<p>Hi! I am assuming that you are a traditionally-aged sophomore, i.e., 19 years old. I sympathize with you. But the summary of this post is basically: do not sacrifice your overarching career goals because of your predictions about the way your relationship or family life will go. I’ve been in your shoes (no, really) and in my experience if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. In the mean time, you need to make sure that you are setting your future up well and that you have a stable career that you like.</p>
<p>When I was 19 and a sophomore I had also been dating my boyfriend for 4 years and we were considering getting married. We did get - but not till I was 27, for a variety of reasons. We both had career goals and personal goals we wanted to pursue first. We stayed together throughout all of that time, and our relationship stayed strong even though part of it was long-distance. I know you probably hate when people tell you this now, but it’s true - 19 is VERY young. You don’t need to plan it all out right this moment; you have plenty, plenty of time.</p>
<p>Most people want to have families and raise their children. You mean you want to be a “stay at home mom.” Working women raise their kids, too.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to say don’t be a stay-at-home mom at all; I’m saying consider the idea that you WON’T want to be a stay-at-home mom, even for a few years, when you are a bit older. I also thought I would want to stay at home with children for 4-5 years when I was 19. Now that I’m 27, I’ve realized I really don’t. I’ve learned a lot over the course of several years, and realized that you can raise healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted children while being a full-time working mother; millions of women do it and have well-adjusted children, and these days a two-parent income is often necessary for a middle-class lifestyle unless one spouse makes a lot more money. (Besides, my mom was a SAHM until I was 16, and she does not have good things to say about it. Read the book The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts. It’s good).</p>
<p>But, let’s say that you do still want to be a SAHM. You’re a sophomore, so you have 4 years left in your program - you’ll be 23 when you graduate. Let’s say that you get married soon after, have two children when you’re 27 and 30, so you return to work at 35. You get 4 years of work experience; you’re out of the workforce for 8 years. But you’re only 35 now - you have at least 30 more years of a career ahead of you to work! Do you really want to eschew the career you really want because of perhaps 10 years out of an at least 30-year working career? While it is harder for people who have been out of the workforce for years to return, it’s not impossible. My mom was out of the workforce for 25 years, and she had NO experience in the field she entered. You’d have 4 years - of admittedly old experience, but still there.</p>
<p>The key is in those 8 years you need to keep abreast of developments in your field and stay connected. You may even choose to work part-time - people in the allied health fields can often choose to work two 12-hour shifts per week, which means maybe you work them on the weekends when your spouse is home. Even if you don’t, you can attend conferences in your field, keep in contact with professional networks, and perhaps volunteer a few hours or pick up some PRN work. Keep your skills current so when necessary, you can return.</p>
<p>Consider also the idea that perhaps that your future husband (regardless of what he is) doesn’t want the stress of supporting a household all on his own, or works in a low-paying industry, or gets laid off, or dies, or gets sick or becomes inable to work. You need to be able to make money of your own. Plan for contingencies.</p>
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<p>I’m not familiar with OT’s hiring vagaries, but my mother and a lot of my extended family are nurses. Nursing is a very good career for familial flexibility - there are all kinds of working schedules; you can do it anywhere in the country (or world); the pay is very good; you can do most of the graduate degrees part-time. But even if you got a nursing degree, you’d still have to contend with an 8-year work gap. I’m not sure how this is much different from the PT world.</p>