It seems to me you have your head on straight. You have personal, educational, and professional goals that are commendable.
If a man doesn't want that type of woman then he's probably not the type of man you would want anyway. Including a few who posted in this thread.
Remember, even if you live alone, you still have to cook, clean, and do laundry; or pay to have it done.
Cheers!
I think some of what you're saying, though not the way you're saying it. It is likely that a highly educated woman will have more in common with a highly educated man than with a car mechanic. That's not entirely true though since there's a lot more than just intellectual backgrounds that can make a marriage work or not. However, your idea that a career is somehow more fulfilling to a woman than home and family is silly. I'm in a career. It's kind of fun. But compare that to raising my kids and being able to take care of my husband like I'd like to? No way. I'm looking forward to changing to mommy-status in a few years.
I am biased though since my parents married when they were 18 and my mother stayed home with us. Since I'd be dead if my mother had done what you apparently think is the best thing for a teenage girl starting college to do if she gets pregnant, or if she'd thought getting an MBA was more important than having her child, I'm a little offended by blanket statements about how "no one should be getting married at nineteen" or "children of 18 have no business having babies".
..."however, I do believe that they need to have a back up plan so that they're not screwed if their husband dies or divorces them... Which is why I feel sorry for women who don't take the time to at least get a college degree in a practical field before getting married."
Heh, I wonder if that's why I have such distaste for girls who go to places like Stanford and then get their $100k MRS degrees in English Lit. At least if they went to finishing school, they'd be honest about their intentions, and learn some related useful skills.
They are related. Look up some of the FReeper lore and read about "the rules" for Maureen Dowd threads.
I'm sure that there's Peace Corp volunteers, nurses, teachers, and police officers who are happy with their lives because they chose their profession and are highly trained in it.
There are also people who got sick of the rat race to the top and downshifted from the hot career track but still stayed within their original field.
However, I'm also sure that there's many factory workers, burger flippers, and Walmart cashiers who wish that they went to college...
Yes, and there are burned out MD's and lawyers wishing they'd had time to get to know their kids, or wondering why their wife had an affair.
What I do find unsexy is someonme willing to spend their lives in a dead end, minimum wage or near minimum wage job. It seems like unfortunately many of the single men out there are just such types of people...
The key question to my mind is if they *started out* that way, or gave up over other things; and for that matter, if they had the wherewithall to aspire to much more than that.
Tell you what, I'll trade you on that one; if you agree to hold it against trophy wives who trade on nothing more than good looks (lots of those in Scottsdale) when they could have barely made it to assistant fry chef if not for trading sex for a man's money.
I do agree with you that people shouldn't be "cogs" in the corporate machine though. It's very important that people switch jobs (and perhaps companies) at least every three years, which is why I'm applying to grad. school right now. It takes about a year to learn a job and a year to make your mark on it... So by the second year one should be looking for more opportunities... This makes you in charge of your career, not the corporation.
This is very much a function of *which* field you are in, which field is "hot" at the moment, and the general economy. Many of the electrical engineers who were hot stuff in the 80's are over the hill now, since they solved the basic problems business needed. Similarly, there is currently a great shortage of pharmacists, after an entire generation of female pharmacists dropped out of the field to do the mommy thing.
These things come and go in waves--even MBAs (middle managers) were dismissed in droves in the 1980's.
And I remember a time in which those who jumped jobs every year were viewed as "unstable" and passed over for plum assignments. Not the case now, but again, some things go in and out of fashion.
I think that unfortunately many posters on this board see women as no more than baby making machines... I find it horrible in this day and age that men in the U.S. would be that offended by the fact that women have a career.
Did you notice some of your fiercest detractors were women?
The problem is not that you choose a career; it is that you appear to be so cavalierly dismissing so many other things out of hand in order to chase that career; without even stopping to consider the *possibility* that you may be costing yourself other opportunities (possibly irrevocably) in the meantime.
...oh, and as for Fahrenheit 451. The reason I referred to it was not for the sake of marriage, but the incessant drumbeat of furious activity allowing no time for actual personality or reflection. Business can get like that too...
Cheers!