But for young women who marry young and are in a great relationship, I don’t see why college is necessary. They can always go back later should they need to. But homemakers should and can protect their financial lives by having life insurance and their own spousal IRA. So the usual arguments about housewives don’t stand in my opinion:

1) If the husband dies…The answer is term life insurance, about 10 to 20 times his yearly salary. It’s not expensive.

2) Should they separate: she’ll have her spousal IRA, child support and could always go back to school.

Bottom line is women should have the choice to be homemakers or not. I’m a stay at home wife and love it, and will definitely show homemaking skills to my children, but it’s up to them to choose what they want to do with their lives.

I don’t think anyone here is against education for women. I, myself, am fanatical about education and spend so much time on it that my oldest daughter, at five years old, is doing second grade level workbooks in my homeschool. And I have every intention of continuing to give her (and my other children) the most rigorous education possible.

The question is not whether or not women should be educated but whether or not college is the most practical way to educate those women who want to be homemakers. The sad fact is that most traditional colleges/universities are so expensive that students graduate up to their eyeballs in debt. This forces them to work for several years to pay off their loans. For a woman whose deep desire is to marry and be a homemaker, that often means that her main plan is jeopardized for the sake of her back-up plan. Full-time homemaking, and sometimes even marriage and childbearing, must be delayed while loans are paid off.

You ask, “who are you to deprive the world of the good she could accomplish with continuing education?” This question ignores the great deal of good that an intelligent woman who is freed from the shackles of a nine-to-five job can do. If more families would think outside the university box for their daughters’ educations, we could unleash an army of women with the time and financial freedom for tremendous service both in their own homes and in their communities.

You are absolutely right that women the world over are abused and demeaned. That is tragic. However, I think this problem has much more to do with undervaluing women, the family, and God-ordained morality than it does with not universally buying women degrees that cost as much as a small house.

The fact that women in other countries are exploited, to me, means nothing about what choices my daughters should make. I think it would be grossly unfair of me to require a young woman who wants to be a homemaker to financially compromise her dreams by attending an expensive university just to “enforce” her value as some kind of political statement. My husband and I will try to help our daughters make the wisest educational decisions they can depending on their dreams, plans, and gifting.

Also, while it is true that some people grow much closer to God in college, I think that generally speaking colleges are far more blatantly anti-Christian, immoral, and sexually perilous than nearly any other environment. Sure, if it’s too bad, a girl can quit, but quitting is very hard after investing all that time and money, and often the damage has already been done. For example, according to Crisis Connection, one in four women on college campuses is the victim of rape. With statistics like that, I think it is absolutely reasonable for parents to ask if a college hundreds of miles from home is a safe environment for their precious daughters. Indeed, it would seem that parents who don’t question the wisdom of traditional college are undervaluing their daughters far more than those who do.