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[thundering_m]

A few thoughts from one who got a doctorate with 3 kids and a full time job. Not ideal and not a stillar dissertation but it got done and here I am TT and happy with it.

Regarding the treasured only child of mature first time parents: Sometimes quality does not balance out quantity. It helps to have some siblings to spread around the high octane attention and expectations. And speaking as one familiar with great grief up close and personal, the fewer people in your life who depend on you to be a loving presence, the emptier it is when those few people disappear.

Regarding

Brilliant.  Yes, with my SO also in grad school we were pulling in a whopping $25k or so.  Sign me up for kids on that salary, for sure!

Quite a few nonacademics certainly do and survive, but not at the affluent level of conspicuous consumerism depicted in, say, Living Simple or Sunset or Southern Living.

Surprised no one has pointed out the declining birthrate of the highly educated or the appallingly young average age in many other countries with, in effect, children raising children.

Also surprised to see no challenge to the original question in terms of its converse: ARe there any studies that show any correlations among personal experience characteristics children/being married/age/gender, field of study, and success in achieving tenure track?

[thundering_m]

A few thoughts from one who got a doctorate with 3 kids and a full time job. Not ideal and certainly not a stellar dissertation (yielding three presentations, two articles, and a tepid followup study) but it got the job (of proving I can do that sort of research) done and here I am TT and happy with it. But as mentioned elsewhere, I am not particularly ambitious for R1 institution or even much acclaim in my field. I like what I do and want to remain employed at it is pretty much it. That's not a mommytrack thing but it might be generational in that we boomer hippies bought into the whole less-is-more, diary-of-a-small-planet, life's-too-short-to-spend-it-with-dinosaurs theme.  

Regarding the treasured only child of mature first time parents: Sometimes quality does not balance out quantity. It helps to have some siblings to spread around the high octane attention and expectations. And speaking as one familiar with great grief up close and personal, the fewer people in your life who depend on you to be a loving presence, the emptier it is when those few people disappear.  

Regarding

Brilliant.  Yes, with my SO also in grad school we were pulling in a whopping $25k or so.  Sign me up for kids on that salary, for sure!

Quite a few nonacademics certainly do and survive, but not at the affluent level of conspicuous consumerism depicted in, say, Living Simple or Sunset or Southern Living.

Surprised no one has pointed out the declining birthrate of the highly educated or the appallingly young average age in many other countries with, in effect, children raising children.

Also surprised to see no challenge to the original question in terms of its converse: Are there any studies that show any correlations among personal experience characteristics children/being married/age/gender, field of study, and success in achieving tenure track? Or, what do we know about apparent causal effects of advanced degrees on family stability?

[macaroon]

I also like how she glosses right over mommy-tracking.  Two of my friends in graduate school who got pregnant lost their funding immediately.

Was this just flat-out discrimination?  The thing that ticked me off so much when they tried to kick me out is that another student in the same lab was allowed more time away from the bench for his girlfriend's gall bladder surgery than I was allowed off for childbirth.  Yet another male student was allowed 10 weeks away from the program (with no negative funding consequences) to go mountain climbing in the Himalayas. 

I'm curious macaroon if you think this is a generational thing? I have no children (and no biological clock that thinks I should), but I can't imagine ever treating a pregnant graduate student that way. Do you sense that your peers would throw a pregnant grad student under the bus in the same manner?

I don't know.  I've run into plenty of young scientists who are sold on the idea that they won't have kids because of their dedication towards their research.  (IMO, really, they just don't want kids and are trying to make some lame justification for that.)  Ergo, anyone who does have children is less deserving of any positive career outcomes.  Yes, I think they'd throw a pregnant student under the bus. 

I don't know how common it is.  I've heard this tired story from young people, but I'm also aware that people who felt this way might not necessarily tell me.

I always figure that every one person who is willing to state a position like that, there are two more who think it but won't say it out loud in your presence. I guess the best that can be hoped for is that the percentage of scientists who hold such views decreases with time, even if it is a slow process.

And far fewer in my case.  My research accomplishments, while not "superstar" level, have been well above average since I became a parent.   Wouldn't it be embarrassing to express a viewpoint like this to someone who is a parent and is more successful?  A few people have anyway.  The conversation has gone something like this:

Other Person:  I could never have kids because it would interfere with my research agenda.
Macaroon:  Oh, yeah.  You would be totally screwed.  Whether you have kids or not, though, you should try to get your act together.

I can get bitter and cynical, but there have been people that believed in me and helped me out.  Word about what happened to me when I got pregnant in grad school spread around campus.  There were a lot of people who were horrified but in no position to do anything about it.  On defense day, the house was packed for my public seminar.  I knew many of them weren't terribly interested in my work (outside of their research interests), but came just to offer support.

[thundering_m]

Other Person:  I could never have kids because it would interfere with my research agenda.
Macaroon:  Oh, yeah.  You would be totally screwed.  Whether you have kids or not, though, you should try to get your act together.

HOF

[johnr]

Regarding the treasured only child of mature first time parents: Sometimes quality does not balance out quantity. It helps to have some siblings to spread around the high octane attention and expectations. And speaking as one familiar with great grief up close and personal, the fewer people in your life who depend on you to be a loving presence, the emptier it is when those few people disappear.

Speaking as one familiar with this issue up close and personal; was that comment really necessary? Sometimes all the time, trying, money, and heartache in the world won't result in more than one.  Thanks for twisting the knife though!

[wareagle]

Regarding the treasured only child of mature first time parents: Sometimes quality does not balance out quantity. It helps to have some siblings to spread around the high octane attention and expectations. And speaking as one familiar with great grief up close and personal, the fewer people in your life who depend on you to be a loving presence, the emptier it is when those few people disappear.

Speaking as one familiar with this issue up close and personal; was that comment really necessary? Sometimes all the time, trying, money, and heartache in the world won't result in more than one.  Thanks for twisting the knife though!

Amen.  Thanks for saying it.  Our one treasured child would certainly have had siblings if it had been in the cards.  Unfortunately, it wasn't.

[thundering_m]

Regarding the treasured only child of mature first time parents: Sometimes quality does not balance out quantity. It helps to have some siblings to spread around the high octane attention and expectations. And speaking as one familiar with great grief up close and personal, the fewer people in your life who depend on you to be a loving presence, the emptier it is when those few people disappear.

Speaking as one familiar with this issue up close and personal; was that comment really necessary? Sometimes all the time, trying, money, and heartache in the world won't result in more than one.  Thanks for twisting the knife though!

Amen.  Thanks for saying it.  Our one treasured child would certainly have had siblings if it had been in the cards.  Unfortunately, it wasn't.

Oh dear. In no way did I mean to diminish how precious a child is to the parent of any age. It was a poorly phrased effort to support having more than one. Those who begin having children late in life tend to have fewer, thus concentrating their considerable and loving resources on a few. I know many only children who are certainly well-adjusted and whose parents are as well, but that was not the point. I was trying to say that in the larger perspective of all the children out there, it would be nice to have more who have been so enriched. It's not a quality of life for your personal family so much as a quality of an increasingly polarized global society.

My sincere apologies.

[kedves]

Surprised no one has pointed out the declining birthrate of the highly educated or the appallingly young average age in many other countries with, in effect, children raising children.

Also surprised to see no challenge to the original question in terms of its converse: Are there any studies that show any correlations among personal experience characteristics children/being married/age/gender, field of study, and success in achieving tenure track? Or, what do we know about apparent causal effects of advanced degrees on family stability?

I'm not sure what you mean.  Is the fertility rate of women with a college education or more declining--as opposed to lower than less-educated women but steady at that rate?  Do you have data?  Births per woman decline with more education historically and across countries, but I haven't heard that it is changing.  If you know that it is, I would be interested to know more.

If anyone is interested in age at first birth in the U.S. over time, the changes are dramatic.  Mothers are having their first child later in life:

Live births per 1,000 women in the group, U.S.

           15-19         20-24      25-29       30-34  

2001       35.7         48.9        40.4          26.6
1968       50.5         76.1        29.6           7.3

(Source:  CDC Center for Health Statistics)

I didn't look up international comparisons for age at first birth because I wasn't sure how they were related to the topic.

If by "family stability," you mean divorce, education decreases the risk of divorce, but it is not necessarily a causal relationship.  The correlation is mostly an effect of delayed marriage plus higher SES.  For U.S. women with a four-year degree and a master's or professional degree (doctoral degrees are not measured separately) who had a first marriage in the period 1990-1994, the dissolution rate within ten years was 15.5% (vs. 17.2% for college and 34.7% for some college).   (Russell Sage report, p. 28.)  The effect of women's education on divorce has increased in the last 20 years.  The education gap in divorce is growing; college-educated women's divorce rate is low and has decreased while non-college-educated women's divorce rate is high and has increased.

[thundering_m]

Surprised no one has pointed out the declining birthrate of the highly educated or the appallingly young average age in many other countries with, in effect, children raising children.

Also surprised to see no challenge to the original question in terms of its converse: Are there any studies that show any correlations among personal experience characteristics children/being married/age/gender, field of study, and success in achieving tenure track? Or, what do we know about apparent causal effects of advanced degrees on family stability?

I'm not sure what you mean.  Is the fertility rate of women with a college education or more declining--as opposed to lower than less-educated women but steady at that rate?  Do you have data?  Births per woman decline with more education historically and across countries, but I haven't heard that it is changing.  If you know that it is, I would be interested to know more.

If anyone is interested in age at first birth in the U.S. over time, the changes are dramatic.  Mothers are having their first child later in life:

Live births per 1,000 women in the group, U.S.

           15-19         20-24      25-29       30-34 

2001       35.7         48.9        40.4          26.6
1968       50.5         76.1        29.6           7.3

(Source:  CDC Center for Health Statistics)

I didn't look up international comparisons for age at first birth because I wasn't sure how they were related to the topic.

If by "family stability," you mean divorce, education decreases the risk of divorce, but it is not necessarily a causal relationship.  The correlation is mostly an effect of delayed marriage plus higher SES.  For U.S. women with a four-year degree and a master's or professional degree (doctoral degrees are not measured separately) who had a first marriage in the period 1990-1994, the dissolution rate within ten years was 15.5% (vs. 17.2% for college and 34.7% for some college).   (Russell Sage report, p. 28.)  The effect of women's education on divorce has increased in the last 20 years.  The education gap in divorce is growing; college-educated women's divorce rate is low and has decreased while non-college-educated women's divorce rate is high and has increased.

Great info, Pink Mouse. Thank you.

Of course, my point was rhetorical: implied but not stated in the original question about why doctoral students don't have children is the assumption that there is a question to be answered rationally, which means more questions from different perspectives that can be answered with similar data.

[cranefly]

Anybody see the movie Idiocracy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/?
Basically the end result of declining birth rates among the educated.

Our jobs are often evaluated on quantity, not quality. I've seen search committees count up lines of publications and compare researchers, without any attention to where those publications were from. The whole system needs an overhaul that would make the job better suited to men and women raising families (or just having a life, period). Unfortunately, the combination of rising public accountability with an over-saturated job market means the system can bleed us dry and spit us back out and there will be 100 people in line for our job.

How do we change the culture of More-More-More?

[kedves]

Mrs. Sanger?

[spectacle]

Regarding

Brilliant.  Yes, with my SO also in grad school we were pulling in a whopping $25k or so.  Sign me up for kids on that salary, for sure!

Quite a few nonacademics certainly do and survive, but not at the affluent level of conspicuous consumerism depicted in, say, Living Simple or Sunset or Southern Living.

We have no desire to live the Southern Living lifestyle. We both grew up poor, however, and would prefer to have children (if we do decide to do so) when we are more financially stable, have made a dent in the loans, and have work circumstances that would allow us to dedicate more attention to the process.

[collegekidsmom]

This article seems to assume that graduate students somehow want to have babies, and are not having them. Is that a given that students or certain ages WANT to have children? As in, "I want to go to graduate school-I guess I just won't be able to have a baby."
Almost all of my colleagues are childless by choice. They pursued school and careers because that's what they wanted to do. So, not everyone wishes they could do both, and are prevented. Also, my two colleagues who are parents had one child by choice. That is what they wanted and planned for. Although fertility issues play a part for some, many people make that choice to have one child. That is perfectly acceptable and happily chosen by many. My kids had a lot of friends growing up that were single children of wonderful parents.

So, is it a case of giving up, or just making different choices when it comes to children. I suppose if graduate students REALLY wanted children, they might find a way to work it out.
They could then look forward to raising those children while on the tenure track.
Maybe people just set priorities in their lives, and go with that.

Maybe some students are reading the threads here about being on the tenure track with three sick kids in succession, and thinking hmmmmm...

[temporaryname]

This article seems to assume that graduate students somehow want to have babies, and are not having them. Is that a given that students or certain ages WANT to have children? As in, "I want to go to graduate school-I guess I just won't be able to have a baby." Almost all of my colleagues are childless by choice. They pursued school and careers because that's what they wanted to do. So, not everyone wishes they could do both, and are prevented. Also, my two colleagues who are parents had one child by choice. That is what they wanted and planned for. Although fertility issues play a part for some, many people make that choice to have one child. That is perfectly acceptable and happily chosen by many. My kids had a lot of friends growing up that were single children of wonderful parents.

So, is it a case of giving up, or just making different choices when it comes to children. I suppose if graduate students REALLY wanted children, they might find a way to work it out.
They could then look forward to raising those children while on the tenure track.
Maybe people just set priorities in their lives, and go with that.

Maybe some students are reading the threads here about being on the tenure track with three sick kids in succession, and thinking hmmmmm...

A bit of both, perhaps? There's room, it seems to me, for a longitudinal study of attitudes so that we can see whether PhD studies attract people who don't want children (or multiple children) at the start, or whether such attitudes are a post-hoc rationalization of their situation.

[oseph]

This article seems to assume that graduate students somehow want to have babies, and are not having them. Is that a given that students or certain ages WANT to have children? As in, "I want to go to graduate school-I guess I just won't be able to have a baby." Almost all of my colleagues are childless by choice. They pursued school and careers because that's what they wanted to do. So, not everyone wishes they could do both, and are prevented. Also, my two colleagues who are parents had one child by choice. That is what they wanted and planned for. Although fertility issues play a part for some, many people make that choice to have one child. That is perfectly acceptable and happily chosen by many. My kids had a lot of friends growing up that were single children of wonderful parents.

So, is it a case of giving up, or just making different choices when it comes to children. I suppose if graduate students REALLY wanted children, they might find a way to work it out.
They could then look forward to raising those children while on the tenure track.
Maybe people just set priorities in their lives, and go with that.

Maybe some students are reading the threads here about being on the tenure track with three sick kids in succession, and thinking hmmmmm...

A bit of both, perhaps? There's room, it seems to me, for a longitudinal study of attitudes so that we can see whether PhD studies attract people who don't want children (or multiple children) at the start, or whether such attitudes are a post-hoc rationalization of their situation.

Doctoral students seem to be like other people in their twenties and early thirties these days:  you have no intention of having children anytime soon or at all, you date, you break up, you are figuring out what to do with your life, maybe you end up getting married or entering into a long-term partnership, and then suddenly you realize you're 29 or 33 or whatever, and if you are in the group that wanted to have kids "some day", some day is not all that far off, and you've got to figure out how to proceed.  Then you split into three groups - the people who can easily pause in their career for kids and have money to do so, the people who really don't have the money to have kids, even though they're not doing a whole lot of anything career-wise, and the people who cannot easily pause in their career (PhD students, young doctors, junior partners at high powered law firms) to have kids if they want to maintain the momentum often demanded in these professions.