S/o Speech paycheck- how to help girls know the options?

lfab

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 12:42 am

amother [ Caramel ] wrote:

I’m not insulting your intelligence lol.

Fact is that very sheltered girls often have less exposure to career options, have very limited “acceptable” career options, and are often strongly encouraged to pursue options that may not be a good fit for them, because.... it’s good for the shidduch resume.

It isn’t uncommon at all for a girl to be rushed from seminary to a degree factory without any time to think.

Spinning off of the speech therapy paycheck rant thread. I agree with the amother quoted above. I too went into one of the therapy fields because I always heard it was a good field for frum mothers. Personally, I think I make a decent salary with decent hours. I don't love my job, but that's partly beaut of the specific population I work with. I think if I worked with younger kids I'd like it somewhat more. But the reality is that other than one of the therapies or nursing I didn't really consider any other options because I didn't really know what else was out there. In addition, in circles where girls are marrying boys in kollel they want jobs where they can finish school quickly and start earning a decent salary right away, especially girls who don't have parents who can provide support. Girls who want to pursue careers that require more schooling either need to marry working boys or wait to get married (which puts a red flag on them as to why they didn't start dating earlier and many girls won't risk it with the "shidduch crisis"). But I want different for my own daughters. I want then to know the that they can choose to pursue other careers. How can we help our daughters know what job options are out there and how to go about getting the schooling needed and having a job in those fields while balancing their home life? Are there any frum organizations that provide this kind of information to high school girls, along with networking and/or internship opportunities to give them a chance to see what's out there? Someplace that will give a realistic assessment of the various career choices without "brainwashing" girls to pursue specific "acceptable" options.

amother

Yellow

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:11 am

Truly the million dollar question.
One part of the problem is that the girls don't have the luxury of the first couple of years of college to figure out what they want, like the average student does before deciding on a major. If girls felt they had more time before beginning the dating/marriage stage, that would take away a huge amount of societal pressure. I'm not advocating for girls waiting to date till their mid 20s or anything. But what's wrong with 21 or 22 being the socially acceptable age?

amother

Cantaloupe

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:23 am

I’m caramel quoted above.

No good answers, but I think it’s important to teach girls about finances and career options earlier on, in high school. Also, girls should know that they have CHOICES. I’m kind of obsessed with this since I felt like I didn’t really have choices. And like the poster above wrote, there shouldn’t be this panicked rush to figure it out in two months.

amother

Lightgreen

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:25 am

You don't need a frum organization. You need girls to talk to women in different fields. Organize a career day at your daughter's high school, and invite women who are willing to be open about what their jobs entail and what salaries look like in the field. I know plenty of women who'd be happy to talk about their careers and challenges. If a high school doesn't want to invite a broad range of women, you have a red flag right there.

lfab

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:27 am

I agree that this is a big part of the problem. Most girls feel like they need to start dating at 19/20 and be working at a job that earns a decent salary at a very young age. But how do we change this? I wouldn't want to encourage my girls not to date learning guys (if that's what they want) just so they can take the time to pursue various options. And I can't imagine that most girls would be willing to wait until 22+ to start dating unless that became the new norm. Someone should start an organization that educates high school students with information on various careers, what kind of education it entails, hook them up with people who work in different fields they may be interested in so they can really get an understanding of what it takes to be successful in that field, how many hours they can expect to work, salary range, etc. I dint have the resources for such an endeavor but I think that there is such a need.

amother

Yellow

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:30 am

amother [ Lightgreen ] wrote:

You don't need a frum organization. You need girls to talk to women in different fields. Organize a career day at your daughter's high school, and invite women who are willing to be open about what their jobs entail and what salaries.look like in the field. I know plenty of women who'd be happy to talk about their careers and challenges. If a high school doesn't want.to invite a broad range of women, you have a red flag right there.

They did something like this at my school. It really wasnt enough. Plus, you are talking 17 year olds who really have no clue about the reality of college/working life, or what they really want. The girls I knew who were absolutely positive about their career path at 17 all changed their minds within a semester or two of college. And that was after doing a day of shadowing back in high school as part of this program and even doing summer classes to jumpstart getting credits before seminary.

lfab

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:30 am

amother [ Cantaloupe ] wrote:

I agree they need choices, but if we, their mothers, don't know the other options out there (most of the women I know work in one of the therapies, or are nurses, teachers, social workers or graphic designers with 1 or 2 people working in computer related fields thrown in ) how can we help educate our daughters?

amother

Lightgreen

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:36 am

amother [ Yellow ] wrote:

I agree that a single day is inadequate. But knowing your options is a start. Some high schools have seniors spend their last semester doing internships. Real world experience goes a long way.

amother

Yellow

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 1:44 am

amother [ Lightgreen ] wrote:

I agree that a single day is inadequate. But knowing your options is a start. Some high schools have seniors spend their last semester doing internships. Real world experience goes a long way.

Sure, but the only real, professional internships I've heard of for high school seniors (not just a few days of shadowing) are connected to public schools or maybe very fancy prep schools. Never heard of this at a BY. Frankly (and I say this as someone who has had high schoolers intern on occasion at my job) I don't know if BY girls could handle it. I also say this as a BY graduate. Maybe a few very sophisticated, savvy ones. But most (as sweet and kind as they are) really aren't ready for something so intense.

Iymnok

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 2:16 am

A sort of jobs fair or full day seminar for young frum women may be good. Not connected to a school. Encouraged to attend would be HS seniors, post seminary girls, and any young women who may want a parnassa.
Many girls do not understand that difference between various salaries as it relates to running a home including expenses due to children. So while 70k is respectable, it can’t support the tuition of very many children as well as insurance of various sorts.

amother

Royalblue

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 6:02 am

amother [ Leaf ] wrote:

Theyre having these career events and stuff in Lakewood to help the girls coming home from seminary figure out what they should do. I wonder if there they're actually helpful.

These events appeared to be sponsored by local offices, which makes me think they won't be discussing a true range of options.
These days, many Lakewood girls are skipping the degree factories and going straight from seminary to the offices -- or even skipping seminary and going straight from high school to offices. These girls approach work initially as an extension of school in some ways -- something they are doing an because it's the next step in the pipeline, and just a place to follow authority and silently resent it. Only difference is that now they are earning a paycheck.
These offices open exploit the girls with low salaries, expect them to work Erev yt and chol hamoed, and take advantage of them in other ways. The jobs are repetitive and unstimulating. I'm concerned about this becoming the new normal. However after several years in an office it is possible to earn a respectable salary.
That being said, I just don't think many options are truly practical. For example, as I posted in the other thread, my nature would be to go into academia. But how would my family have lived during all my schooling?
And I just don't see any BY school encouraging its students to go, say, to law school.

ora_43

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 6:37 am

This isn't just a frum/yeshivish problem. Ask the average secular person in their 30s/40s how well they understood their options when they chose a college... People with a career they don't love are the lucky ones; the unlucky ones are the ones with $50,000+ in student debt and a degree that doesn't open any doors.

To some extent it's inevitable. You can't fully understand what you need/want from a job before creating a professional identity, and you can't create a professional identity without a job. With a handful of exceptions, there's just no way that an 18-year-old without work experience is going to have anywhere near the understanding of what she wants out of a career, or what she's good at and bad at, than she will at age 36. At best she'll have a vague sense of her interests and desired lifestyle.

So you pick something that matches your academic interests and desired lifestyle, hope for the best, and if it doesn't work out - now you have a way to earn money to retrain. And/or a starting point on the path toward a slow shift to a different career.

Personally, for all that I was aware of a wide variety of careers, my understanding of what made some jobs suitable for me and others disastrous, 1. only showed up several years into my time in the workforce, 2. was something I basically stumbled across entirely by accident.

ora_43

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 6:48 am

As individual parents, we can talk to our kids about careers in general - what it's realistic to expect and what it isn't realistic to expect, the wide variety of careers out there, the importance of finding something that matches what they want in terms of things like the office environment, hours, and pace of work, and not just their general interests.

IOW, just because you like science doesn't mean you'd enjoy working in a lab.

We can also encourage kids to do paid work, if not a formal job, and/or volunteer opportunities that allow them to experience different environments. We can encourage them to reflect on what they liked and disliked about each experience.

As for schools, I'd like to see them bring in women with different careers to talk to students in 11th or 12th grades (maybe earlier in Israel, where 10th graders already pick a bagrut track). With an emphasis on the idea that there are different ways of balancing a career and family, and jobs with notoriously parent-friendly hours (eg teacher, speech therapist) are only one of those ways.

ora_43

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 7:29 am

One other thought - we need some humility as parents/educators; mostly, we need to remember that what we know about certain careers might be years if not decades out of date.

One problem I see among people a bit younger than me is that they were directed into careers that used to be fairly solid choices, in their parents' day. But are less so now. Academia, for example. Hoo boy, academia... also journalism, and to some extent law.

We also need to remember that part of what makes a career option viable is personal suitedness. The mentality of, 'fields ABC don't make money, fields XYZ do' can keep people out of fields that they davka could have succeeded in - and get people into fields that they, personally, are unlikely to succeed in despite the 'good money' reputation.

Don't get me wrong, it's not as simple as just 'if you're good at it everything will work out,' and some fields are a much much safer choice than others. But it's important to keep in mind.

amother

Leaf

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 7:34 am

amother [ Royalblue ] wrote:

Yeah, that's what I figured.

But I don't know if that's true if all of them. There's a free one by Shaina keren, a career coach. She's probably doing it to promote her own service. But maybe her advice is actually worth something.

amother

Narcissus

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 7:55 am

I think people forgot that it's called "work" and a "job" for a reason. You work to make money. You have hobbies to enjoy what you do. Yes it's nice to enjoy your job but it doesn't always work that your job is what you love to do. As an adult, you sometimes need to do something you don't love to provide for your family.

People also have unreasonable expectations. They want to work part-time, flexible hours, be home whenever their kids are, enjoy their jobs, stay in a "appropriate" environment, and get paid top dollar. That is just probably not going to happen for majority of people.

amother

Yellow

Sun, Jun 20 2021, 8:03 am

amother [ Narcissus ] wrote:

I agree. This (along with the reality of working on chol hamoed) is probably what should be the thrust of such a workplace seminar. OTOH I don't know that a 17 to 18 year old girl who, at the most, has worked as a camp counselor really has the background knowledge to truly understand this.