If you want to know if you’re about to post a sexist bit of tripe, try swapping out the genders before you post. If your arguments still seem reasonable, carry on. If they suddenly appear to be a bit ridiculous, you may want to rethink them a bit.

For example, some of the points below seem like reasonable things all families should consider before sending a child off to college. Other items, well, see for yourself.

8 Reasons Not to Send Your Sons to College:

We have done some soul searching, and while this is not a popular position to take, we feel it is time to talk about the many reasons families should consider NOT sending their sons to college.

We understand this is a controversial point of view, so let us get the standard objections out of the way first.

  • You don’t believe in educating men.  False.  College and education have very little to do with each other.  College has become more of a training ground for a job.  Let’s be clear:  college graduates receive a diploma, not necessarily an education.  Many wise people in years past obtained great educations by seeking knowledge from books and good material.  Today, anyone can learn anything they want with the vast library system across the country and with the easy access of the internet.  So the real reason boys go to college is for a degree, not an education.  I strongly believe boys and men should be educated, first and foremost in the faith.  Further a good working knowledge of the basics for today’s culture and progressive society can be learned in 12 years of school.  Politicians say that 12 years is not enough today, but that is because of a failed corrupted education system.  Homeschooling parents can educate their children in 12 years.  College may be necessary for the provider of a family depending on the vocation God is calling them to, but jobs are for women.

woman doctor

  • You believe in oppressing men.  False.  The Church teaches that husbands and wives are of equal dignity, but with different roles.  Almost all of our children will choose to marry.  Actually, since the purpose of a college degree is for a job, it becomes unnecessary for our sons to have such a credential.  My personal impression is that the day-to-day grind of a job is below the dignity of men.  In a way, it is like being a hired hand, as result of the fall and the penalty for original sin.(After all, God told Adam not to eat the apple. He never told Eve, so Adam was responsible for taking that bite.)  Sending our husbands out to work should be a very last resort, a misfortune, so it shouldn’t be part of a plan for young men before they even get a start at family life.  Keeping a home, being a loving husband, and being a nurturing father are of immeasurable dignity to a man and not something to be farmed out to servants.  The patriarchy has twisted this so that a job (career) appears elevated, and homemaking is denigrated.  This is the evil work of Satan and devastating to families.

opressing men

  • You believe in taking away opportunities for men and trapping them into a subservient role.  False.  We believe in men making wise prudent choices for themselves.  The indoctrination of the patriarchal culture and the practicing of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle severely cloud, practically blind that good judgment.  Getting a college degree often makes a young man feel an “obligation” to use it, to make money.  Often his wife doesn’t want to see it go to “waste.”  So the degree is what actually traps him.  Not having a degree frees him to enter into a marriage with proper roles in which his wife will provide for him and their children.

mans work

  • God calls men to use their talents.  True.  Men over the last couple of generations have proved their abilities in the workplace, but only in a different way.  God has always given men abilities to bring value and service to their neighbor, which is what people with jobs do.  But to distinguish, it was rarely that a husband and father did this until the last couple of generations, and look at the impact on family life.  Before, it was monks who did these things: building monasteries, hospitals, schools, etc.  We only need to read the lives of the saints to see what they did.  We see only a VERY RARE EXCEPTION of canonized saints who have this.  Generally men will marry and raise children so are gifted by God with the natural abilities to nurture (feed and raise) as well as educate children.  Today’s society has a very accessible conduit for that ability that is very conducive to family life:  homeschooling.  Educating and caring for children is the most valuable calling of a married man and requires accomplished abilities.  These are no small matters.  But fathers often say they could not stand to be with their children all day.  What?  Just stop and think about that sad sad statement.  If that is the case, why did they have children?  In choosing for our sons, we may need to bring them to awareness of this attitude and direct them toward the single life or to that of a religious brother.

priest with children

  • A  man needs to have something to provide income in case his wife dies, becomes disabled or leaves him.  True.  The first 2 issues can and should be resolved with insurance, which is very affordable for young couples who may be vulnerable to these VERY remote possibilities, which is why it is so affordable.  A responsible family will have such coverage in place.  As for the wife leaving him, the possibility of being left in such a state would make a man MUCH more careful about the woman he decides to marry.  Think about it.  If you know you’re throwing your COMPLETE trust and future on a woman, you’ll want one you can certainly rely on.

please your woman

That being said, here are the reasons to NOT send your son to college:

1. He will attract the wrong types of women. I share the common concern addressed to us that there are so many lazy women in our society.  But what mystifies me is why boys continue to marry them and then live to complain about them, along with their parents.  So what normally happens with this setup is that those lazy women who are looking for a father-figure in a husband are very attracted to this responsible, organized, smart man who has it all together along with a steady paying job with benefits.  So if she wants to go to work she can, but if not she can always fall back on his income.  Or if she “doesn’t want to have to answer to anyone” she can start her own business, and it doesn’t matter if it fails or succeeds or makes enough income because again he’s there to help. The bottom line, SHE is only supplementing HIS income, but she’s supposed to be the provider.

lazy woman

Wrong Woman

These are very strong stresses on families that I have observed to consistently repeat themselves over and over.  What he did that was looked upon to be the “responsible thing ‘just in case’” ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the type of woman he married.

2. He will be in a near occasion of sin.  Just think of the environment that college-age students live in.  You have a heavy concentration of young people all living together without the supervision of parents at the most sexually charged state of life they will experience.  How can one expect that anyone would be able to avoid these temptations, even on a religious college campus much less a secular one?  So if it is unnecessary for one to be in a near occasion of sin, is it prudent to willingly put oneself there?  This is no small matter we’re dealing with here.  Is a degree worth the loss of your son’s purity, dignity, and soul?

sinful college boys

This is what happens to boys who go to college.

A man is naturally very observant of a woman’s faults as long as he is in a platonic relationship with her.  Once he becomes sexually active with her, he releases hormones that mask her faults, and he remains in a dreamy state about her.  We can see why God would arrange things in such a way so that when in a proper state of holy matrimony, he would be less sensitive to her faults and thereby less tempted to be critical of her.  But before marriage he should be very sensitive to the complete reality of the woman he will enter into a lifetime commitment with.  It is one thing to advise our son of this reality in ordinary situations, but placing him into an environment that will tempt him to lose this barrier is unfair to him.

3. He will not learn to be a husband and father.  Nothing that is taught in a college curriculum is geared toward domestic homemaking.  On the contrary, it is training in a very femine role of a professional career.  So there becomes a severe inner conflict in a man when he starts trying to be a homemaker and juggle a career alongside it.  Often when a career man discerns the possibility of giving up his career, he faces the reality that he has had no training in homemaking and often has the thought “What would I do at home all day.”

stay home dad

More tea?

Stay-at-home fathers are actually very busy industrious men and do absolutely beautiful marvelous things.  Surely the business world severely undervalues those things they do, but the value to a family is beyond monetary compensation.  These abilities cannot be learned in any college.

4. The cost of a degree is becoming more difficult to recoup.  Like anything that is subsidized by the government, the cost of a college degree is inflated.  That being the case, it can often be difficult or impossible to get an adequate payoff for the investment.  The most common example of that scenario is the job of a school teacher.

male teacher

Because teaching is the only acceptable profession for men.

More commonly now we’re seeing situations where not only is the income not enough to support a family, but many are strapped with student loan debt.  Add to that the possibility of not even being able to get a job with the degree and you have economic disaster for a family before they even get started.  It makes much more sense for a young couple to have a wife with a skill that brings value to the marketplace that has reasonable compensation to go along with it and a husband who is willing to be frugal especially during the early years of starting their family.

5. You don’t have to prove anything to the world.  Often the reason for a boy going to college is the pressure of the society around him, including his parents.  The boy who graduates from highschool along with his parents gets the endless barrage of questions of “Where are you going to college?”

graduate

On the wrong path

The society is so fixated with the patriarchal ideal of men having to have a job and provide an income to have worth.  So parents and their sons often beam with pride in announcing what university he will attend. Astonishingly even homeschool parents fall into this folly.  Often homeschooling parents feel they have to prove that they have done a good job in educating their children and are validated by them going to college.  But the confounding thing is that they went through all this effort to raise and educate their sons themselves but don’t give their sons the opportunity to do the same by locking him into a career.

6. It could be a near occasion of sin for the parents.  In our culture many parents feel an unnecessary obligation to pay for the children’s college tuition.  Of course to aid in that there are a host of financial advisers who can set up college investment savings programs for which the government will grant tax favors.  So parents may avoid having more children with contraception, sterilization, or illicit use of NFP to bear this cost.  To assume that all of our children will need a college degree is quite a stretch, particularly for sons who will likely be fathers.

7. He will regret it.  The more we talk about this prudent option for boys, the more we have men who are willing to admit to the regret they possess for having bought into the lie of the dual-career family.

regret education

He WILL regret it.

A recent comment we received was “Too many of us males were sold a bill of bs. How wrong we were. Praying for wisdom for future fathers and families.” We are not surprised that more and more men are coming forward to tell their stories of regret for having by-passed the more meaningful things in life to opt for the approval of patriarchs who cared nothing more about them than being statistics to reinforce their agenda.  All the while they regret neglecting their children and restricting their childrearing to such an extent that they don’t want to even think about it.

8. It could interfere with a religious vocation.  According to Corey Huber, President of the Mater Ecclesiae Fund for Vocations, Catholic seminaries and religious orders do not accept candidates who have substantial unpaid debt. He states the average college loan debt today is a staggering $27,029 which takes most graduates a decade or more to pay off.

priest in prayer

Thank you Father for saving me from the sin of college.

While we do receive some of our most violent rejection for this position, we receive just as many or more approvals for standing up for what is right and good.

All this is said as an explanation for our position on this issue, not to offend or condemn anyone who finds themselves in any of these situations.  But it is said because it is good and true and practicable.  It can be done even in our current society.  So the intent is for the good of families of the future.  We have to humbly give our children the best options and direction even if they don’t conform to the world’s norms and even if we have to humbly admit poor judgment and decisions on our parts.

Bless you.

And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what the good is, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. (Rom 12:2)

About The Author

Bree Ervin is a certified sexual health educator at ThinkBannedThoughts.com When she's not talking to youth and their adults about responsible sex, she writes about raising children in a "post-feminist" world, racial, gender and sexual equality, politics and of course, sex. Stalk her @ThinkBanned

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