Lord willing by age 16 my sons should be finished with “highschool”, a rigorous and well rounded education. My sons are currently on track for this, which is great. Then at age 16 they will be expected to choose a trade to begin apprenticing in. The plan is to give them a little experience and exposure in each relevant trade before age 16, so they’ll be able to make a more informed decision.
By age 20, or possibly 19, they should be finished apprenticing in their chosen trade. At this point they can choose the optional luxury of a higher education, for example at a place like New Saint Andrew College (bonus: it also happens to be a great place to find a wife!). In our household we have a strong culture of constant learning and curiosity, so either way I take for granted that my sons will always be intellectually growing and learning. Whether they choose to do some of their continual learning at a college will be their choice, but given their income and savings at this point it shouldn’t be a big deal financially either way for them.
Some might critique my strategy above, accusing me of minimizing the life of the mind and over-emphasizing blue collar work. To clarify: I do think the intellect is important, and it can be a temptation for blue collar households to overlook it and adopt a sort of de facto anti-intellectualism. That should be guarded against; Christians should respect and encourage intellectual pursuits. In our household specifically we’re all strongly oriented towards the “head”, so we don’t have much risk of falling in to that ditch. Culturally, you should make sure your family cultivates both the “head” and the “body”, balancing the intellectual and the practical. Neglecting bodily work is just as harmful for a young man as neglecting intellectual pursuits. But in this blogpost I’m most interested in strategic planning for careers, work, and finances. Here’s my philosophy: I teach my boys that “heady” pursuits are desirable, but as a general rule they should not be considered avenues for financial provision. “Head” stuff is a luxury. This includes liberal arts, theology, philosophy, art, natural history, music, poetry, etc. All of these are desirable and honorable and cool, but also impractical in the sense of not turning a profit, and that’s perfectly fine. (Besides, all these endeavors are usually best when they’re motivated by love, pursued by the “amateur” in the literal sense, rather than being motivated straightforwardly by profit.)
Admittedly, some people do make a living with theology or music or scientific research or whatever. It does happen. But it’s generally unwise. That’s partly because you’ll likely fail statistically, and partly because of the inherent risks and instabilities that come with such careers. For example, if you somehow carve out a job for yourself teaching theology, there are external threats that could inhibit your ability to freely speak the truth in your job (donors who don’t like your doctrines for example). If you’re a scientist, the folks funding your studies might not like your political leanings. Etc. For all these reasons, the “heady” pursuits which are more purely grounded in truth or beauty are best followed either as (a) part-time hobbies, or (b) full-time pursuits for those who are already financially independent and don’t need to derive income from it. I emphasize this to my sons in detail, because the temptation in our household would be to pursue exactly these sorts of “heady” careers. For example, my 11 year old son has already written a novel. I encourage his writing, but not as a career, advising him instead to pursue financial independence. If he first becomes financially independent, then he can freely write whatever he wants.
(Note: When I say “financial independence” above, I refer to the strategy of accumulating enough passive investments to theoretically pay for one’s household living expenses without outside work or employment. E.g., if a family lives frugally on $30K/year, then such a household requires savings of around $750K total in order to live purely off the investments, assuming a 4% yield on the investments.)
And oh yeah, student loans. Don’t even get me started on the student loans which are usually necessary to fund the “heady” college-based careers. Apprenticing in a practical trade at age 16 has many advantages, not least of which is being PAID to learn, and surprisingly well too.
Lastly, in world of increasing automation and AI, and insane college tuition rates, the blue collar trades are the most financially wise careers for young men to pursue.
With good budgeting, a young man on the path I’ve described above should theoretically be able to get married basically whenever he wants to. Even as early as age 18 he should have enough income to support a wife (i.e. in the middle of his apprenticeship). There may be other reasons for a particular man to get married later than that, but lack of finances shouldn’t be a relevant obstacle.
Here is my tentative list of trades I will be encouraging my sons to choose from:
-Electrician
-Plumber
-Carpenter
-Construction Manager
-HVAC Technician
-Car Mechanic
-Excavator
That is only a tentative list, and will probably be expanded slightly later. Making a list of trades ahead of time like this is valuable because I want to give my sons at least a little practice and exposure in each trade before age 16 (as mentioned above, so they can make a more informed decision regarding which trade to choose). In my opinion a good trade needs to be:
(a) something you can start at age 16;
(b) something you get paid decently well to do, both during and especially after your training;
(c) something that’s not easy for AI to replace; and
(d) ideally the trade should lend itself to flexible self-employment and independence, as opposed to wage slavery and dependence on an employer.
By those standards, “Welder” does not make the list for example, because it’s not well paid enough. More specialized versions like “Underwater Welder” get paid plenty, but those are too niche and not as friendly to flexible self-employment.
Hypothetically, if one of my sons doesn’t want to pursue one of these trades and is instead passionate about something else, obviously he should pursue that other thing instead. This is not a plan detailing which careers my sons may or may not pursue. That would be crazy. (Those of you who know me know that I’m in no danger of becoming an excessively controlling or authoritarian father.) Rather, this is a strategy for how to advise, orient, and tangibly prepare them. My sons will be men, and as such they will need to carve out their own paths in the world. I’m only trying to help them by preparing several excellent “standard” paths. When Baby Boomers were young men, it was wise to advise them “Go to college and get a degree” as a standard path, or even just “Join the military”. That’s no longer wise advice for young men. This blogpost is about how to replace that advice with something that fits today’s context. In our family the standard path will be one of the trades above, and the burden will be on a young man to carve out a different non-standard path if he chooses. The goal is not to restrict options narrowly, but to multiply them.
Some concrete applications: “full time farmer” is not on my list above. I know it’s possible to make great money being a farmer, like Joel Salatin selling high quality food directly to consumers, but it requires a lot more creativity and initiative. It’s not standard and simple the way being a plumber is. If one of my sons wants to be a farmer like Joel Salatin, then great! All power to him! But he’ll need to be super passionate about pursuing farming, in a way that he wouldn’t need to be super passionate about just chugging along working as a normal plumber. And we would expect him to start pursuing that farming passion in a serious way at age 16. Alternatively, perhaps one of my sons will want to pursue a career that requires higher education, like a nuclear engineer. If so, then that’s fantastic and respectable, and he should start working towards that degree at age 16 and take out the student loans necessary to do so. In both examples, my son will need to take the initiative to deliberately identify and choose that alternative path, in the same sort of way a young Baby Boomer would need to deliberately tell his parents, “I don’t want to get a college degree or join the military; I want to pursue [X] instead.”
Hopefully it’s obvious that all of this is oriented towards generalities, and none of it should be construed as morally absolute.