Dear Alexa,
A few days ago, I read a blog post
that quoted and linked to a study
that addressed the question of whether or not medical school is a worthwhile
investment for women. As I’m sure you’ll hear throughout your life, there is a
wage disparity for men and women in the same profession, and it is this wage disparity
for primary care physicians that caused researchers to ask this question. The
researchers used a tool called the Net-Present-Value (NPV) calculation to
assess the initial investment costs and the earnings of physicians and of
physician assistants and compared the financial values of the two careers for
both men and women. The results showed that the NPV of a career as a physician
was, as expected, higher than the NPV of a career as a physician assistant for men. However, the results for women
were opposite: Women who chose careers as physician assistants were better off financially than women who chose careers
as physicians.
Why this disparity? That question often is answered in
different ways, depending on the political and sociocultural leanings of the
answerer. Feminists and liberals say that women earn less because of
discrimination or because the workplace is structured to meet men’s needs, but
not to meet women’s needs. Those with a more traditional and/or more
conservative worldview, however, say that women earn less because they make
different choices—they work fewer hours, they take extended time off for childbirth
and child rearing, they forego more lucrative positions or promotions in order
to meet their family obligations.
In the study cited here, it is obvious that the reason for
the pay gap between male and female doctors is that male doctors work
significantly more hours than do the female doctors. Is that because women
freely make different choices, or is it because society forces them into
different choices? I believe it’s the former. Women, like men, have choices.
Women, like men, must deal with the consequences of their choices. Today’s
feminist society does not force women into marriage or motherhood—if anything,
today’s feminist society convinces women that they can have it all, that they
don’t have to make choices. But the truth is that we all make choices, and
every choice has a consequence. Every choice opens some doors and closes others;
every choice makes some future options easier or more likely and makes other
future options more difficult or less likely. It is our job as responsible
adults to foresee the reasonable consequences of our choices and to choose accordingly.
Of course sometimes unforeseen events occur, but most of our major decisions
have predictable consequences that we should consider before making our choice.
Your father and I are raising you with the goal that you
will have the ability and the wisdom to think about the consequences before you
make choices.
I wrote to you before about some of the things you should think through, know,
and accept before you choose a husband.
Now I want to urge you to think
carefully about your choice of career before
you invest a lot of time or money into your training.
It would be easy for me to say to you, “Oh, you want to be a
doctor, or a lawyer, or the President of the United States? I have utter
confidence in you, Daughter; I know you can do it—go pursue your dreams!” Much
more difficult, but more honest and more loving, is the response that I hope I
have the courage to give you: “I recognize that you want to help people live
healthy lives, or fight for justice, or help our nation follow the right path.
I commend you for that desire. And I do have faith in your ability, Daughter.
But I question whether you’ve really thought through the implications of that
choice for your life. Not just for your professional
life, but for your whole life.”
You see, Alexa, your career does not exist in a vacuum. It
is a part of your life, but it is not
your entire life. Before you choose a career, there are some other things that
you need to decide.
Is it a priority for you to get married? When you visualize
your ideal life, are you a single woman, or are you a wife? If you prefer not
to marry, then you will have as much time and energy as any man to devote to
your career. So if you choose not to marry, the yes, absolutely, go pursue your
dreams!
But it is a rare woman who does not want to marry. And if you do want to marry, you should consider the repercussions of any potential career on your marriage. If you want to marry, then pursue that dream—don’t fill your life so completely with career preparation that you don’t have time for a relationship that could lead to marriage. Don’t choose a career that will require you to work so many hours to recoup your initial investment that you don’t have time to devote to your husband.
If you marry, that also raises the possibility of children.
There are some women who choose not to have children, who make that choice when
they are young and who never have second thoughts. But it is much more common
for a woman (and for a man) to want children. If you are like most women, and
your husband is like most men, the two of you will want at least one child. So
you must decide what kind of mother you want to be. This decision is best made
alongside your husband, but you may need to choose your educational and career
path before your find your husband—and if you feel strongly enough about the
type of mother you want to be, then that may be a “deal breaker” issue in your
romantic relationships; if you absolutely want to be a stay at home mother, then
you should not be dating a man who insists that his wife will work outside the
home and put their children in daycare, and if you absolutely refuse to be a
stay at home mother, then you should not be dating a man who wants his wife to
fulfill that role.
So what effect would your mothering decisions have on your
career? Quite a large one! If you want to be a stay at home mother, then you
need to be very careful to put yourself into a position in which you can afford
to quit your job when your first child is born. Your father and I made this choice,
although not until after we each as singles had made some less than ideal
financial decisions. We knew when we married that we needed to fix our finances
in order to get ourselves into a position where we didn’t need for me to earn
money. I worked for pay when your father and I married, but we lived off his
salary and used mine primarily to pay off our debts. By the time you were
conceived, we were debt free and accustomed to living on his salary alone. I
actually had quit my job over a year before you were conceived, so that I could
follow your father to Egypt, where his career was taking us.
Did you notice the difference in terminology there? I quit
my job for the sake of your father’s career. My job always was a short-term
affair for me, although it was in a field that could have been a career had we
made different choices. My identity was not wrapped up in my profession; I
could leave it without it causing a fundamental change in how I thought of
myself. It was a big adjustment, and a difficult one in some ways, but it was
not so difficult as it would have been if I had invested more of myself into
it.
The distinction between a job and a career is something you
should consider: which one do you want? You will need to earn money before you
marry, and probably after you marry as well. You and your husband may choose
for you to continue earning money after your children are born, or you may
choose to stay home with the children, or you may do both—working from home so
that you can both earn money and be with your children. But you can earn money
with either a job or a career. If you choose a career, you will invest in it.
You will invest a lot of time and possibly a lot of money, if it requires
specialized education. A career is difficult to walk away from. Choose a career
only if you intend not to walk away from it. (Your father pointed out that
there are some careers that can be put on hold while you walk away temporarily,
intending to return to it once your children are in school; if that is your
intention, choose a career for which that is a possibility.)
But if your sole or main focus will be the supporting of
your husband, the raising of your children, and the keeping of your home, then
choose a job. Choose a field that you can enter without investing a lot of time
or money in education, so that you will not be obligated by loan repayment or
by a sense of responsibility to those who trained you to continue in the field
when you otherwise would leave. Choose a position that will not require you to
work long hours or to travel away from home, so that your time will be
available to your husband and your children. Choose a position that you enjoy,
yes, and that allows you to contribute to the world in a positive way, but do
not allow it to define you to the extent that you aren’t willing to walk away from
it if that is what is best for your family. And accept that positions without
heavy initial investments, without excessive hours, and without travel do not
pay as much as positions with those things.
Choosing a career or a job is not as simple as merely pursuing
something that you would enjoy doing during your working hours. You will have
non-working hours, too. Consider those hours when deciding about your work. If
you don’t, you may find yourself one of many women who want to stay home with
the children, but who can’t because of large student loans. You may find
yourself successful in your career, but without a husband, or with a husband
whom you never see, or with children whom you barely know, because you work all
the time. Consider your personal life when making decisions about your
professional life.
Work-life balance is not something that you should consider only
after you’re firmly established in a career. It is not something that your
employer is obligated to provide for you. It’s something you obtain or forego
based on the choices you make, often on the choices that you make before you
even report for your first day of work. Choose wisely, Alexa.
And always remember, your mama and your daddy love you.
Love,
Mama
