It started when someone asked Dr. B. for advice about starting a Ph.D. program with three kids in tow. Since then, the question has been bouncing around the academic blogosphere, with posts you should read at Academom and Geeky Mom. Although this is absolutely the worst time in the semester for me to fire on all cyliders with this one, regular readers know that I’ve shared my own experiences in this area, so I can’t stay completely out of it.
A brief recap of the current conversation:
Dr. B. notes the many ways graduate programs set things up that are easier for the childless than the child-encumbered, from class schedules to salaries, and opines:
It depends in part on what you want the PhD for, and what kind of program you’re going into. If your goal is to get the damn degree and then get a job at a local CC, you can probably dispense with a lot of the conference-going and networking, and just focus on keeping up with the coursework and pushing out a dissertation. Ditto if you’re getting a PhD in a field where you’re going to move out of academia and into private employment–agribusiness, say, or education, or environmental management or somesuch. But yeah, three school age kids? That sounds tough. How supportive is your husband, and how much money do you have to pay for childcare, pizza, and housekeeping? What’s your MS in, and can you get a job with it that’ll let you use your degree, build up some background, maybe skip the PhD requirement altogether? How old are you, and can you realistically wait, not until the baby’s in school, but until the oldest two are in high school, at least, if not college? Because, though I hate to say this, academia is not the easiest field for women with kids, especially in the plural; and graduate school, especially when you’re still doing coursework, is probably about as bad as it gets. You might get the degree, but in all honesty it’ll probably end up being seen a vanity degree: you’ll have worked your ass off to finish, but while you were focusing on your work, you’ll have been sidelined in the minds of your department as someone who isn’t going to go beyond grad school and will somehow be reabsorbed into the non-academic world with a nice diploma to hang on the wall of your home office.
(Bold emphasis added)
I should add here, so you know something about my personal biases, that my mom went back to school when I (the oldest of four children) was 11. It’s probably what kept her from killing us. As well, it helped her to move into a career with fulfilling work, but the fact that I and my brothers are still alive is also cool.
Academom responds to Dr. B.:
I am of the mind that if you want to get a PhD, do it. I won’t lie: the shit is HARD. And my life is especially crazy: I’m trying to dissertate, teaching what I will call full time (5-5 load), AND putting my husband through his undergrad work. I don’t do much else. I have quit, at the smart prompting of my advisors, all the community service I did for the first 4 years of my PhD work (that included being a Girl Scout leader and doing board of directors work for a local preschool). I quit all the free lance writing I so love(d) to do (mostly maintaining and designing web stuff for local small businesses). I’ve nearly quit all my hobbies, including things like writing poetry (which I sorely miss) and knitting. My family eats a lot of processed food because I don’t have time or money to make decent dinners; my kids eat school lunch (that we get at reduced price).
But I *love* what I’m doing. Teaching is tough work but I can’t imagine me doing anything else, and I mean that. It is worth it to me–all the sacrifices that I’m making right now. …
[I]f we moms continue to ACT AS THOUGH we are marginalized, if we expect such treatment, I daresay we will get it. If you expect to be not taken seriously, you run the risk of falling into that predetermined role by acting like someone who doesn’t deserve to be.
I know this sounds a bit new-age-ish, kind of like “create your reality by pretending it exists already.” But for me it has been true, because there have been moments in my work here where I didn’t respect my own work because I had produced it at 4 in the morning on 3 hours of sleep–only once the devil baby went to sleep. It wasn’t until I started to RESPECT my work that I was able to give it primacy among my priorities so that I wasn’t working at 4 in the morning any more, I was scheduling myself to write during the day when the devil was with a saint, my sitter.
And Geeky Mom, currently disserting like gangbusters, chimes in:
I never even considered my position as a mother as an issue. I thought of myself as a graduate student. I might have done things slightly differently than my single colleagues. For example, I always began working on big assignments early. I knew that daycare, illnesses, and other unforseen child issues might sidetrack me. But I didn’t discuss this way of working with anyone. I typically came into my little grad office, worked from 9-5 and went home. And yes, there was often more work to do when I got home, which does get old. I never felt marginalized. I was offered work as a mentor and in the writing center. I won awards. Perhaps this was because I wasn’t the only parent in the program or because the program isn’t highly ranked. But I always felt that the program was supportive of my work as a grad student.
I started grad school with a 2 year old. I had my second child after I completed my masters. I restarted work on the dissertation after both kids were in school. And yes it’s easier to handle, but I also have a full-time job, which I think makes it much harder. I have to work around the edges of the regular work day. With young children and reliable childcare, at least you can work during semi-normal hours and carve out some time for yourself and your family. …
The other, semi-related issue I was thinking of is the way we push people to work in the *best* program with the *best* people. Such a program might be good for someone who wants to go on to a prestigious position at a good school. And although I do think there are programs whose existence might be questioned, I also think there are perfectly decent jobs for people from *lesser* programs–community colleges, satellite schools, high schools. And some people want those jobs; they’re not just settling for them. Just as you can get a good B.A. education from a school without a reputation if you put your mind to it, I think you can get a good Ph.D. education from such a school too. And I know all the caveats about the academic hierarchy and how people look at the school and all that. And I think that sucks and we should resist it and let a person’s work speak for them instead of the degree. We all know that a Yale degree doesn’t necessarily mean that person has learned anythng. All it means is he gets to run our country.
Top-of-my head responses, which y’all are free to run with in the comments:
- Parenting can make you crazy if you don’t have adequate support systems, whether or not you’re in school at the time. If you have kids, find good support from your partner, or extended family, or friends, or a community group, or someone.
- Graduate school can be a soul-crushing experience, even if you are single, childless, and have sufficient funds.
- Paradoxically, in many instances it seems that combining parenting and being in school can moderate some of the most stressful features of each. (But working out a reasonable support system is still key!)
- Babies are sometimes easily entertained. For example, they’ll enjoy a reading of your most recent dissertation chapter about as much as a reading of Winnie the Pooh. (Still, it’s worth lining up someone to get the kids out of the house for a few hours at a stretch on a regular basis in order that you might write more dissertation chapters to read to the babies.)
- Kids in school require almost as much attention as babies, although it’s a different kind of attention (e.g., helping with homework, driving to sports or other activities, instilling the values that you hope will keep them from killing their siblings or classmates, etc.). As far as I can tell, there’s no reliable “perfect stage” for your kids to reach that will make going to school enormously easier for you.
- If professors in graduate programs have low expectations of students who are mothers, there are two ways to deal with that: you can get through school before you have kids (or when your kids are so old that you can pretend they aren’t there in the background), or you can get in there and perform so well that the professors have to admit that they underestimated you. I would hate to think that our best solution to antiquated assumptions about what mommies can do is to go along with those assumptions.
- Ditto on profs with low expectations of older students. Kick ass and outlive them.
- Similarly, it’s probably time to explain to some profs that not everyone entering a top-flight grad program is hoping to end up as a professor in the Ivy League. If you have a clear plan, don’t be afraid to explain to the nice people advising you how it differs from the plan they assume you have.
Curiously, I see nary a peep about daddies contemplating graduate programs, although I know full well they exist, and that some of them are bearing the main (or full) brunt of childcare duties while in school. I worry that their absence from this discussion will be read as proof that the fathers in graduate school all have wives to take care of the family stuff.
(Not that I wouldn’t like a wife to take care of at least some of the family stuff. Indeed, my better half and I are willing to economize by sharing a wife if we can find one.)
Well I am one of those daddies who did it one, washed out, and is thinking of doing it again. We had our first child while I was doing a Ph.D. and my wife was working on her masters. It was really fun to play pass the baby on campus between classes and things went well for the most part. However, my advisor and economics were not my side. Not to say that she sabotaged me or anything overt. You could just see things change when I told her that my wife was pregnant. No “Congratulations!” or anything like that but rather a thinly veiled discussion on priorities. To be fair she did not drop me from the grant or anything like that but I was marked as “not sufficiently dedicated to the academic lifestyle”.
My wife and I were supporting ourselves on two grad student salaries and that cannot cover a small family for long. I then took a half-time position working for a large company in my field instead of working in the department to make ends meet. That was both good and bad, it fed us but it also meant I was not getting authorship on grant related papers.
Another problem was my advisor’s perception that my wife was the dominant academic in our relationship, really the biggest difference was that I could make more money and she taught while I did research in our assistantships. I still remember the condescending way my advisor made the comment “your wife usually gets he way, huh?” You would think that the “mentor for women in the sciences” position might have tempered her attitude a bit. I saw our situation as two dedicated students making there way as best they could, 50-50 split and all that. My advisor was more of the mind that I was too whipped.
This culminated when we moved and I thought I would finish my dissertation remotely, others before me had done the same. However, I remember her words to this day that I should disabuse myself of that notion, she would let me go but would not support me in any way.
I still marvel at the capriciousness of it all in the end. I had a couple of different professors that I could have chosen as my advisor when I started, and if I had chosen differently I would most definitely be a Dr. Ukko. Alas, grad students were property in my department and you could not generally move from one advisor to another. This was explained to me basically that students are only here for a couple of years while professors are there forever.
Wow this is getting too long, maybe I should get mee to a shrink instead of posting this stuff here. Long story short now that I am a professor’s husband I think I might just go back to another school and try again. But I wonder what my first aborted attempt and a 6 year publishing gap while in industry will have done to my prospects..
Off to put the kids down to bed, forgive the lack of editing.
Great overview of the discussion.
I think you’re right that grad school for anyone can be soul crushing.
It’s a pretty inhumane and sexist system. I hope it’s gotten and getting better for women, but things sure aren’t changing fast!
FYI – you only need a master’s degree to teach in a community college. There’s no point in getting a PhD unless you really have research in mind as a goal.
The last bit is what I always tell people when they claim there is no bias against female parents: You (almost) never hear young men saying “I don’t know if I can have children and still get tenure.” And while there are men (like Ukko) who bear much childcare responsibility, every single young man in my large biology grad program who has kids- also has a stay-at-home wife. Of course any parent with childcare responsibilities is getting shafted by the assumption that their ‘wife’ should take care of it.
“…don’t be afraid to explain to the nice people advising you how it differs from the plan they assume you have.” Oh, I wish. Alas, my old white guy advisor does not respond well to this (condescension, vindictive pettiness, etc.)
“Paradoxically, in many instances it seems that combining parenting and being in school can moderate some of the most stressful features of each.”
Yes, but be prepared to drop every other thing out of your life.
“Kids in school require almost as much attention as babies…”
As much time, maybe, but less work. The most demanding time, for our kids, was ages about 9 months to 2 years: mobile but with no sense at all; needing constant attention to make sure they don’t kill themselves; needing the most reassurance and repetition, especially at bedtime.