You know very well that was a deliberate misconstruction of what she said. You can't provide for a wife and children on a single income of $30k a year. Her statement had nothing at all to do with getting rich and you know that.
30k a year is more than the per capita GDP of the UK, where the cost of living is substantially higher than here. It's far from impossible to live on. Difficult? yes, but not impossible. My statement was really about priorities, like the rest of my post. If your priority is not a high standard of living, this wage is feasible. This is not to say that such a situation is ideal, after all I'm the one who's been attacked for arguing that priests should be paid a living wage, but there is nothing wrong with someone taking a poor paying job if it is what they want to do. Now, if you're someone of the opposite sex looking for a spouse, and you have different priorities, then look elsewhere for a spouse, but there is nothing wrong with what this person has chosen to do; rather it is actually something that should be regarded as commendable.
I don't mind working but realize that it's difficult (if not impossible) to be the primary wage-earner in the family and be the mother. I think what I want, and what most of of my female friends want, is a man who has a good job that would allow us to take some time off when the children are young.
And yet many people do it. This is ultimately about your vision about the ideal way to raise your children, mother stays home and father works, the traditional model, which is not the reality for many, if not most, American households today. There's nothing wrong with this vision, but not everyone will share it, in looking for a spouse look for someone who has similar views on such things. That's not to say that those who maintain different views are wrong, just not compatable.
I said I wanted to find a man with a "good job" not a rich man. A "good job" allows a family to own a home. That provides good health and dental insurance. And there are many pious men out there who go to "good" non-religious jobs every morning. Being a good family man, as a good religous man should be, means that one can't be completely career driven. But one can be a good pious Orthodox Christian and be an accoutant for 9 hours a day.
I don't think you're going to find many 'pious' Orthodox men out there period, whether they have good jobs or not, not in modern America. However, I certainly hope you find the guy you're looking for, and there are probably a few of them out there. Just dont expect everyone to have the same priorities.
Oh please. That's not what I meant and you know it. A job that pays $25K a year is not enough to support a family. Someone with such a job would need to have a spouse who made at least double that to buy a house and feed the kids, etc. So it's a "second-income" job.
I thought it was $30k? Anyway, what I wrote to Veniamin still applies.
I have much more respect for a guy who accepts his role as a provider and goes to work every morning to a job he doesn't love (but still likes) and shows up to liturgy too than for a guy who's scared of the "secular" world and therefore either forfeits having a family or forces his family to live in poverty or forces his wife to support and his children. I'm firmly convinced that the average man is called to be a husband and a father and therefore called to provide for his wife and children. That means he might be have to be <gasp> an accountant or a pharmacist.
And I firmly believe that everyone is more capable of determining their calling than either your or I. And where do you get this notion of being 'scared' of the secular world? I doubt anyone's scared of it, it may just not interest them. Personally it's not so much the secular world, as the corporate world, that I simply cannot stand; the very concept that one area of research is preferable to another area simply because it's more lucrative is absurd and repugnant, and I would not want to work under those conditions. I'd much rather work for say a University or a Government Lab, even if it meant making substantially less. As far as working as an accountant, I'd rather starve; but that's just my personal view of the field. Concerning whether one has a family, their standard of living, and who supports it, that's personal preference. I have a friend who's father stayed home with him and his brother when they were younger because he (an electrical engineer) could work at home and their mother (a doctor) did not want to quit her job as a department head at a local hospital. Personally, I don't particularly want to have a family and I doubt my choice of career would have a substantial impact on this.
It's all very simple for me...my father had a good job so IMHO it's not too much to expect every guy to also have a good job. My dad, like your acquaintance, was a professor. He choose that profession so he'd have time for his family. But he made enough for my parents to own a home and put food on the table. To get vaccinations for the kids and visits to the doctor and the dentist. He didn't make as much as he could have made but he realized that being a grown up man and a husbad and father required some sacrfiices, namely not doing exactly what he wanted to do as a profession.
Great, that's what you're looking for in a man and I hope you find it, but not everyone has the same priorities...which has been the point of all these ramblings of mine.
