Where --Â Not When --Â Should You Have a Baby?

By SARANNA THORNTON

I am in the unusual position of being a tenured female economics professor with four children. I had my first baby three years after completing my Ph.D., the next a few years later, the third during the year of my tenure decision, and the fourth two years after that. And between the births of my second and third children I radically changed my research focus from monetary economics to pregnancy discrimination.

I was changing jobs, and the college where I was interviewing didn't have a