Would you trade your family for money? Which one of your kids would you swap for certain wealth?
All parents know what they would answer. None. Never. No way.
Yet a new Pew study shows parents would prefer — by a lot — their children prioritize financial independence and a good career over family and children. Eighty-eight percent of parents said it’s “extremely or very important” for their children to be financially independent when they reach adulthood; 88% also said the same of their children having a job they enjoy.
Only 21% of parents said it was “extremely or very important” for their child to get married, and just 20% felt that strongly about their progeny reproducing.
This is a giant mistake.
For one thing, with the stability of family comes a higher income. Want a better shot at having a good career? Get married.
It makes sense. The dude swiping on Tinder every night just isn’t going to have the same focus on succeeding as the man who has a family to support.
It doesn’t apply just to men, either. An October 2021 Pew study reported that in the last 30 years, the coupled have come to outearn the singles. Coupled women make $8,000 more a year on average than single women.
“The gaps in economic outcomes between unpartnered and partnered adults have widened since 1990,” Pew noted. “Among men, the gaps are widening because unpartnered men are faring worse than they were in 1990. Among women, however, these gaps have gotten wider because partnered women are faring substantially better than in 1990.”
Married people also pool their resources. Want your kid to be financially secure? Move marriage to the top of his or her to-do list. A 2017 TD Ameritrade study found “29% of single adults consider themselves financially secure, whereas 43% of married couples say the same.” A surprising stat in the data is that married people, despite often having to take care of expensive little people who live with them, end up saving more than single people.
Putting money or career first doesn’t work. You can’t “have it all,” but you can have most of it if you’re in a stable relationship.
Beyond just the cash, a married woman has options. The question “Will you go back to work?” that a woman gets asked after having a baby is not posed to single women.
And there are the existential reasons. We’re only on this planet for so long. The clichéd line “Nobody on his deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office’” is true. Your work might be meaningful and important, or it might be just a paycheck, but either way your family is worth far more. Your co-workers are not going to miss you when you’re gone. Your Twitter followers might not even notice. But done right, you will leave a legacy with your family to carry on.
Everyone says “Family first,” but sending the message to kids to pursue careers over family is the opposite of that. It exposes a shallow materialism trend that used to be embarrassing but is now out in the open. What are riches worth when you don’t have what really matters?
Parents should, of course, motivate their children to become financially secure. A marriage can always fail, and having a career to support yourself is important. No parents want their grown kid living in their basement calling up to ma to make some meatloaf. But when their child grows up and someday asks themselves “What’s the point?” the answer will never come back “To get those slides to Chad in accounting for our presentation.”
Raise children who understand this and who place importance on finding the right spouse and having children, and career and financial stability will follow.
Twitter: @Karol
