When my husband and I were courting, we were told by our pastor that I “needed” to get a college degree before we married.  (So much for godly counsel.)  The problem is, from a biblical perspective, we found this completely illogical.

I had every intention of being a full-time homemaker, as we believe is the ideal according to Scripture.  If I had gone to college, to prepare myself for a career I did not intend to have, I would have accumulated large amounts of debt.  Due to the need to pay off this debt, I would have ended up in the very profession I had prepared for but not intended to have.

As it turns out, there is now a study that supports this type of thinking. [broken link]

The so-called logic behind sending a woman to college to prepare for some other career is that “if something happens to her husband,” she will have a way to support herself.  But is this really logical?  Do we encourage our sons to prepare for careers other than those they intend to hold “just in case something should happen”? Of course not!  We encourage them to prepare to do that which they intend to do — and trust God with the rest.

Imagine this scenario:

A young man earnestly desires, and fully expects, to be a doctor. However, he thinks that perhaps his plans won’t work out. Maybe it will take a while to find a job in that field. Maybe after he’s been working for a while, the hospital will downsize. Because he cannot be perfectly certain of his future in the medical field, he decides to go to law school — not because he plans to be a lawyer, mind you, just in case doctoring doesn’t work out. Oh, he’ll read a few anatomy books and bandage a few wounds, but most of his time, money, and effort will be poured into law school.

Most of us would agree that this young man needs some serious training in logic!  And yet we encourage our young ladies to operate according to this very same logic.

If we expect to be homemakers, devoting our time, money, and energy to training in some other career is not only poor stewardship, it could very well be self-defeating. Studying nursing, for example, just because “it could be a while before I get married” or “my husband could possibly someday die or ditch me” is really no different than studying law because medicine might not work out. Meanwhile, we are ill-equipped for the career we do intend to have.

How many Christian women end up using their college degrees because they are widowed?  Conversely, how many abandon their homes while they’re married because they are either paying off college loans or because the world has seduced them and they are no longer content to manage their own homes? (Besides, take a quick look at the Scriptures.  If a woman is widowed, who is responsible to provide for her?)

God has promised to meet our needs. If the unexpected happens, we can worry about it then. In the meantime, lets just concentrate on preparing for the expected.

“But, but, but…”

Note that I did not say “women should never go to college.” I said that it’s unwise to prepare for a backup career at the expense of the one you intend to have. Particularly if you can do it and avoid debt, some women may find college a helpful investment of their time. College (for both men and women) should be the route chosen when it’s the best way to meet your own goals. Not “because it’s the thing to do” or out of fear of what might happen twenty or thirty years down the road. It should not come at the expense of better investments toward the goals you have, and if you’re taking out loans you need to be aware of cost — in life choices — of paying them off.

Originally posted 10 Feb 2006, this post was merged on 15 Feb 2006 with another post from 2006.