AIBU for feeling devastated about my graduate daughter's pregnancy?

[Postmanpatri]

Hi, my DD is 21, she will be 22 in January. She has just graduated from university, and got married last month. I’ll be honest I wasn’t thrilled about her getting married at 21, she’d been with her boyfriend since secondary school.
However today she has announced she is pregnant. She told me it wasn’t planned, but they are keeping the baby. She still lives at home with me but has committed to finding somewhere else to live, I’ve told her there is no hurry.
Im going to be honest I’m devastated, she was the first person in our family to go to university, she got straight As in her highers and advanced highers, she is due to start teacher training, but has said she might not start as she is due in February.
I am so worried she is throwing her life away, her husband is a lovely boy but he is only 22, he’s a joiner so he puts in a lot of hard work but it’s not high earning.

AIBU to feel like this? What do I do?

I was devastated when I first heard, mostly because I was shocked and scared. Multiple commenters have now reassured me this doesn’t mean she can’t still pursue what she wanted to pursue which is teaching. Therefore yes, I do feel differently.

It’s fine the only thing I find strange it’s that she’s married and doesn’t have her own place . I think it’s a bit much getting married before you have moved out of your parent’s house . I would have not moved her husband in in the first place to be honest I just find that absolutely ridiculous.

One of my former pupils bought a terraced house down the road from me for less than 90k. (It would have been more, but she has to walk down a path to get to the road. Road access would have raised the price.

Galley kitchen, two bedrooms and a spacious living room with windows at either end. Garden back and front.

A decent area in a town with reasonable transportation links.

A house of the same design had had a lot of work done and sold at offers over 115k.

Folk in England often have no grasp of the difference in house prices here - perhaps because their knowledge of pricing comes from the university areas of Edinburgh and St Andrews.

Prices have also gone up a bit in the commuter belt, but you can certainly get a much more spacious home in a decent area here.

I’m not sure this is true, DDs husband completed his highers before starting his apprenticeship and got AAABB, they both enjoy going to the ballet and opera, they both love history, they both play instruments.
He decided to become a joiner as it was what he wanted to do and where his passion lay. He has built countless pieces of furniture for us so far, he’s a talented man.
Right now he works for the local council as he likes the predictable wage etc.

Apparently?

Cheek!

Getting a University degree is an achievement but the OP's daughter is going to struggle doing that now.

i don't understand the relevance of this. OP's daughter already has a degree, having gained outstanding exam results at school.

As is so often the case, some posters are incapable of appreciating that not everyone wants the same things. And apparently young people finding it difficult or impossible to buy their own house is a terrible thing, but a young couple intending to buy a house in their early twenties is also a terrible thing?

I've just seen that the daughter has a first class honours degree in music. Fantastic. And she will be able to continue to earn money giving music tuition while she waits to do teacher training. Sounds good to me. The implication that she's a pregnant cafe worker on minimum wage is quite the distortion.

My neighbour's son who did not want to go to university started his career working as a joiner for the council, now at the age of thirty runs his own successful business and has worked extremely hard in the evenings to renovate a four-bedroomed detached house for him, wife and baby to live in.

This is a lovely, interesting thread, and you sound like a really wonderful family. I'm sure the kids are going to be very happy. My observations were of a very sweeping nature, and they weren't in any way intended as a commentary on any of you specifically. (But I do think your son-in-law is a very unusual young man, statistically speaking!)

Just to add, I moved away from my own small-town community and family (three generations before me went to uni, so admittedly different background), and I am very conscious of the stability and happiness and sense of belonging that comes from staying put (and which, by the same token, you miss out on when you head out into the world). So I'm definitely inclined to think that they've made a great decision and I hope they can navigate their interests and ambitions where they are, sounds like they're very well set up to do it.

I wouldn’t return to my secondary teaching post, but I have the impression that my colleagues in the Music Department had a much more positive experience.

I did a bit of supply in a Music Department and that was a joy. (I’m not qualified in music, but I play an instrument and my knowledge was just about enough for the junior classes I covered.)

Wow! Such entitlement.
£35K at age 21 is a fantastic salary and yes - actually in some parts of the country you can still buy a property for less than £100K.
We are not all middle class mumsnetters.

OP you should be very proud of your daughter and her husband. The country needs more of them and well done you for helping your daughter to achieve all she has.

You sound like a snob.
People have different lives to you.
150k is a common house price in Scotland. I bought my 4 bed for 195k. And 35k is a perfectly acceptable salary, especially at 21/22 and in the public service (yes he’s a joiner but is working for the local council. In a few years with more experience he’ll be able to work for himself and potentially get a better rate)

I get the impression that teaching is not as highly pressured in Scotland as it is in England. It's not an easy job, but I have a number of friends who teach in primary and secondary here for 20+ years and not one of them has talked of leaving the profession. It's also becoming fairly common for midlife mums in my circle to retrain to teach (I know three who have done that). And with music skills your daughter will always be able to make good money doing private tutoring if she decided teaching in schools is not for her.

There are so many positives in this story. I'll add the positive that the way the world is going (especially with global warming), if you're going to have a baby, then the earlier the better. Life is getting harder, not easier.

I don't know where OP is in Scotland, but here's an example of a perfectly nice 3-bed house, an hour from Edinburgh, on at £145K (offers over). And I've found a 2-bed house in Blairgowrie (nice town in lovely countryside) on at £90K.

3 bedroom end of terrace house for sale in Cheviot Road, Kirkcaldy, KY2

Also, on a teacher salary plus a joiners salary your daughter's family will be able to live a very comfortable life in most areas of Scotland. There's a class teacher at my kids school who is married to a plumber in the live in the most expensive part of town and she gets a new BMW SUV every couple of years. You're getting advice from people who live in a completely different economy where achieving that level of comfort requires a private sector role that takes up all your time and risks sucking the life out of you.

If you really want to pay over the odds for a house round here, then you need to go for a new build.

This one is close to me: £305k for a 4 bed house with two bathrooms, detached, own garage.

Markinch is a village just outside Glenrothes. The village is popular with commuters since it has a railway stop, convenient for Edinburgh and Dundee.

The same development has 3 bed detached houses for sale at 253k. That's very expensive for the area.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/91372893#/?channel=RES_NEW

@FunPartyIdeas It’s only teachers who think banking is less stress! High st banking does not pay well and other areas of banking are very results driven and not amazing pay for many either. No nice long holidays either! Teaching has a great career structure and plenty going for it. Don’t believe for 1 second that highly paid banking roles are stress free and not long hours. Dream on. Plus the competition to get them is immense - unlike teaching.

I was a bit taken back by that comment too. I've got an MSc but am skint due to medical circumstances yet a relative with minimal education beyond gcse is running a business that's got a million pound turnover.

OP., it may not be ideal in you eyes but things happen for a reason that relative I talk off was born to very you parents. Just support them in anyway you want to. They'll make it work a joiner is a skilled and can command huge fees.

I'm with you OP as I live also in a part of Scotland where it's cheap to buy a family home on one income. Our first mortgage years ago was based only on one income and we have been mortgage free for years. Life is for living. We live modestly and enjoy our family life. I am sure your DD and her DH will also do the same. Buying ex local authority property will mean she can take her time rejoining the workforce once she's had your DGC.

Not everyone is interested in sitting at a desk crunching numbers. Horses for courses. Teaching, I agree, is a good career choice for the OP's DD. She'll get a good pension which is nothing to be sniffed at.

Always always it's people who are not native to Glenrothes or Markinch who are buying all these up. I have similar properties near me all getting sold by two income families often not originally from these parts. Many locals are completely priced out of the local market. So ex local authority is the only affordable option for many.

Yup.

This one in my area needs a bit of work, but it has good bones.

Ex Glenrothes Corporation, 3 bed. Decent area. Good transport links. 105k.

Agreed. My 4 bed end terraced property was £94k 16 years ago. Today in my street they're going for £165k+. Not bad for ex local authority housing stock. We have done it all up to our own taste over the years by saving up around a busy family life raising four DC. Four large double bedrooms upstairs, one master bedroom downstairs, family bathroom (upstairs), wet room (downstairs), large kitchen with space to feed six. I am sure OP's son in law can refurbish property cheaply to make a beautiful family home from ex local authority housing stock often with huge back gardens aswell as huge bedrooms. With loads and loads of cupboards (absolutely love all of mine!).

To what @user1476613140 said, I'll add that when you're working as a teacher it's often possible to live outside your catchment but still to have a very short commute.

I do know some teachers who have an hour's commute, but that's quite unusual for Scotland. I know many people who live[d] outside their catchment but could get to work in 10 minutes.

Even if someone was a peripatetic music instructor, they didn't have a lot of travelling to do in the same local authority. I knew one chap who started out as a tradesman, retrained as a maths teacher and finally worked as a peripatetic music instructor, moving between a couple of schools a day at most.

I knew music teachers who worked part-time between two schools in the authority and their commutes were relatively brief as well.

I know - as if we are all making it up @WearyAuldWumman
🤣

It's the same round about Cowdenbeath and Kelty - the new builds are being bought by folk from Edinburgh or parts of England.

You'll find that as well as ex-council houses, locals often buy ex Coal Board houses (often bungalows) and build on at the back.

A 2 bed ex-council house across from the public park in Cowdenbeath has a box room being used as a 3rd bedroom. Move in condition, close to Foulford Primary School and the local high school - going for 135k.

You can tell I'm feeling a bit crabbit, can't you?😁