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  • ABCs and Ph.D.s: The Sequential Strategy

    By Dana Campbell November 5, 2008 1:37 am

    When I was in graduate school I could count on one hand (maybe even one finger) the number of graduate students I knew who had children. In my cohort (which I have blogged about before), not one of the ten of us had children before we finished, and this was true of the cohorts before and after mine in my department. I was the first in my cohort to have a baby; born 6 months after I defended my thesis.

    I’m thinking about this again now because I’ve been working a few hours a week for a graduate program in biology at the University of Maryland and the graduate student who works with me in the office there is six months pregnant. She will have her baby about a month after finishing her prelims. Many people say this is a great strategy for balancing a family and academia: get a family started while you are flexible as a graduate student. Unlike my graduate experience, when no one was following this strategy, there are a number of students here who have done just that.

    While I see her calculating exactly how to fit the baby into her academic life, I am torn for her. I remember the freedom of being a graduate student, the time I spent sitting around in “the fish lab” with a diverse bunch of other grad students on Saturday nights. I remember collaborating with my lab mates on experiments that we jubilantly finished at 4am, and then celebrating by going out for breakfast. I remember bonding with three fellow graduate students who came with me as field assistants to Ecuador (especially after we survived the effects of a nasty food-born virus - three days wracked with fever, lying immobile in small huts in the sticky heat of the Amazon rainforest).

    Graduate school provided huge enjoyment for me. I traveled; I thought hard; I worked all hours; I interacted intensely with amazing people; I took advantage of resources available to me. While I understand that the idea of planning one’s family for the benefit of their career is important - often crucial for continuing the traditional academic route - for me the unfettered enjoyment of immersing myself in graduate school was a formative experience that I am glad I did not dilute with a family. I realize that not everyone enjoys graduate school to the same degree. Part of my enjoyment was having a crew of peers who shared my interests, and who were living the same way I was. I’m not sure why students didn’t have children in my program the way they do in other departments, but I’m interested in exploring this, and the effect it might have on graduate and career experiences.

    While I loved it, I was ready to finish graduate student life when it ended. I might have enjoyed continuing in a traditional academic career, but I didn’t want to dilute my next intense adventure – parenthood. Again, I put my all into this venture, and wouldn’t have it any other way. For me, the sequential strategy worked well. Now, as my children get older I have more time to weave family and career together, and I am finding academic opportunities I would never have considered if I had planned to mesh these important aspects of my life right from the beginning.

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Comments on ABCs and Ph.D.s: The Sequential Strategy

  • Don't be torn
  • Posted by Jean on November 5, 2008 at 7:55am EST

  • Don't be torn - There is nothing in my life that has touched me as deeply, that I have enjoyed as much, that has made me a better person, a better scholar, as my children. I had my first child just after finishing my master's thesis and raised him while I was getting my PhD - in my last year as a graduate student I had my second child. It has not been easy - I wouldn't reccommend it. I don't, and I didn't, tell most people I had a child - mostly because of the stigma ("you cannot be a serious graduate student, willing to put in the long hours of research etc. AND a parent"), but with a VERY supportive husband, we have "made it" this far - and I did enjoy graduate school, and I did bond with fellow graduate students. . . and my life is better because I made the choices that were right for me and my family. AND, I DID make the choice. My children were not "accidents."

  • Life
  • Posted by Theresa , student on November 5, 2008 at 8:55am EST

  • I appreciate your comments about the conflict between graduate school and family life. It is one I struggle with everyday. However, that is life. I am a first year PhD student,and I am raising my three year old son while my husband is working in another state.
    Is it easy? - no
    Would I recommend someone start a family while in school? - not if possible
    Would I do it again? - absolutely
    I did not plan all of the events of my life, but my life is what it is. I probably should have finished school before having a family, but because I have a family, I value my education even more. I know what I have to do in the short time I have to do it. Sometimes I write papers with my son draped across my lap. Sometimes my son comes with me to the office. Sometimes we have dinner with my classmates. Sometimes I have to put off my readings so I can play Thomas the Tank Engine.
    By continuing my education, I am teaching my son an important lesson: life is not always simple, but we have to make the best of every situation. I hope when he is old enough to make his own decisions, he will see the decisions my husband and I made to finish school as an example of never giving up!
    I have the best life!

  • This post has completely turned me off to this site
  • Posted by Karista on November 10, 2008 at 10:46am EST

  • I thought that this site was supposed to be for women who are trying to balance an academic life and family, not one where the "traditional" minded profess that their experience was the ideal and quite frankly, the correct one. I would expect a post like this to come from a male, not another female who supposedly "gets" what women in academia go through to balance work and family life. So perhaps Dana is smarter than the rest of us - she did it the "right" way unlike her graduate student and many others. This post is so elitist I could barely get through it. I am glad I did though. At least now I know what I am up against and why many professors in my department hold the attitudes they do about the "right" sorts of Ph.D. students. This post reminds me why female Ph.D. students with a child or children will continue to get passed up for research and publishing opportunities with female faculty like Dana. I'm glad that Dana was privileged enough to travel to third world countries (who knows what she professed to the third world women there) and now has the privilege to "weave family and career together" as her children grow older. But for the rest of us - life isn't such a binary (and thank goodness for that).

  • Question is now answered
  • Posted by Melinda on November 11, 2008 at 12:50pm EST

  • Well, at least now my question is answered about how ridiculous it truly is to have a child while a Ph.D. student and how others in the academy will perceive me if I do.

  • Oddly Hostile
  • Posted by Megan on November 12, 2008 at 9:10am EST

  • I don't see anything in this column that ought to provoke such hostile comments. The writer is reflecting on how her choices benefited her and on how other choices will force female Ph.D.s to give up those benefits. It doesn't mean the current crop of Ph.D.s blending parenthood and grad school are wrong; they are just getting a different set of benefits and losses.

    For me, the take home message is that there is no good or right time to have a child and be an academic. It is always a trade off. For me the frustrating element is that what women trade off is so often different from what men trade off.

    I'm in a tenure track job and watch some of my male colleagues do fascinating things that involve travel and time away from campus that I cannot do--because I had my kids post-Ph.D. and post-tenure. When the Dean congratulates Colleague X "for his work in Kenya--which began just 2 weeks after the birth of his third child," I want to bash someone. Maybe the Dean for not realizing that a female colleague will never be honored for leaving a 2 week old infant. Maybe Colleague X for leaving his spouse home with two small children and a 2 week old infant. But I bite my tongue and clap. His project is fantastic. I just regret that the differences in expectations for male and female parents mean I won't be able to engage in such projects--for a long, long, time. Maybe if I'd had my kids 15 years younger, I could be traveling to Kenya with Colleague X or planning my own fantastic project. But, I didn't--I enjoyed the time in grad school with my peers.

    No matter when you have kids, you lose some professional time and some professional advantages. I think reflecting on this reality is not only reasonable but important for younger academics who are trying to figure out when the "right" time might be. There isn't one. All you can hope for is finding a time that seems best for you.

  • In response to "Oddly Hostile"
  • Posted by Melinda on November 14, 2008 at 11:25am EST

  • "Dana" is not "reflecting" on how her "choices" benefited her. Dana is making biased judgments about others who are not doing what she did. She uses the same old rhetoric that mothers have been using for years to put others mothers in their places for making decisions that are unlike her own. she writes about how she, unlike Ph.D. students WITH children, had "freedom" and how she was able to immerse herself into her program and was able to "bond" with classmates and cohort. She writes about how glad she is that she did not choose to "dilute" her life with children. It's really no different than the same judgments that stay-at-home mothers make towards working mothers and vice versa.

    But it is the last sentence of her post that really says it all: "Now, as my children get older I have more time to weave family and career together, and I am finding academic opportunities I would never have considered if I had planned to mesh these important aspects of my life right from the beginning."

    It speaks for itself what she REALLY thinks about those who mix families w/ Ph.D. programs.

    Certain disciplines in academia could have a field day analyzing the rhetoric and tone in this post.

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