Advice for College Students Considering Career and Family

Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

Recently, Public Discourse published an excellent essay by Mary Frances Myler titled Treat Students Like Future Parents, Not Just Future Employees. The following paragraph resounded with me:

Any attempt to encourage marriage and family life among students would be incomplete without acknowledging the unique burdens that young women face when weighing the goods of marriage and family in light of a career. . . . Work is good, and it is a creative expression of human dignity. But careerism . . . [ignores] the reality that most women won’t “have it all.”

Universities do and ought to prepare their students for the intellectual life and workforce. Many students would also benefit from an open discussion about how to integrate work and family. Women, in particular, are more likely to face difficult choices about raising children and work. (This is is not to dismiss the conflicts that men will also face, of course). I know many Millennial moms—including myself—who felt unprepared to tackle the challenges of full-time work and having children. Too often, these issues are not discussed until after a baby arrives.

Ms. Myler writes:

Young women seeking career counseling need to hear from mothers who no longer work, or who work part-time. Conversations about future careers need to take place in the context of a holistic assessment of life: if a student hopes to be a primary caregiver for a future family, perhaps he or she should consider choosing a career that offers flexibility with options for part-time work. Campus career centers should acknowledge that many students will probably not want full time, in-person jobs and should point them to careers that are conducive to flexible work, freelancing, or remote work—options that are more friendly to parents seeking to balance childcare and employment.

Along these lines, I have written about how homemaker parents often have serial careers, rather than a single linear career arc. The women and men who care for the home and children in the 21st century often step in and out of the workforce based on the needs of their families.

Could we prepare interested young women and men to consider these issues? What could we offer college students who want to think deeply about the balance of family and work? I think any such preparation would need to include an emphasis on flexibility, since sometimes young adults determined to have a high-flying career end up at home with their little kids—but conversely, sometimes those who had planned on staying home unexpectedly need to enter the workforce!

I’m putting together a reading list for young women and men who want to think about parenthood, work, career arcs and similar subjects. I’d love for it to include a wide variety of options and perspectives. In other words, rather than advocating for a particular view point, I’d love to provide a reading list that sparks—rather than dictates—discussion. So far I’ve come up:

• The Feminine Mystique, Ch.1, The Problem That Has No Name

• Wendell Berry’s essay on Feminism, The Body & The Machine https://religioustech.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Berry-Wendell-Feminism-the-Body-and-the-Machine.pdf

• Emily Bazelon, I Picked My Job Over My Kids: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/opinion/sunday/ive-picked-my-job-over-my-kids.html

• Anne-Marie Slaughter, Why Woman Still Can’t Have It All: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/

• Sheryl Sandberg Facebook post on single motherhood: https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156819553860177?fref=nf&pnref=story

• Kate Bolick, All the Single Ladies: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/308654/

• Elizabeth Bruenig, I Became a Mother at 25 and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/motherhood-baby-bust-early-parenthood.html

• Erika Bachiochi, Pursuing the Reunification of Home and Work:

  https://americancompass.org/pursuing-the-reuinification-of-home-and-work/

Readers, what would you add to this list?