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[dr_prephd]

why don't you let your (ex) husband take your child, i.e. have primary custody, if the PhD is really important to you?

Because raising children and having a career are not mutually exclusive.

[spectacle]

why don't you let your (ex) husband take your child, i.e. have primary custody, if the PhD is really important to you?

Because raising children and having a career are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, this.

And also, perhaps the husband doesn't want primary custody?  Perhaps he doesn't even want partial custody. 

[psyche74]

I feel sorry for your situation and hope everything works out for you but considering comments like the one below, why don't you let your (ex) husband take your child, i.e. have primary custody, if the PhD is really important to you?

Whoa...this one struck me as a little insane. If the PhD is really important to you, why not abandon your child to the care of someone else? Seriously? That would be your solution? I don't know any good parent, mother or father, who would ever consider that to be an acceptable alternative. Plenty of not-so-good parents who might do it, of course... And to your later comment about bad husbands not equalling bad fathers, I would point out that the way you treat your spouse has a tremendous impact on your children's welfare. 'Bad spouses' tend to be highly correlated with 'bad parents.' Correlation does not mean causation, of course, but there tends to be a similar factor (or factors) driving both variables. Usually, priorities are out of whack.

Anyway, the focus of any good parent trying to make it through a PhD program ought to be on how best to gain the PhD AND bring their children up well. Short and long term considerations are brought in, and sometimes you make short term sacrifices for long term payoffs. But if anything has to be abandoned, it won't be the child.

[msparticularity]

I went through grad school as a divorced mother with ideal custody arrangements and family support (joint custody with the ex, my parents around and available, and two aunts in addition) and STILL relied heavily upon the support of MrP (my live-in partner at the time) to juggle the logistics involved in caring for a school-aged child. This is not to say that it is impossible for a single parent, but I think that in practice some form of live-in support is really needed. It doesn't necessarily need to be a partner, of course--a sibling who is committed to helping raise a child can be an amazing support person. (In fact, my brother shared a lot of the child care duties even when I was still married to my daughter's father.)

It can be done, but boy, does it take that village.

[mdwlark]

That first year after a divorce under these circumstances is just a killer, and it is remarkable that you were able to hold it together.  I congratulate you on that.  Great job!

However, there is the reality of how hard it is to be a single parent grad student in the middle of her first year of intense grief and there is the problem of the perception that you are creating in the department.  The social norms you are missing are probably not just about the value of B's (which is ridiculous, but I won't go there).  It is probably also about the norms of expected graduate student behavior.  The norm is that you need to present yourself to the grad school as a scholar who is just fascinated and consumed with scholarship on Mesopotamian basketweaving, who seldom has anything else on her mind, spends hours in the lab or library and arrives the next day with thorough and well organized data, and squeezes everything else in in 15 minutes before the day begins.  If they addressed in the letter the fact that they know you had a hard year and understand what your situation is, that means that (a) they aren't at all sympathetic, and (b) you are talking about it entirely too much.  You won't get mommy-tracked if the department is only vaguely aware that you have children.  That is why the support system has to be good.  If once in a while a consistently excellent, dedicated student has a day-care crisis, that will be forgiven.  But like the "B" grades, after a crisis has happened twice in close proximity, and especially if the crises become a regular thing, they stop counting the 75 days your were OK, they notice the 10 days it seemed like you were not.  I'm sorry, that is unfair.  I believe this is inhumane.  In some cosmic scheme of things, I believe the true measure of a person's accomplishment in life will not be on what they produced but on how much they overcame to do it. Unfortunately, you may be doing a lot better than they believe if they are hearing a running commentary on how much you have overcome.  

There also may be some people who are not waiting to see how well you do,but are expecting you to fail.  You want to keep your advisor as an ally.  You will need his protection.  

I also went through some really bad times and needed a lot of forgiveness. I ended up doing some damage to perceptions of me and subsequently my career.  If you look at how many forumites are talking about battling personal issues and depression, we all face these times.  I would like to see you show everybody that you can do it and do it great, but I also understand rethinking getting a PhD in a bad PhD job market.  I would get one only if for some crazy reason you just have to.  Good luck in your decision making.  

[tolerantly]

Short and long term considerations are brought in, and sometimes you make short term sacrifices for long term payoffs.

And that's the problem right there. Payoffs from a PhD aren't so easy to come by, and it gets harder to find any the more encumbered you are. If every new PhD had a pretty fair chance of landing a nifty, or at least tolerable, t-t spot somewhere, the whole situation would look different. As things go, in so many fields, it's really just an expensive ticket into the gladiator ring.

The problem for a single parent isn't just getting the PhD. It's getting the PhD while building a competitive portfolio, and then schlepping the kids around the country, uprooting them time and again to follow the VAPs and adjunct jobs, without having a partner there to help the kids along. It's the prospect of landing in a town far from family where good support for single parents & their children does not exist.

Career and single parenthood are not mutually exclusive, no. But one has to be a little smarter about career, in the situation. Particular careers and responsible single parenthood may well be mutually exclusive.

[psyche74]

Career and single parenthood are not mutually exclusive, no. But one has to be a little smarter about career, in the situation. Particular careers and responsible single parenthood may well be mutually exclusive.

I can agree wholeheartedly with that, although I would extend it to couples as well (plenty of careers that aren't exactly family friendly). I was 'fortunate' enough to become a single parent before I chose to apply to PhD programs, which enabled me to target fields/schools/programs/etc. that would allow me to continue focusing on being a good parent as well as a good student/researcher/instructor. Of course, not everyone would agree that my field is particularly supportive of parenting, so perhaps it depends a lot on one's perspective and expectations.

[psyche74]

I went through grad school as a divorced mother with ideal custody arrangements and family support (joint custody with the ex, my parents around and available, and two aunts in addition) and STILL relied heavily upon the support of MrP (my live-in partner at the time) to juggle the logistics involved in caring for a school-aged child. This is not to say that it is impossible for a single parent, but I think that in practice some form of live-in support is really needed. It doesn't necessarily need to be a partner, of course--a sibling who is committed to helping raise a child can be an amazing support person. (In fact, my brother shared a lot of the child care duties even when I was still married to my daughter's father.)

It can be done, but boy, does it take that village.

I think when all those avenues disappear and we have no support from family or friends, we tend to be surprised at exactly how much we can do on our own. So for those who do not have other avenues of support, don't despair :) It can be done and can offer some unexpected rewards. I've been in school full time since my son was 6 and he's gone to a ton of classes with me (I had to sit in back instead of the front of class and, of course, had to make sure that my son was well trained so that he wasn't a distraction). Because we're both being evaluated in a similar manner (A = good job), my child has an area in which he can relate to me and both appreciate successes as well as commiserate with disappointments. And while study/research is time consuming, there's a great deal of flexibility about when I choose to do it, which has allowed me to find plenty of quality time with my son. He's 12 now, and though I haven't been able to give him everything I had so wanted to give him, he's gained other things in the process--perhaps even more valuable.

[mlp55099]

Hi, OP posting with an update.
I wanted to thank everyone for the suggestions about how to manage through that first year, and how to recover from the horrible letter I got.
I ended up staying in the program, and writing a great MA thesis. I also passed both my comps, won a fellowship, and recently defended my dissertation proposal in front of the department to very positive reviews.
While I am not sure I will stay in academia, I will finish my PhD. A lot of the people who posted suggestions provided kindness and understanding and gave me the space to think about whether I really wanted to do this.
I am forever grateful to them.

[punchnpie]

I'm glad to see that you seem to have gotten through the worst of it. I hope things are going better in your personal life as well (just the fact that the kiddie has gotten older during all of this should be a help) so that you can have an easier time pushing through this last bit. Don't let writing the diss drag on too long; a good diss is a done diss. Get 'er done and get out!  It's nice to hear from you again, especially with such positive news.

[psyche74]

Hi, OP posting with an update.
I wanted to thank everyone for the suggestions about how to manage through that first year, and how to recover from the horrible letter I got.
I ended up staying in the program, and writing a great MA thesis. I also passed both my comps, won a fellowship, and recently defended my dissertation proposal in front of the department to very positive reviews.
While I am not sure I will stay in academia, I will finish my PhD. A lot of the people who posted suggestions provided kindness and understanding and gave me the space to think about whether I really wanted to do this.
I am forever grateful to them.

Excellent job!! Nicely done :)

[jack_lee]

maybe good thing

http://www.lenongjia.net