I feel like I am reaching a crossroads in my life and I'm not really sure what to do so I could use some solid advice. Here's my situation:
I'm a 21-year-old girl and I'm graduating with a bachelor's in psychology. I hate psychology and I'm not going to do anything with it. I had been thinking about going to law school but lately, I just don't see the point. I estimated that I would finish law school when I'm 24, because I would take a year off now, and I would work for a few years. This would mean I would start having children around age 26-27. I really don't like this because:
1. I have a boyfriend who I've been dating for over 2 years and we want to get married soon.
2. I don't want to start having kids at an older age.
3. 2-3 years of working wouldn't be enough to pay off the loans I would incur.
4. I would really just love to start my family soon, within the next year, and be a stay-at-home mom and homeschool my children.
The problems with this are:
1. My boyfriend is 22 and he has no career direction. He recently received his bachelor's as well but now he doesn't know what to do. He was thinking about graduate school but that would put him into even more debt and we couldn't get married anytime soon because if we have children, he couldn't afford to support us.
2. I feel like I have been so ingrained by society to think that I need to have a career and make money. I received great grades in undergrad and I know I have the potential to get a high-paying job if I went to graduate school but I would have to sacrifice my dream of having a family.
3. My parents are going to flip out when I tell them that I just want to get married and have a family. They are so set on me achieving so much as far as a career and education.
4. I worry what would happen if my future husband died and I didn't have any education to pay the bills.
Basically, I don't know what to do. He is looking for a job and I told him that maybe he could work for 5 or so years and save money and then if he wanted to go to graduate school, we could live off our savings. In the next year, I would also be working and saving money so that when we get married, we would have some money to start with.
I was thinking that maybe I could get another degree like nursing or midwifery and I could do that part time. But, I don't have any money and those all cost a few thousand.
For those of you who didn't go to graduate school and got married young, how did you do it?
If you are a woman who doesn't have formal training in any career/didn't go to college, how are you doing it? Do you bring in any money by doing something that doesn't require being away from home for long periods of time? Also, do you worry that you did not get an education, in the sense that you don't have the training that jobs would be looking for?
Thank you in advance for any advice and even for reading this far!