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PhD programs and babies...
Hey Ladies! I'm a newlywed and new to the nest...this is my first post:)
I will be starting grad school in August of 2011 (a PhD program in molecular biology/genetics), and as stoked as DH and I are about this awesome program and opportunity, we might want to start a family sooner than the 5-6 years that it takes to graduate. I know that we are young (23 and 26), but we are looking forward to having babies, and would like to start before I'm 30...FWIW, we won't be going into debt over my education, and DH and I will both have a steady income a far as we can tell.
I am hoping to hear from any ladies out there who have been through a science-y PhD program, and your thoughts or experiences regarding whether or not it would be possible to have kids before you finished your degree. Is this something that you would advise against? Many thanks for all of your opinions!
Re: PhD programs and babies...
I don't have my PhD, but my H is working on his. We're 28 and we'll have our second anniversary this summer. We're committed to not having children during his PhD work, because when we have them, we both want to be able to invest fully in them, and in that time in our lives.
You've committed to getting your PhD, which is a grueling task in the best of circumstances. Throwing into that being pregnant (morning sickness, exhaustion, and heaven forbid any complications that leave you on bed rest long term), having a child (there's not maternity leave in graduate school), and raising that child (sleepless nights for months on end, potty training, daycare, doctor's appointments, the list goes on and on) only makes a difficult challenge even harder. All of these things are all things that are going to take away from your ability to focus on your education, which ultimately will take away from your future.
You and your H are newlyweds, with a secure income. Enjoy the next few years. Travel. Build your savings account. Focus on your future. Don't get caught up in wanting it all and wanting it RIGHT NOW. There is a lot of time for everything; right now, get your education and build your future. Both of those things will make you better prepared for the challenges that come with taking the next step.
Coming out of lurkdom...
I'm completing my PhD this summer (fingers crossed!). Although my degree will be in the humanities, I think I can offer you some perspective.
For me personally, this degree has been all consuming and DH and I have elected to wait for some of the reasons PP stated: the degree really takes up a lot of my energy and we aren't in a rush, even though I'm pushing 30.
That said, I have several friends in the department with children that were born while their mothers were in the PhD process and I have had a lot of conversations with them about how they do it. So while I'm no expert, here's what I've learned:
-Some programs actually do have maternity leave policies. They may not be great, but they're there. My school offers 7 weeks of paid leave with the guarantee of someone running your lab (if you are in the sciences). See what your school offers.
-will you be able to see a "regular" doctor or have to use student health services?
-During coursework, taking time off to have a baby wouldn't work out too well, but you may have more flexibility during the comps process and dissertating. Will you be teaching? Working in a lab?
-Consider timing: my friends managed to time things so their babies came during the summer. This takes a lot of planning and an even greater amount of luck. Are you willing to take a break from TTC if the timing isn't right?
-All these mothers send their children to daycare. Whether you have kids or not, you have to treat a PhD program like a job and devote regular hours to it every day. So while you have flexibility in that you're not working 9-5 (which can be great for doctors' appointments and such), you still need to recognize that you won't get work done with a baby needing your attention.
-You need to be exceptionally disciplined. Your first year of grad school is not a time to measure your discipline. Expect it to wane after a while. Give it a couple of years and then see if you are still disciplined enough to write while having a child. Some are. I'm not.
-talk to the people in your individual program. Do any have kids? Even if not, find out all you can about the actual experience in each year so that you have a real sense of what the best timing would be.
Mostly, I'd say you'll figure it out as you go along. Be prepared for the process to not be what you'd expected-- you'll have to adjust your timetable along the way. I certainly don't think it's impossible, but it might take an even greater amount of planning than others might have to think about. Good luck!
I don't have a PhD nor kids. In fact I may not be qualified to post here at all except that I have worked with grad students in the lab who were pregnant. The timing is crucial with a science degree like that because for 9 months (and longer while you are TTC; first trimester is highest risk for mutations) there are a lot of lab activities you won't be able to do. Chemicals, radiation, etc. It seems like it would be best to wait towards the end of the program when you are exclusively writing and have done all of the lab work that you need to do for it. I would be extremely worried to be pregnant and even in a chemistry building, let alone at the bench running experiments. Just my $0.02.
On a side note, one of my organic chemistry professors was pregnant while they were building the new chemistry building and they ended up switching the male/female bathrooms in the building for her so that the female one was closer to her office because she had morning sickness so badly and had to use the bathroom a lot.
Wow, thank you so much for your thoughtful advice, ladies. I am fully aware of the time commitments that come with completing a program like this, and I would definitely rather wait to have kids if I have to choose between giving them the attention that they need and being committed to school work. Better to do them one at a time and do them both well (and enjoy both processes.)
That being said, a lot of people have told me that,"There is never going to be a convenient time to have kids" with respect to your career. I know that this is a situation where I need to wait and see how the program plays out. I was thinking that we wouldn't try until after the first three-four years are done (first year is all classes and rotations, years 2-5/6 are thesis research, no teaching). On the other hand, I could just put my head down, push through, try to get out early, and then think about having babies. I guess we'll just have to see.
Many thanks for your advice!
I don't have a PhD but my DH has one. In chemistry.
If this is a top notch prestigeous program, don't count on having time to nurture your marriage much less a child. DH typically worked 6 days a week 10-12 hour days for 5 years. Even if you were to attempt to do both- even with a seamless pregnancy and healthy child- you wouldn't have the band width to do either very well.
You are very young. I would not attempt pregnancy during a rigorous science PhD program; and you have plenty of time in any event. Wait. Most candidates I knew in school worked fifteen hour days routinely; every day, not just m-f. It's a marathon in the best of circumstances; adding a baby to it? omg.
Borrow a baby for the weekend before your next paper is due. The whole weekend; and see how fragmented your time gets with a baby .It's very, very difficult.
i don't know how this translates to a phd in the sciences, but i'm working on mine right now in the humanities. having talked to a lot of people in my own program and similar ones at other schools, it seems **if** you're planning to go into academia after you graduate, the best time to have children is actually while you're still a student. post-course work, during the ABD / dissertation writing years. the workload is still intense, but much less so than it is for new faculty hoping to make tenure.
my school offers 6 weeks maternity leave, and my program is very accepting of parents. it was not always this way here (there used to be a big stigma against having kids while a student), and many other programs i considered are still not very okay with it. i recommend reading up on the school policies to anywhere you apply, and speaking to students within the program about their experiences. i'd take it as a good sign that it's doable if there are students within that program already making it work with children.
I have a PhD in the humanities, and have worked in the Graduate Program office for a chemistry program (and lived with a chem. PhD student at the time). Many of my classmates were married, one or two had children during the program, several others had kids that were in the tween/teen years or beyond and therefore didn't require as much attention. All of them took longer to complete their degrees than did those of us without children. And I can't think of a single student I worked with in the chem program who had kids. I'm not sure I can recall any of them who were even married yet...they spent most days and half of their nights in the lab.
Based on that experience, I'd say that while it's not impossible, it's not something I'd choose to do. At least not until coursework and most of your lab work is done and, perhaps, you're just ABD. At that point you can write on a more flexible schedule and don't have to worry about missing lab time for safety reasons. Even then it'll be a struggle, however. I know that I'd want to give as much attention as possible to both my studies and my child/family, and the best way to do that when you're as young as you are is to get the degree out of the way and then start a family.
Sciences and humanities are two very different animals. Science expects <shudder> results. DH's boss was planning on his grad students' results to win him a Nobel.
Nobody ever birth a two headed baby from reading too much Shakespeare.
I just finished my PhD in the sciences. A few of my colleagues had children while we were in the PhD program, and handled the balance between work and family with varying degrees of success. Some of their success (or lack thereof) seemed to depend on how well they handled stress and multitasking before they had children! You need to be better than most in this area to wind up in a PhD program in the first place (and I'm sure you are), but if you tend to have a spike in anxiety when working under a deadline or pressure... it might be a good sign that trying to combine a doctorate and a baby could cause some problems for you.
One factor that seemed common among those who handled the transition from couple to family well was the degree of support available from their partner. Will your husband be working full-time? Is he willing to pitch in when you have a big exam the next day? Do you have relatives near the area where you will be attending school who are willing to babysit on the occasional weekend or help you keep up during busy times?
So much of the answer to this question will depend on the demands of your specific program, so it might be a good idea to give yourself some time to get used to the program before considering pregnancy. Go through the first semester (or year, or first few years) to see how much free time you have in a given week. It might also be useful to try and time the pregnancy or birth to fall during a specific time (i.e., right after defending your thesis, after submitting a grant) when there is a natural decrease in pressure and demands on your time.
You make a good point that there is never a "right time" to have a baby when the stars align and everything is magically stress-free (wouldn't that be amazing?). Also, the completion of your graduate program does not necessarily equal a better time to have a baby. Most early career scientists work pretty hard to establish themselves, write grants, secure tenure, publish, etc. As a postdoc, I often work more hours than I did as a grad student. There will always be stress, demands on your time, and reasons to wait, but if having a family is a priority for you and your husband then you will make the time!
A friend of mine is working on a PhD in a similar field, and is expecting her first child in May. She's through her classwork, and is currently wrapping up lab work, and will be working on her dissertation pretty much full time after that. She's planning to continue working on that at least a little during her maternity leave.
From what she's said, others in her program have had babies while still in the program, and for the most part it's not too different from having a baby and a full time job. Obviously there are some things (classes, lab work) that can't necessarily be put on hold completely for three months or whatever, but there are ways to work around that, either by holding off on a new phase of research, or taking a semester off from classes, sometimes doing independent study in place of a class.
I'm way late to this but my input:
The only people I know who have had babies during their science PhD had them when they were almost finished, so they were able to write their dissertations in the final months of pregnancy and after giving birth, giving them more freedom to be at home with the new baby. As someone mentioned, if you're going into academia, your final year of grad school is often the best time to have a child unless you can afford to take time off before or after a post-doc, and doing that can affect your ability to find a job.
Two factors to consider are the type of work you'll be doing (will you be exposed to radiation/chemicals/etc - personally, I do a lot of computer work so I could get away with it) and your boss. My program doesn't have a maternity policy, but some advisers are more flexible and will pay you as long as you're writing while at home. Others may require you to take unpaid leave - technically, my program only allows 10 vacation/sick days, but hardly anyone sticks with it. You absolutely have to talk to your PI about whether he's willing to work with you, because even if you can afford the unpaid leave, he can also make life a living hell for you if he doesn't approve (sucks, but it's true). Graduate students are second-class citizens and don't have many of the rights that normal employees have.
Personally, if my husband wasn't also a grad student, I'd be attempting to get pregnant in my fourth year. I know my boss is fairly flexible and would allow me to take paid leave, and my project lends itself easily to working from home. But DH won't be able to support me emotionally or take care of the baby, since I barely see him as it is. Sure, there's no awesomely right time to have a baby, but some times are worse than others. Only you know if you, your lab, your boss, and your DH are amenable to this.