Right now, I am simultaneously reading Susan Patton’s Marry Smart and Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, These two women are on opposite sides of the coin when it comes to the discussion of which comes first: career or love.
Patton believes that women should spend 75% of their time in college and immediate post-graduate years attending to their personal goal of securing a mate and 25% of the time on their career.
She believes that women’s options for finding a suitable mate dry up the more years they are out of college. She believes that college is one of the few places that women will be around suitable, equally educated, and intellectually compatible men.
Related: Here are 7 amazing reasons I will never regret going to college!
Sandberg, on the other hand, who actually married shortly after college and then quickly divorced, urges women – “don’t leave before you leave.” Sandberg doesn’t want women to turn down amazing career opportunities now because of their distant family planning goals.
In addition to this advice, Sandberg doles out all types of useful and poignant advice for emerging female leaders. My favorite is that the number one criteria for picking a job is not growth, but fast growth.
As I read both books as this black, married, feminist, and entrepreneurial woman, I was surprised that I agreed with Patton, to a degree, on her general premise of investing time into finding love early as much as I did Sandberg’s call to action of increasing women’s presence in leadership capacities in the workplace.
But here’s why. I think many black girls grow up with the notion that getting involved with boys derails their academic and professional achievement instead of enhancing it.
Black girls in high school and in college are taught to keep their noses in them books and them legs closed.
Period. Looking for the MRS degrees comes after you have secured your BA, MA or PhD.
But I don’t think that it is relationships, per se, that leave black women on the losing side of romantic relationships while in college. I think unwanted pregnancies can do that. But we often make that synonymous in this discussion of “stay away from dem boys” when, in actuality, they can be mutually exclusive.
So, I would change the advice from “stay away from dem boys” to “don’t get pregnant” as a rule of thumb. In fact, the implication that skill alone will lead to your career advancement, and that black men in college are enemies rather than allies, needs to be revisited because it is extremely misguided.
No matter where you go, relationships serve as the foundation for fulfillment and advancement in both career and personal lives. Having been in the workforce and read numerous studies on promotion and job advancement, I had to learn this the hard way.
After skill and ability are accounted for, it is the quality of your relationships, your interpersonal skills, and how well you work with different types of people that make you prime pickings for the stretch assignments, not how you bang out a spreadsheet or report or the design of your PowerPoint.
Similarly, while in college, instead of being labeled as predators, black men can serve support networks, provide a varied perspective, give emotional support all while being groomed to be lovers, companions, and husbands.
What say you Black and Married with Kids? Should we encourage our daughters and sons to be in relationships during college?
My answer is yes! Because at what point would you expect them to learn how to build a healthy relationship with the opposite sex? And then it can also breed fear of the opposite sex, as you have stated. Unfortunately, I know too many women who are afraid to put themselves out there and date because they have been told to focus on an education first.
And it does not take a degree to build a healthy lasting relationship.