Our generation has benefited from the past. We are fortunate to have more equality in many sectors of society in everything from careers to education. College today is a necessity and a viable option for many students after high school, a privilege that some of our parents did not have. We can go to college in order gain education and skills that will benefit us in the outside world. I was shocked recently to hear one young woman talk about how she was so eager to graduate from WSU and get out of Pullman in order to start being a housewife. When asked about her plans for the future, she said she would not be getting a job because her hypothetical husband would be able to support her. I just couldn’t believe that in the 21st Century some women are still attending college solely to get their Mrs. Degree. However, this seems to be the truth. Women are willing to go to college now, only too happy to give it away for a life of domesticity.

According to an article published in the New York Times, 60 percent of women decrease or stop working altogether once they have children.

The Mrs. Degree was quite the phenomenon in the 1950s when women would attend college to find a husband and then either drop out or continue to work hard for an education that would not be put to use in the professional world. However, when women were only defined by these domestic roles of wife and mother, a strange sort of anxiety and depression began to set in. Betty Friedan wrote of “the problem that has no name” that was common in those mid-century housewives. These women wanted more than the limiting gender roles than came along with the “housewife” job prescription. In order to “fix” this undefinable problem, doctors began prescribing speed to women to try and help them get over the melancholy. Needless to say, this really didn’t solve the problem, it just helped the women get their chores done faster.

Now there is a difference between people who choose to be “stay-at-home” parents and those who simply want to find someone else to support them. “Stay-at-home” parents have goals outside of marriage. Maybe they had a career before they decided to settle down or work out of their homes. Those obtaining their Mrs. Degrees seldom have other goals outside of the home. They are going to college to get a degree in domesticity. Having a spouse and children is noble, but being confined to these roles has caused a sense of emptiness in women in the past. How can some young women today still not have any other desires outside of marriage? How can one justify an at least four-year degree just to be willingly shackled to the vacuum? It seems as though men are also oblivious to this ploy. Our society places value on men “supporting their wife and kids” but rarely ever honors the independent woman making it on her own in this difficult world. It is unfortunate that the Mrs. Degree is not obsolete in our progressive and ever changing society. I would sincerely hope that one day college will truly be about educating academically and socially and marriage will be about true love and independence instead of only a form of survival and status.