At least carrying all those heavy books prepared me for carrying a toddler.

A reasonable question raised on one of my Catholic discussion lists:

"Why would a young woman spend three or four years to get a specialized degree that she won't ever be using?"  In other words, is education wasted on the at-home mother?

Really, for those of us whose vocation is marriage and motherhood, and who believe that we should concentrate on raising our own children---what good is university education at all?

After my first response (I HAVE A PH.D. IN ENGINEERING AND HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST I WASTED TWELVE YEARS GETTING IT)  I had a chance to actually think about it for a while.

First, an analogy to another vocation.  Let's say a man got a university education as, say, a computer programmer or an electrical engineer, worked for a little while, then realized his vocation was to the priesthood, so entered the seminary and became a priest. Choose one:

(a) The young man's first education was wasted and will be useless to him now.

(b) God will be able to use his university-gained knowledge in his priesthood:

• his practical skills in the administration of a parish
• his mental skills in his homiletics and decision-making
• his particular understanding of the human condition in his pastoral care.

Isn't (b) more likely?

Now, let's suppose there is a young Catholic woman who looks for a good value for the education dollar and who assembles as much financial aid as she can, so that debt is not a large concern.  Then, suppose she desires to pursue an education that is either specialized and useful OR ordered towards the proper development of an educated mind (i.e. a CLASSICALLY liberal arts program).

Further, let us suppose that what she desires most is to marry and raise a family.  That is, her vocation is foremost in her mind. (When you find this young woman, by the way, in about 15 years, please let me know so that I can arrange marriage to one of my sons.)

Question: Does a postsecondary education, either classically liberal or specialized, serve her vocation as a wife and mother? I say, absolutely, yes.

The classical-liberal education, of course, is a gimme. I can hardly think of anything that would prepare a woman better to educate her own children; and it would surely serve her in her interior life. Motherhood can be sanctifying even if it is nothing but self-sacrifice and submission to drudgery; but a rich interior life---contemplation, analysis, reading---builds sanctification and satisfaction at the same time. When a woman's works as a wife and mother inspire her mind to reach surprising conclusions, and when her contemplation animates her works as a wife and mother, then she is a more integrated person. And, probably, a better wife and mother, and a better intellectual, than she would have been otherwise.

Specialized training is a more difficult question. Some kinds do feed the interior life, although the classically educated may find this difficult to imagine. A woman who had, say, medical training would be given lots of material to contemplate about the nature of the human person. Legal training sharpens one's ability to analyze issues of ethics and morality as well as issues of politics and government.

I know from personal experience that training in the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering has produced a mode of thought that gives me great enjoyment and encourages me to contemplate the physical Creation---and anyway, some have said that mathematics is the real language of God, at least when he's speaking about the Stuff he has made (that is, everything other than Persons).

But besides enriching the interior life, specialized training has practical uses in the vocation of wife and mother. Most people, if they imagine this is possible at all, imagine that it means that a medical doctor can employ her skills in putting band-aids on boo-boos, or that a psychologist can analyze her family and so safeguard their mental health, or that a master carpenter can save money by building the deck herself instead of hiring someone else.

But this is to reduce marriage and motherhood from a vocation to a "job" that has a specific "skill set," one that can draw upon the skills one has developed in one's previous "job." A vocation demands not the application of specific skills, but the donation of the whole person.  So specialized training, like the classically liberal education, serves the vocation insofar as the part of the person it develops can turn over all that developed part of themselves to the service of the marriage and the family.

Specialization is not a bad thing. It is a kind of uniqueness. I turn my developed engineer-self over to my family and create one kind of family. A medical doctor turns her developed medical-doctor-self over to her family and creates a different kind of family. 

There is one final dirty little secret that we women with specialized training have about the use of our training in the home.  We often turn it over to our husbands so that they may better perform their "jobs" which serve our family by providing for our material needs. A highly trained woman in the home is a twenty-four-hour-a-day professional consultant. She brings to this "job" (and in this case I would call it a job) all her skills and mental powers.

If husband and wife are, as in my family, trained in the same or related fields, the benefits of this aspect of marriage are nakedly apparent. Mark and I talk about very specific engineering problems that arise in his job all the time.

But even if they are trained in different fields, I suspect that the wife's education bears fruit. She can be his sounding board, his editor, his "different perspective" that helps him see some other side of the issue he might not have considered. This applies to almost any job the husband might have that itself requires a postsecondary education. In this way she serves the family by increasing the husband's power to support the family outside the home---and does all this from within the home.

It is a dirty little secret because it is shocking to the world that an educated woman, today, would submit her education to the service of her husband's career, letting him get all the so-called "credit" in the outside world. Yet it is a peculiarly rewarding kind of submission, and it has an actual economic payoff, if a difficult-to-measure one, for the family.

The thing to tell your daughters is not "Don't bother with an education, because it doesn't help you as a wife and mother." The thing to tell your daughters is, "While you are getting your education, always keep in mind that someday you will turn it over to God in the service of your vocation, whatever it may be."

I think God can use a priest's whole education, whatever it is, in the service of the priesthood. And I would expect no less for the service of matrimony.

UPDATE:  Welcome, readers of The Anchoress! 

While you're here, consider:  What is a vocation anyway?   Check out my recommendations to a friend looking for good books to read during her first pregnancy.   Ask yourself what it means to bathe your feet in the blood of the wicked.  Do the math about women in top-tier technical faculties.  Or take my quiz and try to tell the difference between what is random and what is designed.

UPDATE AGAIN:  More on challenging common assumptions about family roles.

Comments

[The Anchoress]

And let's not forget - if your husband passes away young, it insures that the mother will have the means necessary to support her family on her own, if she must.

[Kate]

I've read that, all other things being equal, a man's earning power increases according to his wife's education. In other words, if you have two men who each studied the same thing at the same colleges up to the same level, the one with the college educated wife is earning more than the one whose wife never finished college - which, I think, is related to the phenomenon you describe. I think of my brother, a college dropout, whose very intelligent college educated wife has helped him find ways to organise his time, maximise his earnings, minimize his tax burden, and find better paying jobs. She has re-worked his resume, polished his appearance, and inspired him to try for more. She is quite definately an asset!

[bearing]

bearing here.

Anchoress: Yes, there are many circumstances in which a woman's education might become necessary.

If the husband becomes "merely" disabled, for instance, even the best life insurance policy won't support the family.

And there's also the possibility that, though called to marriage, she may not find a spouse.

Exploring the ways that education can be turned over to the service of the vocation, rather than the service of an unusual "emergency" though, is of personal interest!

Ultimately, it becomes something more that you can give to God, or to God through giving it to a spouse. Not just the "university education" that I have experience with, but the whole life of the person---educated traditionally or in the school of life---that precedes the consecration of the self in marriage or in religious life.

[DeputyHeadmistress]

This is wonderful! Found you via Anchoress. I have been a sahm for 22 years now (our oldest is 22, our youngest is 7; we homeschool), and while I never did complete my degree, I have continued to pursue learning through my own reading.
I especially appreciate and connect with what you have to say about a mother's interior life.
I'll be linking to this later (when I have more time to add some thoughts of my own).

[mamasquirrel]

Literary critic Northrop Frye once said that a liberal arts degree was useless...and if it wasn't, then it wasn't worth much.

In other words, to back up from your specialized training question for a moment--isn't the question of the value of an arts degree the same, then, for both men and women? If a man takes a graduate degree in philosophy and then works in marketing or some other field, did he waste his education?

I like your post--lots to think about.

[bearing]

Mamasquirrel: A good question that leads to wondering if any education is ever wasted...

Of course it's not "education" that can be wasted so much as it is time or money that might be wasted *on* education....

I think you can *waste time* that could have been better spent by screwing around instead of applying yourself. You can *waste money* by spending it on the prestigiousness of your school or on frills that don't actually educate you.

But I'm inclined to think that the actual education---provided that it didn't fill your mind with falsehoods---is only wasted if you refuse to apply it to your state in life.

[Diane]

Excellent post. I found you via The Anchorees.

I am an at-home mom with a master's in Electrical Engineering, so I can definitely relate. My parents subtly accused me of wasting their money on my education. But I suspect that if I won the lottery and "retired", no one would ever make such an accusation. I think people generally consider things "wasted" when they are not used for personal gain.

Worse than the "wasting my degree" accusation, was the suggestion that my first born's developmental delays were caused by my NOT dumping him in day care where he could properly be socialized. That one still irritates.

I will save this post for my future defense. I'll be hearing the accusations in a year when my youngest starts school.

[Christine (Rambling GOP Soccer Mom)]

I've also linked to this (as well as the rest of the Carnival this week). I'm a stay at home mother and a homeschooler. I used to be a teacher, and also an interpreter for the Deaf. When I told people of my ultimate goal of staying at home, homeschooling, and basically striving to be a good wife and mother, a few people wondered aloud if I'd be wasting my education! As if learning alone wasn't a worthy goal!

It's really a shame that so many women are made to feel as though they have wasted themselves by staying at home and raising their children. Really, what greater contribution can I give to the world than to raise my two beautiful girls to be good Catholic Christians?

By the way, while I want to stress living their vocations out, which very well may be to become wives and mothers, my husband and I tease that we'll send our two beauties to live with Mother Angelica before they're ten. But an arranged marriage might not be bad, either. My dear husband joked about that recently with another of the Catholic homeschooling mothers recently.

Thank you for talking about something that really needs to be talked about. Women ought not be pressured to put family life on a backburner if that is their vocation! Education is in no way wasted on a stay at home mother!