@Midwest67 Yes- and my younger girls (now 16 and 17) watched me navigate that… they are acutely aware of the need for financial independence (TMI I know but my ex was carrying on a long term affair and was stomping on me completely about what he would and would not do - you know like stop it) and my girls saw very clearly that I could (not that this was easy) say don’t let the door hit you in the a$$ on the way out and know I could support myself AND raise them as well.
I told both my kids that marriage is a partnership. Communication is essential. They should have the skills and education to support their decisions. S doesn’t need to be the sole breadwinner but if he and W decide to homeschool or whatever, he needs to have a job/income to support that decision. If he and W decide that her working is what she needs to do, then he needs flexibility to meet the demands of a family life (e.g., being a father to his kids). He and W will know expectations because they’ll talk about it. No surprises. Things change. What you do when the children are little could be different than when they are older.
D should have the skills and education to support herself and any children that she and H would have. She should be in a marriage with a husband who has a job/income to support the decision to be at home or working. But that she may find herself in a situation where she has to work and support her children by herself.
This is a critical thing for me as my mother found herself with a disabled husband when she was in her late 30s. Disabled husband and five children ranging from early primary grades to college. Luckily she had returned to the workforce a few months prior to my father’s illness. She had a tough road to travel, but she had the skills and education. It wasn’t anything she could have envisioned.
D hasn’t taken this to heart like I wished she would. S seems like he heard the message better. Different kids.
Get your first child as soon as possible. Ideally, during undergrad. It is relatively easy to take a year off and come back to college. Daycare is subsidized (free) for students. College often provides help with housing for student families (very subsidized). And you would really know, what kind of partner / husband you have. You would never ever be as flexible in your life as you are during your undergrad years. Plus, you are young, pregnancy, delivery, sleepless nights will be much easier.
I got my fist child during my first year of grad work. We had no money, no documents (student visa), nothing. However, it all worked really well. We were young, and we moved from place to place. It is not difficult with one child. We waited too long before we got the second child, I was 30+, and yes, it was far more difficult. The fourth child was born when I was 37, I had a house, stable income, full-time babysitter, yet it was far more difficult that the first child, born in 20s.
College is a good time to have a child. IMHO.
Well, glad it worked out for you, @californiaa, but I think telling young women with no degree (yet) to “take a year off” to have a baby is not terribly good advice.
Not really. Executive position can’t be done part-time. Most high-level positions can’t be done part-time.
After undergrad, get a job for a couple years to get some job experience. This will translate well to any position you might want to transfer into eventually. I’d suggest work in industry where the page is relatively good and you can learn real-world work habits and real-world issues. Then after a few years you can determine is it time to go back to school, shift careers (so many people work in a variety of fields now over their career) or stay where you were planted.
And getting a job for a couple of years will help financially with options later. That gives you lots of options. Working in industry will make you a better teacher later if you choose. And it will give you contacts you won’t regret later.
Not part time, but flexible. Working from home, having the ability to leave early or come in late if needed, etc. When I had D, I had been at my job for several years and they knew I would get things done. I also had more paid time off.
Re: advice for sons . . . what @katliamom said!
I told my kids “love what you do, do what you love”.
Sometimes it takes time to figure out what that will be. Many people switch majors in college…and many switch careers as adults.
@lookingforward I’ve been fascinated by the range of responses. It’s so interesting to hear (not just on CC) everything from “career is your priority, family happens when it happens” to “lean in, have kids, have the career, chase the dreams” to “having it all is a myth, your biological clock is ticking, don’t put off kids forever”. Hearing your honest experiences is (imo) more helpful than platitudes or mantras.
Yeah, not going to happen 
Good heavens, no.
I agree with @californiaaa that this arrangement has certain advantages – the ease of taking a year off and the availability of child care.
But I think these are more than offset by the need to commit to a partner while you’re still very young. Extremely early marriages are less likely to be successful than those that begin when the partners are a little older.
And among today’s well-educated young people, very early parenthood is rare. If you have a child at 20, who will your friends be? Not the other 20-year-olds who have complete freedom to come and go as they please. You can’t join in their spontaneous social activities because you have to worry about child care. And I don’t think the 30-year-old parents in your area would become your friends, either, even though their child care needs and daily schedules are more like yours. That decade’s difference in age means that you’re too different to relate easily to each other.
How will you support that child, as a UG? Lol, maxima Lol.
There often is a subsidy, but rarely is daycare free for college students. At my university, students get a sizeable discount but still pay almost $1000 per month for an infant. And even then the waiting list is so long that the infants become toddlers before they are offered a spot. At other universities, I have seen prices of $500 per month for students.
As with much advice, the statements should be “daycare MIGHT be, but rarely is free for SOME students” and “Housing MIGHT be available at subsidized prices at SOME universities for SOME students”, etc. There is rarely ever one way to do things and just because something worked for one person decades ago doesn’t mean today’s situations are the same. I do know an ( somewhat older) undergrad with kids and she absolutely doesn’t get free childcare, even with subsidies, housing either. And let me tell you, it’s a real struggle to have a sick kid, a final or a paper due, or a broken down car and a sick kid and a paper due and so on. I would never, ever advise my kids to “get a kid” in undergrad, or even if they were not in college and that young. My young friend is in college to make a better life for herself and her family, but it’s HARD, really hard, even with support. And people change a lot from their late teens-early 20’s. That’s not a good age to think you know exactly what you want for most of them.
The trick is to not think that one’s version of life is the best way or the only way, OP. I’m one of 5 kids, and each one of us did things differently than the other. Both of my parents did things differently then THEIR parents, and so on. The only thing I think that I would give as “must follow” advice to all kids everywhere would be to make sure you can be self-supporting no matter what. I know too many women caught off-guard by a surprise separation/divorce or young widows, men with wives who became disabled, and other things that effectively ended “the good life” for families with one income and thinking they had it all.
You’ve got to be able to stand on your own and live what YOU think is a stable life. That definition will vary from person to person. But stability is the important thing, kids or not.
I might as well throw my 2 cents in. (1) be able to support yourself; (2) decide when to have kids rather than it being a surprise; (3) pick well in the spouse dept [harder than it sounds]; and (4) like #46 above, I also have found that the more your employers like you the more flexible they are willing to be to keep you.
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Subsidized daycare (was free for my family), subsidized housing (we got 2 room apartment on campus, for free). We did not qualify for any government support (as internationals), but got tons of financial support through charities, that help low income families with babies. We even got some subsidy from the county, for “child in poverty”, or something like this. Actually, we were better financially with the baby than before having a baby.
Having a baby really helped us to grow up. My husband was a goofy idealist before our D was born. Half a year later, he completed his Ph.D. and got a real job. 
Yes, I had a help - my grandmother came and helped us to babysit our D. So we did not have to miss parties and college life.
I agree that everyone’s life is different. However,
I was born when my Mom was 16 years old. Siblings followed. Mom went to college and completed her undergrad, at the insistence of her parents (my grandparents). Grandparents helped financially and babysitted all kids.
On the positive side, mom re-entered workforce at her late 30s. Her children were in college / high school. She was a confident, mature person. Dad (by that time) made a career and helped Mom to get an entry position. Later, she completed advanced degree and made a career When she was in her late 40s, she was free to devote herself to career. I am in the 40s and I don’t have this luxury.
“Grandparents helped financially and babysitted all kids.”
“Subsidized daycare (was free for my family), subsidized housing (we got 2 room apartment on campus, for free).”
Again, nice that it worked out in your case, but today’s fiscal realities at the vast majority of universities is that neither daycare or housing is anywhere remotely close to “free.”
And not everyone can rely on grandparents to help out financially or babysit.
In fact, interestingly, what you’re suggesting to OP (and presumably many other young women) is the exact OPPOSITE to what most of the women on this thread are saying.
We’re saying – get yourself financially independent – and you’re saying get yourself someone else to pay for your housing, daycare and babysitting.
How’s this good advice???
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Sooner or later, everyone becomes financially independent.
I have a PhD in biochemistry. I’ll give you the same advice I gave my own children - don’t do it! A PhD can take 5-10 years. In order to be eligible to teach at the college level, you’ll need postdoctoral fellowships - that’s another 2-5 years. Once you can snag an elusive position at the college or university level, which only about 10% of PhDs do, you’ll need to be flexible on location. Want to stay where your husband is in Massachusetts? Sorry, the one offer you have is in Nebraska. Academia is extremely unfriendly to working mothers. The expectation is that you will spend 12-16 hours per day in the lab. Daycares just aren’t open that long. Nannies make more than grad students or postdocs or often lecturers.
If you want to teach, become a high school teacher, after your bachelors. That’s what most of the female PhD’s I know did anyway. And it’s harder to get a high school job with a PhD because you are more expensive to hire.