Catherine Pakaluk is an associate professor of social research and economic thought at the Catholic University of America. Courtesy | Catherine Pakaluk

Catherine Pakaluk earned her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and now serves as an associate professor of social research and economic thought at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She and her husband currently reside in Hyattsville, Maryland with their eight children.

What advice do you have for young people who want families?

My number one advice is “don’t wait.” If you’ve found someone you want to marry, start a family immediately. It’s become really common to view marriage as one step and having kids as a second step, discerned apart from the marriage decision. So, a couple gets married after college, say, but waits until after a master’s degree or a special job to welcome a first child. But once you subject the timing of your family to the “right time” then the qualitative requirements can get bigger and messier. When we have this much financial savings. This much security. This much room in our house. When I finish this one more opportunity. Search the internet briefly, and you will find thousands of advice columns about the right time to start a family. 

What’s wrong with waiting?

The problem with this approach is that you don’t have all the information you need to make the decisions. You don’t know how much you’re going to love that child and how much — looking back — you’ll wish you started sooner. I heard this from so many people in my interviews. When you finally clear away the obstacles and have your first child, two things happen. First, you realize nothing really makes you ready, and that’s OK. Having your baby is what makes you ready. Second, you discover how wonderful, meaningful, and delightful it is to be a mother or a father. Looking back, you’ll often think, if I had known it was this good, I would have started sooner. I would have cleared the obstacles. 

This matters because a very important predictor of the size of your family is when you start. Because your fertility falls so dramatically in your 30s. If you start later in your 20s, by the time you know how much you enjoy mothering (or fathering), it might be too late to fill out your family the way you want to. Women have so many regrets about not starting sooner, so my number one advice is to go against the grain and start as soon as possible. Don’t listen to the voices who say you’re being unwise. Your friends will come to regret their single-mindedness and see your “foolishness” as wisdom.

Is it possible for a woman to have a career and a large family? 

For sure. In my book, I introduce women with large families of all types—some with careers (doctor, professor), others with part-time jobs, and others who are staying home at the time when I interview them. What stood out to me was that the women I met had planned for their families. Practically, they picked jobs and careers that could be fitted around their kids, rather than what usually happens — fitting your kids around your career.   

This is how it works, I think. We all know that career and family will be in conflict at least sometimes. You can’t do everything at the same time. When two things rub up against each other, something has to give. You have to choose where you’re willing to put something on the back burner for a bit. If your family is the most important thing to you, then for a while at some point in life, you’re going to let your career suffer a setback or a time out. That’s OK — it won’t be forever. But this approach — putting family first in a conflict — leads to happier, more well-adjusted children, a peaceful heart, and fulfillment in the long run. In the long run, you have a family, and you develop your professional contributions, just not in the same time frame as others. 

In my case, just to spell it out, I took double the normal time to finish my Ph.D., double the normal time to get tenure, and I work professionally a lot more in my 40s than I did in my 30s (my last baby was born when I was 40). It doesn’t track with my husband’s career time frame, and that’s OK. I wouldn’t trade any of my kids for writing my first book earlier in life.  

How can young women resist buying into the “girl boss” narrative when society praises careerists? 

Sometimes I think the answer to this question is: grace, grace, and more grace. Yes, there are some helpful tips for not measuring yourself by a worldly standard. Build a network of real role models — women you’d like to be like someday. Learn what makes them wonderful, notice things they do and don’t do. How they dress and don’t dress. How they prioritize their time, and what they don’t waste time on, etc., but ultimately, I think prayer and grace are essential parts of resisting the alluring messages of the world. We know that in all things, there is a struggle between good and evil. Why not here, too? Like the devil tempting Jesus in the desert, the world will offer us so many images of success that compete with a Christian life. We are going to be vulnerable to these temptations without prayer and God’s grace.    

How should young people hoping to get married and start families prepare financially?

Save, save, and save. Commit to living comfortably below your means and saving the extra, even if it seems small. You might be tempted to think: it’s too far to go, we can’t save enough. Not so. The habit of saving compounds in our lives, and it’s a wonderful discipline that helps us grow up. Because we live in a culture of “easy credit,” which says borrow for the things you want today and pay it back later. This means you can have whatever you want when you want it. 

But the consequence is living a life burdened by increasing debts and interest payments. What looked like freedom to consume ends up limiting your freedom. It commits your future earnings to payments when you don’t know what you’ll want to be free to do later. Having kids is the long game — God’s recommended savings. Beginning to save early, high school ideally, or college, puts you in a position to see everything with a view to the long term and not those immediate gratifications. So, the act of saving young will make starting your family easier, both because you’ll be in a stronger financial position but also because you practice a virtue that makes it easier to do hard things in the short term for the sake of long-term gain. This is a deeply biblical principle. 

How and where should single people look for a partner with similar values?

Well, in a nutshell, church. Seriously — we know that the practice of faith provides the values and spiritual resources to do hard things, and Judeo-Christian communities value children. Normally, single people are going to benefit by looking for friends and partners in religious communities. For a lot of young people this will mean a college that is religious, or at least friendly to serious religious communities. But of course, I also recommend being open about looking. Your family, friends of your family, may have recommendations. That’s not a weird thing, it’s been done for centuries. Finally, pray without ceasing. We know that God wants to bless us with marriage and family. The words of scripture declare it. But he also wants us to ask for our needs. He wants us to go to him as we would to a good father. He can do all things. Pray daily to find a godly, holy spouse. Then, try to stay open to the still, small voices. And trust that God will provide. He is always faithful.