It’s Almost as if Capitalism Is … Broken?

I’m a high school English teacher. My wife has always been the primary breadwinner in our family, and we recently moved across the country for her dream job, to a place where teacher salaries are much lower. I accepted a job at a new school that I feel excited about, but I find myself dwelling on how much less money I’m going to make — about $25,000 less than my previous job. Obviously, I didn’t get into teaching for the money, and not feeling the pressure of being the primary earner helps, but I’m wondering what my motivation will be like when it comes to grading papers on nights and weekends. Any advice for dealing with this psychological hurdle? Just buck up and ignore it since there’s nothing I can do about it? — T.K.

If “buck up and ignore it since there’s nothing you can do about it” worked as advice for anything, I and every member of the Advice Columnist Industrial Complex would be out of a job, so let’s skip that approach. We live in a capitalist society, and capitalism shows value through money, so it’s entirely reasonable to be put off by taking a $25,000 pay cut to do the same work. And when that job is teaching — which in the United States means being chronically undervalued — I have to imagine it feels all the worse.

The key to feeling better about it, I think, has two parts. One is remembering that salaries are often totally arbitrary, and in fact have far less to do with your actual value than a million other factors beyond your control. When I went from my second job to my third, I doubled my salary and wound up with significantly less work. Your situation is far less pleasant, but equally nonsensical, and just bearing that in mind will be good for morale. (Especially in a public-sector job in which salaries are set by a government, so you know you’re not alone in getting screwed.)

Part two is feeling great about the fact that you made this sacrifice to support your wife. Dream jobs don’t come up that often, and that you enthusiastically moved across the country so she could take hers is no small thing — especially since it goes against inane gender norms that still hold a frankly shocking amount of power over a frankly shocking number of straight couples. More money is, of course, never unwelcome, but it sounds like you and your wife have enough not to stress about it constantly, which means you can focus on molding a bunch of new minds at your exciting new gig and adjusting to your new city with your wildly impressive wife.

Your Kid Is Not a Kid

My 24-year-old daughter works for a small nonprofit. She has recently started to see a therapist one day a week, so she arrives an hour later than normal and stays an extra hour that day. She puts her arrival time into the organization’s calendar, which is the protocol if you have a doctor’s appointment, but since this is a weekly appointment, she wasn’t sure if she needs to explain where she is to the executive director. My initial response is that her therapy appointments are none of the director’s business, but now I wonder if I am just being old-fashioned. What do you recommend for her? — Amherst, Mass.

I’d recommend that she draw sharper boundaries with her mom. Asking family members for advice is entirely reasonable, but your outsourcing the question crosses the line into helicopter parenting. A 24-year-old is more than capable of navigating her own office politics.

It sounds as though her boss has already agreed to her schedule change one day a week, so I don’t see a need for any further discussion about why. If arriving an hour late isn’t causing any problems, she can just keep filling out the calendar. She absolutely shouldn’t feel any shame for going to therapy — everyone should try it! — but she doesn’t need to go out of her way to make sure everyone knows, either.