This is a question someone asked on Twitter. I posted it on my FB page, and the answers were interesting.
1. What did your father's father do for a living?
2. What did your father do?
3. What did your mother's mother do?
4. What did your mother do?
5. What do you do?
My answers:
1. Sold used cars
2. Chemical engineer
3. Worked in a furniture factory
4. School librarian
5. Professor
What are your answers?
13 comments:
1. Owned/managed rental property
2. Computer repair for a bank
3. Ran a clothing factory with husband
4. Teacher/stay at home mom
5. Professor
very interesting!
1. No idea. The family does have diamond merchants, but I don't know if he was one. I just know he was a bad person.
2. Salesman/unemployed/small business owner/truck driver/etc.
3. Flight nurse/school nurse
4. Professor
5. Professor
It's very cool that your mother was a professor too! I think that's the first time I've seen that.
1. Ran a small company and regretted not being a lawyer.
2. Professor.
3. Elementary school teacher.
4 professor
5. Professor.
But at least the profs are 3 very different fields.
A lot of the women economics phds I know from my generation and earlier have at least one parent who was a professor. A friend of mine thought about how we'd go about studying that to see if it's really a thing and if it has changed over time but never did collect data.
Cool questions!
1. tobacco farmer
2. electrical engineer
3. nurse
4. nurse
5. professor
N&M: That's interesting! Here in the English department, I don't know anyone whose parents were professors. We're a regional university, though. I wonder if it's different up the hill at the flagship U.
1. Farmer
2. Firefighter, then industrial safety manager
3. Farm wife, then factory jobs (after my grandpa died)
4. PA
5. In process (currently professoring..)
@delegar-- I suspect that humanities phds are the gateway for women (my mom is a humanities phd). It takes a second-gen PhD to go into an even more male-dominated field. At least that was our hypothesis.
1. Basically a businessman, but at one point owned a factory that made the kisslocks on ladies' handbags.
2. Doctor
3. Research psychologist
4. Psychologist and artist
5. math prof
1. Fisherman
2. Accountant, then CFO of a company
3. Stay-at-home mom
4. Stay-at-home mom
5. English professor
This survey has led me to reflect that I'm the first generation of woman on either side of my family not to be a stay-at-home mom. And yet, oddly, it never even occurred to me to do that. i always assumed that I'd work.
I remember thinking wistfully as a kid how lovely it would be to just marry someone and let them support me, but that was when I was ten and filled with anxiety about the future. (I was sure I would never be able to make a living -- who would hire ME? What would I even DO?)
Post a Comment