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Old 10-19-2017, 07:18 PM   #3
Clodfobble
UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 20,012
I always thought the "pursue a career first, then have kids" thing was backwards. In your 20s, no one gives a shit what you think. In your 30s, you start to get respect from the other 30- and 40-year-olds simply because you're not one of those awful 20-year-olds. Most people don't even really figure out what they want to do until their 30s anyway, so whatever career foundation they enthusiastically but naively laid in their 20s (like everything else we laid in our 20s, yuk yuk yuk) is often wasted anyway. Then right about the time their career finally starts moving, all of a sudden they're out of commission for 5-10 years? That seems like a much bigger career-killer to me.

Now, if the choice is to have no kids in favor of a career, I can understand that. But if you are trying to do the work/kids balance, it really helps to recognize that pretty much everything you do in your 20s is meaningless anyway, so you might as well spend that time being vomited on and screamed at, while you still have the stamina. Then right about the time they're able to stay at home alone and be autonomous, you've got the age and wisdom for someone to take you seriously in the workplace.

Admittedly, people are often too stupid to make permanent marriage choices in their 20s either, and that's how you end up with divorced women in their 30s entering the workforce for the first time. But guess what? That divorced woman still gets taken more seriously than the 22-year-old upstart intern.
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