Kirsty Allsopp says ditch university and have baby by 27

[Prettyinbeige]

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/02/kirstie-allsop-young-women-ditch-university-baby-by-27

I know it's different for everyone but I completely agree with this article.

For me having my son at 22 was the best thing I ever did. It made me a much stronger and more confident person, which then in turn has helped me in pursuing a career and building a life for us.
I think I would have found things a lot harder if I had built a career and a life to then have to sacrifice it in order to have a baby.

I also understand in some cases it isn't possible for people to have children before a certain age. But I guess what I'm saying is I see some sense in what Kirsty is saying

But you are using career progression as the only measure of...anything!!

life would be really dull if it was in its entirety just 'career'

i bet your friends are envious of some aspect of your life

In Kirsty's world:

Parents help buy their offspring a home and whatever comforts they or their grandchildren need.

Parents have a home (or two) that offer ample comfortable space if offspring want to live at home.

Parents live in (or fund accomodation in) areas of the country offering whatever career opportunity offspring want to pursue and arrange internships etc as required.

Parents can house and fund offspring if they return home broke, unemployed or with grandkids in tow when they've been left in the lurch.

If I had that sort of financial support I would have pursued whatever hobby I fancied and called it my career. I could have had children whenever I liked, knowing that I didn't have to worry about the financial consequences.

Kirsty: everyone would like that freedom. Reminding them they don't have it is a mite insensitive.

Of course there is more to life than career progression but having a good income, marketable skills etc, not being financially beholden makes you better placed to enjoy the other good things in life and generally have better outcomes all round

WHY should women make themselves doubly vulnerable (or, at best, simply dependent), by having children and potentially no qualifications?

Meanwhile, imagine universities dominated by young men, ambitious women in such a minority that they appear abnormal ("bluestocking" wasn'r much of a compliment).

It's an utterly chilling idea.

Feminist, my office-chair ARSE!

In Kirsty's world the parents farm the kids out to boarding school early.

I think we need to stop teaching our kids that life 'should be' this way or another.

it is somehow assumed that if you are struggling you are a failure. If you haven't got kids AND a career AND a great sex life and blah blah blah them you haven't 'made it'

life is a struggle in one way or another whatever your situation and priorities, at some point in your life

i do think its important tone financially independent but i don't think that means you have to bust a gut and be all high flying razzle dazzle. A person can live fairly frugally, be in dependant and happy

feminism doesn't mean we should all mimmick men

I don't think not having a degree means having no qualifications as some posters have suggested.
About 60% of the population don't go to university and manage to have in lots of cases a good life.

Yes and what chicken said. Degrees are mostly not a great start in life these days (i have 2, so no axe to grind)

I had DD (unplanned) at 24. I had a degree and was in my second year of teaching.

I then got married and had DS and none of that really interrupted my teaching career.

However it was really really shitty being stuck at home with a screaming baby, no money and a man I hardly knew at 24 when all my friends were either out having a whale of a time or working on their marvellous careers or both. I really did hate it, even though it was of my own making.

Fast forward a few years and I am just finishing up my law degree and about to start as a trainee solicitor. In a way it's great because I've got my kids now and I know I won't have to take a career break etc but the blood,sweat and tears it has taken to get here is just unthinkable now. It is really hard to study with kids around and the guilt of being around but yet not being around is immense.

See, I'm so confused I don't even know if I'm glad I've done it this way or not. I think I can see the advantages but overall I still think the traditional way is likely to be better for most people if not all.

I am interested in those saying that DCs who don't know what they want to 'be' at 18 shouldn't go to university... I didn't know what I wanted to do but I studied subjects I was good at (maths and physics) and by the end of my degree I had a lot more skills and had my eyes opened to many possibilities (I am from a working class area and went to a comprehensive school with a narrow parochial view of the world, knew nothing of the possibilities of life until I went to uni). I self-funded a 1yr masters and went into a fabulous career in a profession which I love and am passionate about.

If I shouldn't have gone to university because I didn't know what I wanted to do then what would I have done at 18? Got a job in retail or waitressing? I can't imagine what else I wouldn't have been qualified for. In what way would that have helped me to learn what I wanted to do?

(I don't think everybody should go to uni btw. my brother didn't and is a chef, but he was already working in kitchens from age 16 and sort of knew that was his area, it's the idea that people who don't know what they want to do at 18 should not study I find odd).

I agree with past posters that studying with children isn't that easy, and often held up as a wonderful option by women who haven't done it.

My apologies for having equated university with ALL qualifications and experience. Let me rephrase that as: whatever the preparation for supporting oneself, it is an important preparation to make, especially if it's intended to accompany a life with children. Firstly, that would leave women (and children) less vulnerable/dependent. Secondly, where would such a prescriptive life-trajectory leave someone who is either infertile, or not interested in having children? Could a woman in such a society be permitted a life, rather than limbo?!

My Mother used to work with a jolly posh chap, who took her aside one day when I was a teenager, and asked when she was going to arrange my first marriage. Seriously! He thought the first marriage should be for money, then you could marry for love after that. Maybe Kirstie comes from the same school of thinking.

I don't know whether my Mother's colleague - a very senior civil servant - thought the same applied to chaps, or whether it was just gels who should marry for moolah.

He may just have been an isolated weirdo, have known plenty of other chaps and chapesses who didn't seem to have the same odd attitudes. Or they just didn't tell me about them...

So what, chicken, should all women just stop trying to get degrees then, and leave it to the men....

Or are degrees also virtually worthless for them, and should they also be following Kirsty's advice, leaving no-one obtaining that level of qualification...?

Bottom line - it's her individual stance, that the OP happens to agree with. How anyone can possibly argue that it's right for everyone is just bizarre.

My 20s were amazing - wouldn't have changed them for anything, and absolutely not for nappy-changing!

I grew up I a scheme,I am first in family to go to uni,it means a lot to me
I worked hard for my qualifications and I wanted it for as long as can remember
I knew going to uni was a way out,ability to earn money,be solvent.work. And I had my family after I'd completed all that.as I was free to cane the hours,work, travel.it wouldn't have been possible with family

I want her to adopt me, so she can help me with a deposit for a house

and then you both can find you a nice boyfriend as well

Fuck it's so Horah hockey stick and gerls getting a nice man to settle down with

I can honestly say phrase settle down chills me,it's like getting sent to the knackers yard

No one ever discuss the order in which men should live their lives. Its ridiculous

Go University, get a degree, get a good job and experience, then have children, then return to work once children are at school. That's the ideal way of doing it suppose but its not always that simple. The older you leave having children the more likelihood of complications with conceiving x

Japanese I didn't say that. I sais I disagreed with a poster who said if you didn't get a degree then you don't have any qualifications.
I had my first child at 19 and then went to university, it was incredibly hard but worth it because I value education so much.

If men could push babies out, we would be discussing how hard it was for them too though.....