The Baby Boomer era is past. What you describe of your father's experience no longer really exists. If that's the only person you know, then your impressions of

The Baby Boomer era is past. What you describe of your father's experience no longer really exists. If that's the only person you know, then your impressions of the career possibilities of a PhD are seriously out of date. In your father's era, many blue collar workers could also "start a family, purchase property, and start building personal wealth" with their jobs, including straight out of high school. For that matter, the programmers of the 1960s and 1970s also had little problem getting a solid job. Nowadays with a PhD in chemistry you often end up doing a postdoc or two for several years. As two data points, https://sankirnam.wordpress.com/category/chemistry-jobs-2/ https://sankirnam.wordpress.com/category/chemistry-jobs-2/ : > I didn’t do a postdoc because I wanted to get an industry job, but now it appears that a postdoc is necessary – and this is information that I only found out after graduating. That in turn points to http://justlikecooking.blogspot.com/2016/05/postdoc-required-check-job-ads.html http://justlikecooking.blogspot.com/2016/05/postdoc-required... , which points out job ads for industry which require post-doc experience. An organic chemist now likely will be in the early 30s before being able to do the things your father did immediately after graduating. And without having to deal with issues like http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7568-279a http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj... or http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj6924-766a http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj... . Yes, postdocs often have roommates: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=postdoc+roommate&t=ffsb&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=postdoc+roommate&t=ffsb&ia=web . You end with "Is this not somewhat like college". Absolutely, I agree. My point is that what you describe is much more like the college experience than it is the PhD experience. Or like a journeyman, who also, at least traditionally, does not 'put down roots'.