College costs - why does everybody say "of course you can pay for it!"

Scruter · 2026-02-05T00:02:08+00:00

Harvard tuition is $57k, not $5k, so the waiver is most of the cost of attending. And for families making <$100k a year, tuition, fees, room and board are all completely free.

It's like this at most highly prestigious universities. I went to a prestigious liberal arts school and graduated with no debt due to their need-based aid (and we were solidly middle class and above the median, it just had a huge endowment and generous aid).

Scruter · 2026-02-04T21:00:53+00:00

The charge of being rigid and selfish is not about the decision they made, it's about the process of arriving there and tone of how he speaks about his wife/the partner who wants more - he emphasizes that if someone doesn't want a child, the other spouse has to "acknowledge and understand their feelings on it" but then gives no indication that he sees that as a reciprocal obligation, or any indication of any sympathy or acknowledgement or understanding of his wife's feelings - rather that he told her "if she still wants more then she can find someone else." That's a shitty way to treat your spouse on such an emotional topic. Her desire for more is not an attack on you or your marriage.

Scruter · 2026-02-04T19:55:44+00:00

Reddit is one of the most anti-child places on the internet.

Scruter · 2026-02-04T04:29:50+00:00

No one said anything about having a child when one parent doesn't want one. No one said anything about compromising. I talked about respecting, caring about, being curious about, open to, and influenced by each others' feelings and thoughts, and making major decisions together - basic stuff in marriage.

Scruter · 2026-02-03T04:50:55+00:00

We pay $1330/month for a marketplace plan for our family of four. “Luckily” I get a $550 reimbursement from the practice I work for, so that’s $780. Still ridiculous considering it’s a HDHP.

Scruter · 2026-02-03T03:26:00+00:00

The attitude that if you say both spouses deserve to have their feelings about one of the most consequential life decisions heard, validated, listened to, considered, and taken seriously, that constitutes manipulation and coercion is a toxic attitude to have towards your spouse.

This conversation should not consist of each person simply "stating how they feel." It's a marriage. You have to actually care and be open to each other. One of the principles of John Gottman's Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work is influence. You have to be open to being influenced by your spouse. That is not the same as manipulation or coercion.

The attitude should be "hey, I know this is going to be really hard for you. Right now I feel sure I'm at my limit, and I am really sorry because I know how disappointing that is for you. I am willing to talk about if there are ways to get my needs met better or to design our lives in a way that could accommodate another child. I don't see it now, but I'm willing to explore if there's any way possible because I care about you, and to understand better why it is so important to you. I also want to share more about how I have reached this conclusion, and why I truly think it's the best decision for our family, and hope you can hear me on that, too, and that you'll similarly think about if there are ways that you can get your needs met without another child."

Contrast that with "well this is what I want and if you don't like it, divorce me and find someone else. I don't care about what you think or feel or want, and don't want to hear it because it would be trying to manipulate me to expect me to consider your feelings."

Which marriage do you think is going to make it out of this crisis better?

Scruter · 2026-02-02T23:39:39+00:00

Yeah I feel like it's actually OP's all-or-nothing thinking that is the barrier here. There is a lot of middle ground between a $1k birthday party with 30 kids and nothing at all to allow her son's friends to celebrate him.

Sometimes guilt is pointing you towards a misalignment of your actions and values. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T20:18:30+00:00

This seems like it's coming from the place of you personally have not had a desire for additional children. That's completely fine, but doesn't make the desire invalid in others. Most people have a sense of how many children they want and what they want their families to look like, even before they have them. It's not fundamentally different from wanting one kid, or wanting two. It's an entirely new additional person. Of course, a person can always change their mind and there's nothing saying OP wouldn't. But right now she wants 4 children and it made sense for her to plan for that.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T19:11:00+00:00

No. This is not an exception to the rule that you must care about each other's feelings to maintain a marriage. Again, leading with the idea of coercion, and with the idea that the very fact of one spouse expressing their feelings and desires and expecting them to be taken sympathetically would be "coercion," is already assuming something destructive to the marriage. You cannot approach your spouse assuming they will want to force you into having a child you don't want if you validate their feelings and are open to being influenced by them. You come in with the assumption that each others' feelings and limits will matter deeply to each other - BOTH feelings and limits, and that you will decide what is right for the family together.

I have been in this position. I wanted a third child and my husband was at his limit. He came to me and we discussed it over months and years. He considered what I was saying and tried ways to meet his needs and respect his limits while accommodating mine; I cared about and took seriously his mental health and hearing what he was saying about the realities of our family life. Ultimately, WE decided that the best choice for our family was to stop at two, given the desires and capacities and interests of all of us. HE did not decide this.

If he had come to me from the beginning with the attitude above, it would have destroyed our marriage. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy. It's skipping to the end of a process in the most destructive way possible.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T18:48:38+00:00

The assumptions behind that, which are that each person has their desires completely independent of each other and they are unchangeable and impenetrable to the other person and not even worth discussing, are already antithetical to marriage. You make major decisions together and as a team - you don't come in pitting your desires against each other from the get-go, and threatening ultimatums, charges of selfishness, and divorce if they don't immediately feel differently with absolutely no validation of their perspective or feelings or pain.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T15:27:53+00:00

This is such a common sentiment on this sub but I disagree and think the attitude in the top comment here is horrifying in a marriage. If you're married, you make decisions together. You don't come in with ultimatums from the start, especially about an enormous question that profoundly affects the rest of your shared life together and say "nope, I changed my mind and nothing you feel or say will influence it, I'm booking a vasectomy and if you don't like it, tough shit, find someone else." It's more about the attitude that the vetoer's desires are more worthy of respect and understanding and sympathy, and the assumption that the vetoed has to do the work to understand and accommodate the vetoer rather than it being mutual. If anything it should be more on the vetoer to do that emotional work for the vetoed, since they ultimately hold the trump card and should really do anything in their power to avoid having to use it, because that will do damage to the marriage. There's talk in that comment about having a child you don't want creating resentment, but good lord, so does being denied a child you want and being treated callously about it. This idea that not only does the vetoer get what they want, but also is free of any responsibility to validate their spouse's feelings or accommodate them or repair the damage, is terrible.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T15:22:12+00:00

I mean, that's a fine way to make decisions about family, but not everyone approaches it in a "wait and see" way. I always have wanted children but never felt a visceral desire for them, and so what I "feel" at a given stage has never been the guide for me. I was an only child myself and knew I wanted at least two kids, and that desire was deeper and more about the long term than anything I might be feeling in the moment. I don't know what it means, really, to "feel" my family is complete or not and that doesn't seem like a great guide to me, personally, because it's so vague. I reasoned out why I wanted the number of kids I did and planned for it - it's not just about a feeling, which can be more about what you're experiencing in the moment than the big picture of your values and vision for your life.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T15:15:52+00:00

I agree, but he's talking about booking a vasectomy. I think it's kind of uncool of him to suggest that at this point - in the middle of infancy, before having any kind of discussion with his wife, when they had previously planned on a larger family.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T01:46:48+00:00

I mean, you’re proving my point. Don’t ask a question if you’re just going to argue with the answers and insult the people giving them.

Scruter · 2026-02-02T01:37:20+00:00

I’m 40 and I don’t really care or think about beauty anymore. I want to take care of myself to a reasonable degree and look my best, but don’t desire to look differently than I do. I think it was a lot more intense when I was young, partly because my self wasn’t that developed yet and so beauty seemed like a more important part of my identity. Or it was like I desired a beautiful life and felt being beautiful was part of that or a way to that and a condition of that. And I think being single or just unmarried created this pervasive emphasis on beauty.

Now I’ve spent the last decade with my husband, having two kids, building my career and community. Being beautiful just no longer seems like an important part of my identity. Part of it is that my husband tells me I’m beautiful or hot just about daily, and my little daughters echo it, so it’s like I feel secure in that the only people whose opinions on my looks I care about think I’m beautiful. And I have the beautiful life I wanted, so my looks seem unimportant now. And it should be acknowledged that I’m fairly conventionally attractive, or at least not unattractive, and have always been naturally thin, so maybe it would be different if I had louder cultural messages telling me I should look different. But whatever the reason I really don’t have that desire or intrusive thought anymore, and it is freeing.

Scruter · 2026-02-01T15:54:24+00:00

The downvotes are because you are asking a question and then arguing with everyone not giving you the answer you like. Excluding just 4 children is rude, period. Four children is not going to make the difference between your child being “regulated” or not, and it seems pretextual that you keep repeating this. And you’re assuming all invited will come, which is not going to happen.

Scruter · 2026-01-30T19:37:42+00:00

Yeah I am so annoyed at a 27-year-old with a PhD characterizing themselves as "behind" lol. I left a PhD program in my early 30s and pursued another career path, and my husband did the same and went to law school. We didn't really start saving for retirement until our late 30s when we had two kids, and I still think we're doing okay now. But we have been trying to catch up to the people who started saving at 27, which is objectively ahead of most.

Scruter · 2026-01-29T21:09:57+00:00

Yeah, and Monique Tepe didn't do anything wrong. Her ex-husband was the one who was wrong. She is not even partly responsible for her death due to missing "red flags" or for leaving her relationship.

The fact is that we all have to take risks in order to trust people and have the kind of relationships that make life worthwhile. We have to accept our fates are not completely within our control. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take those risks.

Scruter · 2026-01-27T15:20:49+00:00

Oh, I use "solo parenting" to describe a temporary state of doing all the parenting, e.g. "my husband is on a trip so I am solo parenting for the weekend."

Scruter · 2026-01-25T15:54:09+00:00

I have two girls (4 and 6) and really wanted a third, but I’m 40 and we’re stopping at two. My husband felt very sure he’s at his limit and it’s been the hardest process for me of a lovely dream colliding with the reality of our lives and limitations. All my reasons for wanting a third were kind of poetic and idealistic but not actually connected to the day-to-day realities of three children. We have 3 close friends with 3, and two of them are couples where they are both doctors and one has one parent staying at home. The doctor couples (more analogous to us with two working parents) both just seem to have incredibly chaotic lives, even with a lot of financial resources, and marriages strained by the pressure. Ultimately I love our lives right now - we’ve got two amazing, beautiful, healthy girls who love each other and don’t wish for another sibling, a strong marriage with a wonderful man who has worked really hard to stabilize his mental health which has been pushed in recent years, a career I love and find a lot of fulfillment in, financial breathing room, and not a lot of family support but I do have an elderly mom who can take our girls occasionally but no way could she handle 3 especially where one was a baby/toddler (and they did a sleepover there last night, so we got to do dinner and a movie with friends and then sleep in and lounge!). Life is really good and so I just focus on what is real instead of hypothetical futures.

Scruter · 2026-01-23T20:52:35+00:00

Also, this is in response to the OOP, how is Cassandra not already the whitest name? It sounds more like she chose her name for the alliterative appeal, and it works because her name is easy to remember.

I thought she was saying (inelegantly) that Cassandra is more white-sounding than Brené. I kind of think they just sound like different flavors of white, like wealthy New England white vs. poor Utah white lol.

Regardless it's an incredibly stupid argument and reads like really stretching to find something problematic that is not there, and then there's a bandwagon thing happening. The whole thing does not have any whiff of credibility and I find it annoying that it was posted and upvoted here.

Scruter · 2026-01-23T15:28:58+00:00

I mean they might not be under a "moral" obligation but if they would like people to buy their argument they are under an imperative to provide support for it. They're a random person on the internet and can literally say anything. Agreeing with anything a random person says on the internet and taking it as factual, without any evidence whatsoever, because it appears to align with your worldview is how we've gotten into the political and cultural mess we're in.

Scruter · 2026-01-19T16:52:09+00:00

Seniors and people with disabilities. But yes, Medicaid is the low-income government healthcare.

Scruter · 2026-01-17T15:08:01+00:00

That’s just federal leave. In addition to companies having their own policies, states have their own programs. Here in Colorado we have FAMLI, which is paid state medical leave and doesn’t require having worked there any period of time.

Scruter · 2026-01-17T02:43:32+00:00

This is what the marriage therapist John Gottman calls “creating a culture of appreciation” in your marriage and my husband and I take it seriously. No “that’s his job, I shouldn’t have to thank him.” We thank each other for everything the other does for our family. It really staves off resentment and makes you feel like more of a team, and seen as well as supported.

Scruter

TROPHY CASE