We're Too Young for Families

To the editors:

Matthew S. Vogel's "Family: Another Option" (Opinion, Dec. 7) argues that Harvard students are becoming too focused on careers and success to pursue the more traditional option of marriage and family. But what he does not realize is that getting married and having a family is as much a predetermined, programmed lifestyle as a nine-to-five job at a consulting firm. He describes raising children to be the finest, most meaningful way to live, but that description only disguises how typical and uninspired such a lifestyle tends to be.

At Harvard, we are not weighted under the responsibility to be successful and make large salaries; instead we are using this school as an opportunity to do something extraordinary with our lives. To be focused on raising children this early in life is to be stunting one's capacity to take advantage of all the skills and opportunities we have at our disposal. To hear that few students are not presently intent on having a family comes as no surprise to me.

At our age, we should be concerned entirely with making the most of our lives, finding the careers we can enjoy and securing a financial base so that if we do have families in the end, we can live with them comfortably. If Vogel is in such a rush to have kids, perhaps he should step back and realize all that he might be missing. JOSEPH N. JOHNSON