I had two babies this past year, nine months apart. We named the first baby "Betty," after my husband's grandmother. The name I gave to my second baby is quite a bit longer and has more punctuation. Baby No. 2 is my dissertation.
Fellow graduate students often ask me whether I would recommend starting a family while still in graduate school. Already overworked and underpaid, my compatriots seem incredulous when I tell them that it was, in fact, the perfect time, that dissertation writing and pregnancy are harmonious—and even analogous—experiences.
After the initial fun of conception (of the baby and the research idea) is over, and the test results (of the home-pregnancy kit and comps/the proposal defense) come back positive, the first trimester (of pregnancy and writing) is the worst. Like many women, I experienced unrelenting nausea and fatigue starting at around six weeks and lasting a little under two months. I found myself performing bizarre rituals—like eating Fudgsicles for breakfast—just to make it through the day. Likewise, I found the earliest stages of drafting Chapter 1 of my dissertation to be the worst: nausea inducing, exhausting, and helped only by yet another series of bizarre rituals. Choosing the right coffee mug (for my woefully undercaffeinated hot tea) was crucial to a productive morning.
When you're pregnant, at first you don't feel pregnant. You just feel sick. From the depths of the nausea and fatigue you wonder if your due date will ever arrive and if there will really be a baby there at the end of it. Same goes for the dissertation when you're sitting there, a blank Word document fading to black as your computer times out and goes to sleep. And even though you know plenty of people have done it before—people who are your friends and who assure you that you're going to be fine—you can't believe that what you're going through now will ever be a baby. Or a dissertation.
I started a pregnancy journal. At first I mainly wrote down what I ate. When the green haze of nausea bogged me down and I could barely think about my dissertation topic, I could at least write down that I'd eaten a Fudgsicle. My word count went up. Soon, I realized, I could write down that I had read three articles and taken notes on my chapter.
The illusion of progress inspired real progress, and the desire to record an impressive word count was often all the motivation I needed to push through a case of writer's block. The pregnancy journal began to serve a dual purpose as a dissertation journal, and soon I was typing away on my chapter as well. I went from writing about Fudgsicles to documenting my fears. What was I afraid of? Not finishing on time? Never finishing? Being a good scholar but a bad mother? Being a bad mother but a good scholar? Could I be good at both?
Having heard horror stories of women whose careers had derailed on the "mommy track," I was determined to turn in a chapter before I announced my maternity news to my dissertation committee. When I met with my co-chairs, they offered heartfelt congratulations, but I know that they wondered, as I did, if I would actually finish. My waistline was growing faster than the stack of pages on my desk.
The second trimester of pregnancy is, by all accounts, the best. The nausea goes away for most women, you're filled with energy, your skin glows, and an adorable belly pokes out, showing the world that you're pregnant and not, as evidence might have suggested, just retaining water. It's also likely now that the pregnancy is going to carry to term, and people feel a little more confident telling friends and strangers the good news.
I had a similar boost of confidence with my diss. The first chapter painfully behind me, I was now a fully-fledged ABD, and, full of energy, I cranked out the next two chapters in quick succession.
Everyone knows an ABD who has drifted away. Dissertation due dates can be entirely too flexible. If you are a perfectionist in love with your topic, a chapter is never truly finished, and, if it is, you can't start the next one until you read one more book, apply for a fellowship to visit that one crucial archive, or grade that Sisyphean stack of student papers.
The baby's due date, however, was firm. Sometime on or around May 28, 2009, the baby was coming. I couldn't apply for an extension, and whether I'd finished the reading or not, I was about to face the ultimate comprehensive exam.
Having a firm due date on my pregnancy helped me to work steadily on my dissertation, to push through writer's block when a nonpregnant graduate student might turn to piles of reading or, worse, go play endless rounds of bar trivia until inspiration returned. I didn't have time to wait to be inspired or to chase down every lead. Instead, I just sat down every day and wrote the thing. Dissertation writing was as much a part of our baby preparation as putting together the crib and choosing a name.
Despite the physical toll of pregnancy, despite giving up fellowships and prestigious postdocs in faraway places that my singleton friends were able to pursue, and—this was the hardest part—despite partaking in neither the stimulating effects of caffeine nor the analgesic effects of alcohol, I worked relentlessly. Having a responsibility greater than the dissertation put things in perspective. The dissertation was just one part of my life. It wasn't my whole life. I think that if I didn't have that perspective, I'd still be troubling over Chapter 1.
If writing the dissertation is like carrying a baby (and in this extended metaphor, the slightly embarrassing committee meetings are those biweekly visits with the OB in which he speculates how many inches some part of your anatomy has grown since he saw you last), then the defense is labor and delivery.
You worry about it. You overprepare. Everyone you know who's been there before has a horror story to tell and nothing can prevent them from sharing that tale of woe. And then the day comes and nothing goes as planned, but it's over before you've even fully realized that it's begun. And suddenly, you're a doctor of philosophy—or a mother—and you're excited and happy and exhausted and a little bit afraid that someone's made a terrible mistake because you just aren't ready yet.
What your mentors don't tell you is that the defense is not the culmination of some big project. It's the beginning of an even bigger project, one that is lifelong. You look at those hundreds of pages and you know that now the real work begins: You've got to publish some bits of that work as articles, you've got to get a job, you've got to revise the whole thing and publish it as a book. Somewhere in between all of that, you have to teach, go to meetings, and advise undergraduates. Oh, and you have to get that life you've been putting off for five, six, seven, or more years.
It's an even bigger shock when you behold a tiny baby in your arms. The pregnancy book ends with the chapter on labor and delivery, but you've got to take this baby home, feed her, change her, comfort her when she cries, and care for her when she's sick. It might not happen the first night, or even the second, but soon after you bring that baby home, and you look at her sleeping (or, more likely, not sleeping), and you're a little goofy from painkillers and lack of sleep, and parts of you that you didn't even know existed are sore—that's when you realize that this project is forever. You are a mother, and the hardest work is yet to come.
In the end, I didn't finish the entire dissertation before the baby came. I gave myself six weeks off after her birth, during which time I didn't even think about thinking about my work, and I considered it an especially productive day if I managed to take a shower.
But as the baby settled into a routine, I turned back to the project. And I found, once again, that being a mother inspires productivity. Any moment spent away from the baby was a moment I was not going to waste, and in six months, during which time I also taught two new courses and went on the job market, I finished two more chapters, an introduction, a conclusion, and revisions.
With the job market in shambles, I'm glad I didn't wait to be "settled" to start a family. I know that the feasibility of starting a family in graduate school depends greatly on the details of your situation, and I was fortunate. I had good student health insurance, a devoted partner, a supportive committee, and a network of fellow graduate-student parents.
After the long labor that brought Betty into the world I couldn't imagine ever wanting to put myself through that ordeal ever again. And when I uploaded my dissertation I had a similar feeling of utter exhaustion. But now I find myself tossing around ideas for the next book—and wondering if maybe Betty would like to have a little brother.
Comments
1. jhough1 - March 03, 2010 at 08:05 am
There is another important factor that ambitious women need to take into account. My daughter (a seismologist) had her first child just after prelims and her second when beginning her post-doc. She is now 49. Her first child has just graduated from law school and is working. Her second child is graduating from college this spring. My daughter has an extremely successful career, including books, many scholarly articles, and travel around the world. She will head a research team in Haiti for three weeks starting this weekend. She doesn't have to worry about neglecting children or rejecting opportunities, and hasn't for a number of years.
If women don't have children in grad school, they really have to wait until after tenure. The result is that at a time when their careers should be nearing their height, my daughter's colleagues often have children who range in age from their pre-teens into their early teens. Either they neglect the children at an time when it can blow up in their face, or they find real restrictions on what they can do in their career. Many choose the second option. Of course, there are different kinds of career, and women must choose what they want. But graduate students should be looking ahead to what they want to do in their forties when they think about what they are doing in their early and mid twenties.
2. drj50 - March 03, 2010 at 09:06 am
Thanks for a delightful and encouraging essay. I supported my wife through a similar experience (though it took a bit longer), so I have some understanding of what you have accomplished. Well done!
3. birgitta1415 - March 03, 2010 at 12:40 pm
I have to disagree with jhough1 that if women don't have children in graduate school "they really have to wait until after tenure." This may well once have been true, and it may remain true in some fields and at some kinds of institutions. However, it is not a universal truth, and I think it's damaging for young female scholars to hear it repeated so frequently.
I have spent my entire career in public R1 institutions, from grad school through my current position as a full professor. My husband and I were financially and emotionally not ready for children during our 20s when we were in grad school. I earned my Ph.D. at age 27. I had my first child at age 31 while on the tenure track. I didn't stop the tenure clock, and I got tenure (in my humanities field, where publishing a book is the key to teunre), with no problem. I had my second child just before I was promoted to full professor, and that promotion too was no problem.
I am not a superwoman, nor are the many friends and colleagues I know who have followed the same path. The same strategies of self-discipline and organization that made it work well for the article's author to have a baby while writing a dissertation made it possible for me to have a baby while turning my dissertation into my first book and working as an assistant professor.
So, women, I'm not saying don't have a baby in grad school if that's what works for you an your partner. I'm just saying that it's not true that you either must do it in grad school or wait until you have tenure.
4. mycostofliving - March 03, 2010 at 01:04 pm
Thank you for this. I have a toddler and am in graduate school, and I truly believe that I am more motivated and more focused because of my son at home. Whereas I would obsess over tiny details for many hours before I became a mother, now I just have to put my foot down and move on. If the details are crucial, I take the time, but I've realized that most of the time, they're not. I just had too much time to obsess before. My time at work is only time to be productive now, and I've noticed that my efficiency has increased exponentially. Now if only everyone else surrounding me would believe this and not just think that I would prefer to be home with my toddler (which I wouldn't, although it sure is nice to go home to him and my supportive spouse at the end of the day), I'd be all set.
5. mylittlegirls - March 03, 2010 at 05:06 pm
I'm glad to see an article like this! I had two daughters during graduate school (one before qualifying exams, one before prelims/dissertation), and while it can be hard, it can be also wonderful if your and your spouse/partner are committed to it. We were both pursuing doctorates (math and physics), and child care was a team effort--rarely did we use outside help since we didn't have the finances for it. We did live in a relatively low-cost-of-living area, but child care is still expensive. You really do learn to prioritize your time and become very efficient with your research time/class time/teaching time. We loved the flexibility of grad school and the time we each got to spend with our daughters on a regular basis. Getting used to full-time positions has been challenging, but also rewarding in its own way. My initial reaction was "Wow, 8 hours a day all devoted to work! What in the world am I going to do with all this time?"
While we loved having our children in grad school, it's definitely not for everyone. You do sacrafice a lot of your personal "fun" time. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all timeline for having kids. You need to decide what's best for you, which could be completely different from everyone else. And that's okay. It's just nice to hear from other grad school moms and know I'm not the only crazy one to think kids in grad school was great!
6. 22256297 - March 03, 2010 at 05:10 pm
I had my first child before defending my master thesis and my second child before defending my dissertation.
I took time off from graduate school while I stayed home and nursed, and found it to be most motivational to me. Incredibly, it didn't take me any longer than my peers (whom didn't birth children in grad school)as when I returned from my maternity leaves, I was so ready to get back to rewrite after rewrite after rewrite.
My only real challenge came from one of my dis. committee members who felt certain that I couldn't be a mother and a scientist.
I'll let my pub and grant records speak for themselves.
7. supertatie - March 04, 2010 at 10:14 am
I enjoyed the tone of this piece, and the author's sense of doing things at the pace that worked for her. How few women do that!
When I was in college and law school (early to mid-eighties) a very wise woman who was from the original feminist generation (the one just before mine, in other words) and who was also very accomplished gave me some advice that I have never forgotten: "People say you can't have it all," she said. "That's not true. You just can't have it all AT THE SAME TIME."
She continued, "You're going to be a doctor/lawyer/fill in the blank for the rest of your life, but your children will only be little once. TAKE THE LONG VIEW."
"Take the long view." I have clung to that mantra my entire professional life, and it has served me well. I am an attorney and a professor, and I have made numerous professional sacrifices for the sake of the two babies I had at age 42 and 44. I selected a smaller city with no commute. I opted for a town close to family, for frequent interaction with aunts and uncles and cousins. I gave up professional options that would have offered much higher pay, but which required travel, or longer hours.
Why?
Because I take the long view. I see myself as an attorney and a professor in my 60s and 70s and 80s, and there will be time for all of that. My wise friend's advice gave me a different perspective on accomplishment. No longer did I think I had to do everything by the time I was 30. Or 40! (I submit that it is our culture's obsession with youth and youthful beauty that makes women think at some deep, dark subconscious level that receiving accolades when you are 72 just won't be as cool because you won't look as good.)
I have given this advice to all the women I know, and watched the lights go on, and their breathing relax as they realized that they had to please no one but themselves. I've known women who stepped off partnership (or tenure) track to raise children, with the knowledge that they could return later. My own sister, in fact, with a B.A., MBA, and JD has been a stay at home mom to six children since 1994, and is now returning to the work force as her oldest moves into upper high school and her youngest enters first grade.
Will it be easy? Of course not. (Is trying to get tenure while raising children, or make partner while raising children "easy"? I don't think so.) But the women I know who have made these choices know that the skills it takes to run a household and raise children successfully are marketable, if described properly: organizational skills being just one of them. Scratch below the surface of any argument AGAINST doing so, and you'll find it comes down to, "But what will X think?" "X" being friends, colleagues, former fellow students, prospective employers, other women, you name it. Rarely does "But what feels best to ME?" dominate the internal debate.
No one can tell anyone which balance will make them happiest. But I have known a lot of women who struggle to raise children and accomplish everything they can professionally at the same time, and few of them seem happy or fulfilled to me. They seem manic and frazzled, and their children neglected and overscheduled.
Women pay too much attention to what the world, or "other people" say, and forget - or never learn - how to trust their own instincts. They ignore what they hearts and powerful emotions tell them, and make themselves do things which don't feel right and don't fit.
It is a powerful irony - and a sad one - that women's ability to enter the work force was not accompanied by a vision of ourselves as professionals for the entirety of our adult lives. Instead, we fling ourselves violently into motherhood and career at the same time, tell ourselves we can do everything well at the same time, and forget about the productive, useful and happy years of professional accomplishment that we can have after our children are older.
No wonder record numbers of us are on antidepressents, anti-anxiety medications, suffering from autoimmune disorders (where the body literally attacks itself) and succumbing to heart disease in numbers appraching that of men.
This isn't progress, and it isn't inevitable. Take the long view.
8. tuxthepenguin - March 04, 2010 at 10:16 am
As a tenured professor at a research university, let me point out what is IMO problematic about this discussion. The higher priority should be the family, not the academic career. IMO family is at least 100 times better than tenure. Have kids early and often if you can afford them.
From the perspective of a search committee member, it's perfectly acceptable to read a letter from the adviser saying that the dissertation was postponed for a year due to having a baby. I actually like candidates if they have children in grad school because that shows that they can do the multitasking necessary for a tenure track professor. Obviously I don't support job candidates just because they have kids, but I definitely don't penalize them either.
Just my opinion, but looking back, I'd rather have three kids and no academic job than tenure and no kids. I'd have a lot more kids if I could do it again.
9. gomiller - March 04, 2010 at 05:21 pm
I am a 30-year old woman who never wants children, which is its own version of "get judged by others for doing what works for you," since no one seems to be able to imagine that someone my age in a stable relationship with solid joint income not only doesn't want kids herself, but can't even understand or imagine why others want them. But I really, really enjoyed this article - everyone's road to happiness and success is individual.
10. marginalia - March 05, 2010 at 08:20 am
A very nice article. I agree with the author that the time to have children is in graduate school. Before getting pregnant with my son, I did a lot of research (Mary Ann Mason at Berkeley has some great pieces on this). I worked through my pregnancy, the dissertation was in great shape, and I was positive I would complete it after the baby arrived.
However, my research and reading did not prepare me for two things. First, I went on the job market as a nursing mother - and I am more than happy to leave behind the wonderful experience of lugging a breast pump through multiple security checks where I was subjected to many a humiliating "check-up". However, this was not the worst of my experiences - one of the search committees was an all-male team, and they literally abused me by not scheduling my requested pumping breaks (citing 'lack of time'). I got a job at an excellent (and very collegial and accomodating) R1, but if I were to do it again I would wait a year, wean my child, and then go - rather than be in pain and ultimately lose my milk. I know many women were successful as nursing mothers on the job search, but beware all-old-male committees. Also, if in a situation like mine, please speak up louder than I did. Losing your milk is much worse than not getting a job.
Second thing I did not foresee when I was preparing for pregnancy and childbirth is that my child will have autism. He is delightful and a wonderful person to have in our life, but the treatments are expensive, the process is very time-consuming, and results not guaranteed. Going through all this, I am now significantly more effective than I was before the baby. I have a daily writing habit, to which I stick religiously, and because of my son's special needs experience, I became a better teacher. Now I am contemplating having a second child while on TT.
Good luck to all academic mothers and fathers out there, as well as to prospective parents. From where I stand, my life's much richer with a child than without a child, and my research and teaching only benefited from the experience. Eventually I'll even be able to take a vacation!
11. maconstate - March 08, 2010 at 11:25 am
I can relate to this story as I wrote much of my dissertation during my pregnancy and while my daughter was a baby. She was 8 months old when she attended my graduation. Having a baby during this time worked well as I could work on the dissertation while she napped or after I put her down for the night. I don't know how I would have made it if I was still in class however.
12. drkatmack - March 09, 2010 at 01:01 pm
The article, and several of the comments, reflect wonderful, but best-case, scenarios. Unfortunately, in a critical area of an ABD student's life, many times there is little to no support: the dissertation committee, the advisor, and/or the department at large. One of my colleagues actually learned that her advisor - a woman with two children of her own - had recommended to a departmental hiring committee AGAINST hiring my colleague to teach a summer section of a graduate course in our program because my colleague had a nursing infant, never mind that my colleague was about to go on the job market, and graduate-level teaching experience is critical in our field to getting hired.
Prejudice against parenting while in graduate school, and in academe in general, continues to impact graduate students' access to opportunities. Not always, and not in all circumstances...but often, and sometimes in unexpected ways. My advice to graduate students hoping to become parents during their programs? See if anyone has done it before you, and done it successfully and with the full support of your department's faculty. Ask these parent/colleagues about their experience. That's your best indicator. Forewarned is forearmed.
13. ssleeper - March 10, 2010 at 05:34 pm
I also find this a best-case scenario. I had two kids in grad school, one while at the beginning of my dissertation research, and the other 3 weeks after turning in my draft. She was 2 months old at my defense. (There was quite a gap between their births.) *IF* you have a lot of family support nearby (for the inevitable illnesses, doctor appointments, night lectures, etc.), a spouse with a good paying job with decent hours and health benefits, a supportive school (preferably with on-campus childcare), a supportive committee, AND your child is not born with a life threatening birth defect that makes it impossible to do anything productive for two years (as mine was), then you'll be fine. That is, if you can get a job at all in this job market.