[jerf]

I agree completely. If my kid grows up to be a garbageman, it will not bother me, if that's what he wants to do. (I pick that as a stereotypical low status job.)

I mean, as much as I love my programming job, if you don't want your job to be your life, something like a garbageman has some advantages. The job doesn't come home with you, it's outdoors, physical, you can make a living. None of this particularly appeals to me (other than the "make a living" part which I'm fine with :) ), but it takes all kinds. (Given that my kid is under two years old, the only consideration I'd have is the relatively high risk of automation, but that's not something we can easily predict now.)

And I do agree with your counterargument on the topic of "women in computer science", for what it's worth. I think it's actually both issues in play, which makes it more complicated.

[jimbokun]

"If my kid grows up to be a garbageman, it will not bother me, if that's what he wants to do."

What if it means that he can't afford health insurance, save for retirement, or make a down payment on a house?

[jerf]

"That which can't continue, won't." Like I said, my kid is not even two years old, and predicting the world he'll be entering the labor market in is effectively impossible right now, because there's a crapload of trends that simply Can. Not. Continue. And therefore won't, the only question being in what manner they will not continue.

For instance, I'm not sweating trying to put aside vast quantities of money for college education. Why am I doing this horrible thing? Well, tuition has been going up by about twice the rate of inflation for a long time now (http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml ), and projecting that out, it's another 70% increase in real tuition prices over what I already consider the completely unsustainable tuition rates of today. I don't know what will happen, but today's traditional "four-year college you live at" is not going to be the only choice, or possible even the dominant choice, by then.

Similarly, health care insurance simply can not continue increasing at the rate it is currently increasing at for another 20 years. It's physically impossible. Who knows what will happen instead?

Housing prices are also very difficult to predict once it really settles in that housing is not a good investment.

It's a choice he'll make with eyes wide open if I can help it, but it's his choice, not mine, and frankly neither of us sitting here in 2010 have more than a passing clue what sort of world he'd be making that choice in. Care to bet that by 2028 the US won't have some kind of universal health care, for instance?

[coolnewtoy]

a garbageman, especially if he works for the city, will have a better chance at all that than an artist of most varieties with an ivy league PhD