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{Thoughts Out Loud} {Blog-style}
Family Planning Series
Suggested Audience: young women, moms-to-be, anyone passing on advice
I realized tonight that it’s sad thinking about how many jobs I turned down in my younger years on account of fearing it would interfere with my hopes of becoming a mother. I must have been a teenager, dual-enrolled in high school and college, when I started thinking about joining the military.
Where I came from, a small blink-and-you-miss-it town outside of Jacksonville, North Florida, there were no job prospects. Like, literally, none at all. There were houses, churches, small animal pastures, vacant pastures and woods. Mostly woods. Great for hunting season. Not so great for substantial income…unless you own the hunting lodges maybe.
Anyone who wanted a “real” job that wasn’t a side hustle or labor-intensive factory farmhand, had to go to a neighboring city. Side hustles for women included babysitting, cleaning houses or door-to-door manicures; selling Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware or Scentsy. For men, selling Pampered Chef, locally-butchered hunks of meat, running a lawn service or offering mechanical work. And of course, there was selling drugs, but that wasn’t even a sustainable pursuit, to my knowledge. (No I never sold drugs, for the record. And not judging anyone who did and has since turned their life around to a more moral direction! :-)).
There were basically only two viable job options for our small-town future-gen world-changers coming out of high school: join the Military or join CSX. The military speaks for itself, but CXS offered the railroad and Jax seaport. And those were predominantly male-centered career paths; so for women, the equivalent ideal job was basically nil. If you didn’t like either of those two options, you’d likely be driving anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more in commute for a minimum wage or higher job. And so the rest of us did. And just to be clear, the first two options for military or CSX were also 30min+ drives.
A nicely captured shot of the sun setting at JAXPORT taken by a commuting friend of mine
If you wanted to be a Mom, you could get married and stay home doing your side hustles or holding no job at all. Traditional marriages where men took care of women and children without fussing about them going to work were still a thing back then for at least probably half of our small-town population. Over the years the push has become much stronger for both sexes to work, but there are still a few rare wives who have never worked outside the home a day in their life, to date. (No judgment at all.)
Since I’d grown up being too familiar with the idea that young girls turned into women who got married and had babies right out of high school (my highest aspiration, even though owning my own business came in pretty close to second), I never put too much thought or planning into how that would work out after starting college and getting a job, common for most of the young people around my age.
Not everyone went to college or university, but there sure didn’t seem to be any harm in it for those who wanted to, and no one else whosoever gave any warnings or dire advice about how it might impact family life, especially for females.
Still, somehow it was in the back of my mind as a controversy, since it popped up here and there when I was seeking study and career paths and caused me to have to navigate around it.
It seems like there were always military recruiters at every job fair or college fair I went to. I only had an interest in joining the military if I could go into the Air Force, but I’d heard that was a less likely chance than being placed in the Army. I figured I’d played plenty of Combat Flight Simulator and other sim games to have a good start (haha, throw-back!) (admittedly, I was, and still am, a bit of a nerd).
Look at those graphics! 😉
But in reality, my only real reason for joining the military would have been as a sure way to secure a decent-paying job with free college education included (at the risk of your life being on the line, of course). I didn’t think those were noble enough reasons to join the military though. I felt people should join the military because they were willing to lay down their lives for the innocent citizens of their country…and be willing to kill people … neither of which I really felt compelled to do.
But mostly, I couldn’t quite work out how, if I joined, I would be able to have the ideal family life I envisioned in my mind. I still saw myself being a mother at home in a couple of years and what would I do if I were called off to war for who knows how long? If it was before I had kids that would put having children on hold longer than I wanted to. If it were after I had kids, what if I were flying high in the sky only to be shot down and leave my kids with no mother? Didn’t seem like the right path for me, no matter how much assurance of a career or schooling it offered.
I decided to take local jobs that kept my feet on the ground. I did eventually land a job in the aviation industry and while I was at that job I again considered going to flight school to become a flight attendant, but some of the same questions arose.
What kind of Mom is a flight attendant? How often would I have to leave my kids and be on an overnight flight or long extended flights? Of course, I wasn’t even married yet, but I was engaged, so it didn’t seem too far off that kids would be in the picture, and at least holding a local job would allow me to see them every night. I again decided to stay put in a job that, for all intents and purposes, looked like a steady place to hunker down. Then I got laid off after GE bought out the company (no hard feelings GE) and that ended that career path.
At some point, I did take several ground school courses and got to fly a Cessna. I thought that if I could at least become a private pilot, along with my future husband, who I was sure would fall under the same convictions and would want to do the same, we’d have the option of choosing our own schedule and carrying the family along if needed.
(Haha, what else is there to do but laugh at my own naivety?) Ironically, I did have a later boyfriend who became an air traffic control operator -pretty close. I, on the other hand, was never able to come up with the funds for pilot testing, so that dream ended as well. My flight instructor was a big family man though. He was always talking about his daughters and the trips they flew on together. Very fond memories of those days.
What’s sad though, in hindsight, is that I didn’t have my first child until many…. years later. And I started reflecting tonight on how my life might be different if I had pursued any of those jobs I avoided on account of wanting to be a typical at-home Mom. I could have taken them and most likely advanced my career and financial status. But then again, who is to say?
These days, I’m much more privy to the vanities of life and the unpredictable nature of life. Still, as times have changed from what they once were, we need solutions to problems that weren’t there before.
I wanted to write this article for whoever young girls might read it and find it thought-provoking and useful. I hope it helps them think about, and process their thoughts about marriage and children a little more than they might otherwise.
I realize that there are women who possibly hold the jobs as the ones I’ve mentioned, in the military, flight industry or other non-traditional positions that could make family life more difficult; and these women find a way to have it all at once, even if it may not always look like the traditional family we are accustomed to idealizing; but it’s important to understand in what ways one’s expectations might have to change if they work these type of jobs, or if it’s the lifestyle of preference for certain women who envision more traditional lifestyles.
“As part of their family planning, more women than ever are choosing to postpone childbearing into their late 30s and early 40s, due to careers and late marriages” – Family Planning article from WebMD
I was born in my mom’s early 20’s and I always thought I’d follow suit in terms of maternal age, but my firstborn came at age 31 and I know many others with the same story.
I do think it’s a good idea for young women who want to have children to have a good balance of planning a life that gives them the lifestyle they envision -as opposed to thinking it’s just going to fall in their lap, while also accepting the fate of reality, that we cannot always control how things turn out, no matter how much planning is put into it. “Having a family” may require more thought and planning than it used to, but it’s well worth the cause.
I hope you found this article insightful. If you’re interested in this subject, stay tuned for the next article, “How To Plan A Family”1
From a working, late-bloomer Mom,
iam:ForeverBlessed
References:
Angle & Perspective 
What’s your angle and perspective?