Having Children in Grad School

[Cass]

I'm a married female MSci student in an entomology program. We've been thinking about having kids and exactly how we're going to make that work. Considering the intensity of my chosen career path and the fact that I'll be the one to carry any biological children (we may adopt, later), timing is important. My wife will be the one to stay home and care for the kids (she's a writer and works almost exclusively from home, so it works out well) but I will still require some amount of recovery and bonding time after giving birth. I've heard from some people that having a baby in graduate school is actually easier, in some ways, than waiting until you're on a tenure track. That makes some sense to me, but I've also heard people say it's insane to even think about it until you're completely through school and in a steady job. The problem is "steady job" is a relative term and I'm not sure how long we'll want to wait considering my wife is 36 now. 

So, what have other people done? What would you do differently, if anything? 

[BiochemMom]

My husband and I have a 2 year old (she'll be 3 next month) and I'm in an MS program, graduating this may, and starting a phd program (hopefully) this August. We're both prior military and waited til we were both out, eight years total, to have our first, so we intentionally planned knowing I was going to grad school. I gave birth in my spring semester, junior year of college. We want three, 5 years apart. That means we'll try to conceive again the year our daughter turns four, after coursework is finished. I'll be overloading on courses to not deal with coursework, pregnancy, and lab work--I know how hard it is from doing it. Then our third, we'll try to conceive during my post doc.

It's a lot of work, and finding the balance is difficult. That's why I'm so glad I did an MS prior to PhD. We have a great system setup for balancing our home and work life. It often means I get three hours of sleep in order to spend the evening with my kid and then write on my thesis after she goes to bed. But it works well. I have a great PI who is very accommodating with my schedule. The whole time I've been in grad school, I would arrive at the lab at 4 am in order to leave by 3pm with no issues (I drive two hours each way so I have to leave by 3 to get home for daycare closing).

In a lot of ways it makes me way more productive. I have a limited amount of time in the lab, and I live so far away I can't just pop in to check on an experiment. It's been a great time management learning experience. I go in with a plan, and I get shit done. I've written on three manuscripts (2 first author), my thesis (just turned in my first draft to defend this April), two oral seminars, 3 poster presentations, and will complete my degree on time.

In a lot of ways, having a kid gives me more motivation--I can't let my degree drag out indefinitely. I need to get back into the workforce asap.

It took about a year to figure out our groove. We have no family around because we stayed where my husband's last duty station was for me to complete through my MS. It sucks and in another life, I'd already be tenure track, but I don't regret my service or moving for my husband. It took six schools to finish my undergrad because of the constant moving, but it was worth it. And at least I have no debt because of my GI Bill.

My biggest piece of advice is in picking your PI. If they want a grunt monkey to do nothing but their own work the whole time, with a minimum hours requirement, it's probably not the best PI for you. If they measure productivity and designing your own experiments, executing, and being self motivated without caring about the clock then it's a much better situation.

Either way, it's hard. There are so many moments of guilt. Guilt when I'm home because I'm not devoting as many hours as the single phd candidate in our lab. Guilt when I'm away because I could be with my kid. Guilt when I skip a day in the lab to go to an event at my daughters preschool. Guilt when I'm in the lab instead of at an event all the other parents are at.

My biggest piece of advice is quickly accepting you won't be the best. I'm a great student but I can't devote my life to it to be the best. I'm a great mom but I can't devote all my time to it to be the best. Time with my husband slips when I have to ramp up lab work. Time in the lab slips when I devote time to my husband and kid. And you know what? It's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. Just don't let one side always be the up side on your scales.

[ProfLorax]

Hi there! I'm not in your field, but I am a PhD student who had a baby seven weeks ago. I'm actually breastfeeding as I type this! My partner and I discussed how to time having a baby, but then we realized something infinitely true: there is no "good" time to have a baby. During school or work, I'll have outside commitments. Instead, we decided to start having kids when we felt emotionally and financially ready. And now, I have a beautiful, strong, happy daughter, and I couldn't be happier. I'm still on maternity leave, so I can't tell you much about actual motherhood/grad school balance. But I can talk about pregnancy and new motherhood as a grad student. 

 

Here's some scattered advice I have for any grad student considering having kids:

• If you can, select an advisor/PI who is supportive. My advisor has three kids of her own and has been absolutely amazing. In fact, when our weekly meetings start up in March, I'll be bringing my daughter along!
• Find out your university's official parental leave policy for grad students and your department's unofficial policy. Have other grad students had kids? Does your department allow or even encourage creative solutions to scheduling issues? For example, my department encouraged me to teach extra in the Fall (when I was pregnant) so I wouldn't have to teach when the baby came. This has radically extended what parental leave the university granted me.
• Don't try to be a hero. Work with your university, PI, and department to take off as much time as possible. Child birth is amazing and wonderful and awful and exhausting-- all at the same time. Your body will need time to recover, and if you choose to breastfeed, that in itself takes weeks (and sometimes months!) to master. 
• Start prioritizing your health and your family now. It's good practice. When I was pregnant, I stopped responding to student emails over the weekend (unless the student really did need a reply right away). I started putting up boundaries early on, so now it feels second nature.
• When the time comes, allow your wife to take over household duties. I finished up my coursework and teaching the week before my due date, and my hubs is the only reason our house is still standing. 
• Invest in baby carriers and a hands-free bumping bra. Both will allow you to multi-task during the early days of infancy.
• Enjoy it. Pregnancy and new parenthood are both so strange, challenging, rewarding, beautiful, and wonderful. Take time every once in a while to really soak the whole experience in! 

[Cass]

Thanks for the advice and for sharing your stories. It's definitely encouraging to know other people have done it successfully and I'll be keeping some of the specifics in mind, for sure (hands-free pumping bra sounds like a great idea). And I think the fact that I'll need to schedule myself pretty tightly could actually be good for me. I work best under pressure, so having a lot of things to get done at once is generally where I thrive. I think my biggest fear right now is not getting enough time to just hang out and chat with my wife. Hopefully we'd be able to get a babysitter every once in a while for dinner or something.

I, very tentatively, brought up the fact that we were thinking of having kids fairly soon with my advisor and told her I wanted to take that into consideration when applying to places for a PhD. She was very supportive, more so than I expected. She seemed to think it was perfectly reasonable to do that and she even started suggesting labs in places where she knew the laws would be on our side, for the most part, and that were nearish to where she knows I have family. She suggested some really good schools, too. Cornell, Rutgers, Johns Hopkins. I feel very encouraged. 

[ilovelab]

One thing you should look into is the grad schools maternity leave time. It varies by school. At the UC's you get 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave and that's it. You are in a unique situation so that's something you should look into. A lot of it is going to depend on your PI. Will they allow you to take longer than the 12 weeks off, will they allow your stipend to continue during the maternity leave period etc. Unless you are direct admitting you can't know that but that's a conversation you should have with your prospective PI during lab rotations. Your situation is better than the  grad students in my department who have had kids. They have to pay for day care as their spouse works as well. The med schools at my UC does not provide any subsidized child care etc. I don't know exactly how your program works but I would consider planning on having your child after you have passed your quals. Being pregnant and having to study for quals sounds like hell. You're going to be rotating in labs the first year and depending on your program you might have your written exam the end of the first year.

[Cass]

The school I'm at now offers 16 weeks, but barring any serious medical issues requiring long recovery periods, I don't imagine I'll be able to handle much more than 12 weeks without work, anyway. I will definitely look into the specifics of the school I end up going to, though. My adviser here has also agreed to look through a list of potential PIs with me and if there are any that she knows definitely would or would not be supportive, she'll let me know. And my wife and I can adjust the timeline depending on how the program is structured. A friend of mine went on to start his PhD last year and had no classes the first semester, it was all just research planning and he did a lot of it from home. If that's the case, earlier is probably better. But if I end up in a program where lab-rotations or anything equally strenuous are part of the first semester, then we can push it off. If worse comes to worse, we can wait until later or we can try putting our names down for adoption, I'm just worried we'd be leaving again before it lead to anything. We'd like to do foster-to-adopt in the future, but not until we know we'll be in a place where we'll have ample time get through that process without interruption. A baby is the most practical option right now and I feel like it's only fair to at least look for a way to make it work. The fact that others have done it successfully is definitely encouraging. And, like you said, I have the unique option of having a spouse who works from home so we won't need to deal with daycare.

[Chubberubber]

I also had a child during the final semester of my M.A, and I did plan ahead so that I would have the lightest courseload possible for that semester. 

I can't add anything new in terms of how to do it technically, but if I were to give you one advice it would be this: You can put off work, you can't put off your child's first smile. Try and find that place inside you that allows you to see raising your child as more than another task on your to-do list. It may sound obvious, but I actually found it very difficult and I feel like only now I'm starting to figure it out. If it means taking extra time off to really be able to bond with your child- do it, even if it would dely graduation for a bit. I had to be seperated from my daughter for a month for reasons beyond my control when she was just a month old, and definitely felt like it took her a good while to get used to me and trust me after I returned..

[Navita]

Just go with the flkow mate! Things will work out for you if you plan ahead! Cheers!

[Navita]

Hats off to all you guys! You are awesome. I was just surfing through forum looking for some interesting blogs on grad schools and found this forum. It’s nice to know how different people live different lice sacrificing stuff for a achieving something great in the long run. It’s awesome