach my children that being useful is the most important thing in terms of work. “Useful” jobs aren’t always the highest paid, but they make daily life a whole lot more meaningful and enjoyable. And some useful jobs do pay quite well.
My parents, both high school drop outs, married at 18, first kid at 19 and 5th kid at 24. We moved too many times to count. Dad was abusive to mom, mom put up with it (still married). She had so little choice with 5 small children and no job skills. One bother died of drug overdose, other brother is in and out of prison for drugs.
Having marketable jobs skills (nursing) has allowed me choices my mom never had. This is what I want for my daughter and everyone’s daughters.
@californiaaa wrote:
There is a difference between having unexpected bad luck happen and need help vs having kids and expect others to support them.
As posted in #226, it is why we take out various insurances for those unexpected events.
This is getting away from the original post. But I do wonder if there is a minimum income at which some people feel it is okay to have children. The OP will no doubt not end up making below that so I apologize for the tangent this comment poses and won’t post again.
As some would say, “There is no perfect time to have kids.” I think at minimum people should be able to afford health insurance for the family, disability and life insurance for parents in case something should happen, have a place to live and food on the table. I have advised my kids to have 6 months of expenses saved up in reserve, so I would think it would be no different when one has a family (if not more). Anything over and above that is gravy. But if you can’t afford to provide a roof, food and proper insurance for your kids then I would twice before starting a family.
@BingeWatcher, I too learned the importance of having skills/education/income from my mother. While my father wasn’t abusive, he could not be counted upon to support the family, and overall was completely irresponsible with money. It was my mother who kept us housed, fed, and warm. Being able to support not just myself, but my family, was a key ambition from the time I was able to think about such things. And while my husband was a true partner in every sense, he did experience some career upheavals that, years later, made my earnings and health insurance crucial to my family’s wellbeing. Lesson learned.
I’ve long felt the “perfect time to have kids” is when you can truly be a great parent, nurturing, tolerant, patient, and happy to make adjustments in your life to play that role. It was never a matter of dollars to me, though obviously, being able to afford to feed, clothe, and house them safely is part of it.
The idea of having them simply because you want them (or the clock is ticking) misses the whole of the responsibilities and your own readiness. Kids aren’t just cutie-pies we dress up.
I hope people know I was joking about the minimum income. I know young single moms who have turned their lives around after having a baby. Young people get pregnant by mistake or maybe not so accidentally when they don’t have much else going on in their lives in terms of opportunities. Some of them end up being great parents. What ever happened to the war on poverty? Oh well, the life people are describing on here is basically distinguished by good fortune, not virtue, and I hope the OP achieves it. Hard work benefits everyone but some work hard for under $10 an hour.
I just don’t think you intentionally have them with the idea social services will pay you for them and the U can pay for housing and day care.
There are programs available, when needed, of course, (and assuming you get through the hoops,) but they’re meant to be safety nets, of sorts. At a U, it may be a perk to get housing or care, but that doesn’t translate to, “Oh, choose grad school for the win.”
Hard work isn’t what determines pay. Market supply & demand for special skills is what determines pay. That’s why doctors get paid more than daycare workers.
Not at all romani, but that’s why we all are recommending considering the consequences of losing jobs or becoming disabled. Thank heavens there is a safety net in place, but that doesn’t mean you should plan on using it. My brother with four kids (who has lost his job more than once and whose wife through no fault of her own has been chronically underemployed) has had a much harder time of it than my brother with two who has had many of the exact same issues.
Back in 1980 I paid my next door neighbor $8 an hour to look after my kids in her home. I paid about $8 in taxes to NYS and the IRS. And I took home about $8. I worked half time. Monetarily the money was peanuts compared to what dh made. But if anything should have happened to him at least I’d have been able to get a job in my business.
Architects are underpaid, because lots of people do work without permits.