Grad School Politics in Assigning Course Sections

[Eigen]

My wife and I are leaning towards "If we feel like we reach a time where we can have kids before the possibility of birth defects comes too high, we will."

Otherwise, adoption is always a great option- there are a ton of kids out there that need homes, and you can adopt at any age. Or foster. Or, as mentioned, not everyone has to have kids. And in fact, with the issues we have with general overpopulation.....

That said, what I've generally heard is that the end of your PhD is the best time to have kids, assuming you've got an understanding PI and a good relationship with them. You should be stable enough that taking a bit longer to write isn't that big of a deal, and then they're a bit older when you're moving for post-docs and jobs.

[SeriousSillyPutty]

Oh sure; lots of people don't want kids, many adopt, that is all well. And, many individuals wait to have children and everything goes fine. Considering only one's biological clock and ignoring other life factors would indeed be as ridiculous as you (Arcadian) say.

The point I take from this article is more that because we've come to the point where medical technology enables women to put off having their first pregnancy, we as a society embrace the notion that career should be the first concern, and children second. That is the overall tone this thread has taken. We assume there are no negative implications of this. If that is our view as a society , and our cultural systems are set up to only accommodate this order of things, then that limits the options for women (and, as the article suggests, potentially men) who would prefer to have a child during prime child-baring years, while rates of birth defects caused by mother and father's age are minimal.

I would prefer that academia (and the workforce) be more cognizant of both the high-quality people they are losing because they don't accommodate families and the undue strain they put on those who try to "fit" biologically superior timing into their work lives. Just because I don't have to get pregnant to have a fulfilling life doesn't mean I should have to chose between that and a fulfilling career. Yay for pro-family (not just pro children, but pro spouses, aging parents, etc.) department policies).

[lewin]

To add more anecdotal evidence, in my time as a PhD student I've known three women who had their first kids in the last year of PhD and one who did during postdoc. Of those, three have tenure-track jobs and one has a good government research job. A fifth woman had a kid in the first year of a tenure-track job after doing a one-year post doc. So all would have been 30 years old, +/- 2 years.

Now that i think about it, of the female PhD grads I've known, the women who had kids have been more successful than the ones who didn't. They were all pretty awesome.

[wildviolet]

I had my kids when I was 26 and 28. I was married to my college sweetheart, we both had stable and well-paying jobs, and my in-laws lived with us and helped with childcare. Graduate school wasn't even on my radar then--I thought I would be a high school science teacher forever.

Then we separated, and I moved back to the west coast to be with my family. With the support of my mom and dad, I earned my MS in Science Education at the local state university and decided that I wanted to pursue a PhD. It wasn't an easy decision to go back to school as a single mom of two. It's been a tough couple of months, but I love it here, and I think we'll be okay.

Would I love to be childless in grad school? YES! There's no doubt that my childless colleagues can do things that I can't easily do. Am I envious at times? Yes.

My responsibilities as a parent and student are no less or more than others--just different. I wrote my original post when I was still emotional, and I can see how my wording suggested entitlement. While the discussion has become heated at times, I appreciate everyone sharing their viewpoints. This issue is just very visible in my department because of the older student population.

[wildviolet]

To add more anecdotal evidence, in my time as a PhD student I've known three women who had their first kids in the last year of PhD and one who did during postdoc. Of those, three have tenure-track jobs and one has a good government research job. A fifth woman had a kid in the first year of a tenure-track job after doing a one-year post doc. So all would have been 30 years old, +/- 2 years.

Now that i think about it, of the female PhD grads I've known, the women who had kids have been more successful than the ones who didn't. They were all pretty awesome.

Thanks for sharing.