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[bms2000]

Even though I outsourced the pregnancy part (adopted kids rock that way!), I still was done with the infancy stage by age 32. I barely had the strength to chase them then - I can't see being a 50 year old first time mom.

Careers are great and all, but it seems like it would make more sense to get the child bearing/rearing over early as possible, then establish the career. All too often you see people throwing themselves completely into the academic maelstrom, emerging at age 45, then wondering why they have infertility issues. I know from first hand experience - these fertility issues are not fun to deal with, and I was under 30 when I faced them. Even adoption starts to get more difficult the older you get - some birth parents in the US don't want to choose older parents, and many foreign countries have age cut offs. It's not like if you don't have tenure by age 30 that you will be denied tenure forever.

[spyzowin]

Even though I outsourced the pregnancy part (adopted kids rock that way!), I still was done with the infancy stage by age 32. I barely had the strength to chase them then - I can't see being a 50 year old first time mom.

Careers are great and all, but it seems like it would make more sense to get the child bearing/rearing over early as possible, then establish the career. All too often you see people throwing themselves completely into the academic maelstrom, emerging at age 45, then wondering why they have infertility issues. I know from first hand experience - these fertility issues are not fun to deal with, and I was under 30 when I faced them. Even adoption starts to get more difficult the older you get - some birth parents in the US don't want to choose older parents, and many foreign countries have age cut offs. It's not like if you don't have tenure by age 30 that you will be denied tenure forever.

I'll second this. I had kids in my early 20's with my first wife. And then--after tenure--had a child with my second wife just as I turned 40.  The second child is infinitely harder to chase after, and I'm going to be really really old when he grows up.  We have lots of money now, but children don't really notice how poor you are.

If people want some advice: have children when you're a graduate student. Don't put it off. It only gets harder and harder, even if you have a housekeeper and good daycare.

[astronomygal]

I read this article this morning.

This says that women lose 90% of their eggs by age 30 which is a more rapid decline than previously thought.

[macaroon]

If people want some advice: have children when you're a graduate student. Don't put it off. It only gets harder and harder, even if you have a housekeeper and good daycare.

I went with this plan, myself.  I had kids in my 20's, one in grad school and one as a postdoc.  Several of the female faculty at my grad school were purchasing ova.  Several of the grad students were selling ova.  CREEPY! 

[tinyzombie]

I went with this plan, myself.  I had kids in my 20's, one in grad school and one as a postdoc.  Several of the female faculty at my grad school were purchasing ova.  Several of the grad students were selling ova.  CREEPY! 

I'm curious: do you also think that sperm donation is creepy?

[scampster]

I went with this plan, myself.  I had kids in my 20's, one in grad school and one as a postdoc.  Several of the female faculty at my grad school were purchasing ova.  Several of the grad students were selling ova.  CREEPY! 

I'm curious: do you also think that sperm donation is creepy?

I thought macaroon was implying the potential creepiness of faculty ending up with grad student ova from the same department.

[macaroon]

I went with this plan, myself.  I had kids in my 20's, one in grad school and one as a postdoc.  Several of the female faculty at my grad school were purchasing ova.  Several of the grad students were selling ova.  CREEPY! 

I'm curious: do you also think that sperm donation is creepy?

I thought macaroon was implying the potential creepiness of faculty ending up with grad student ova from the same department.

YES!  As they were using the same clinic, HELL YES!    The egg buyers get to pick from a profile.  If you were an older female scientist picking ova from a profile, would you pick ova from another scientist?  I probably would.  Several of the female faculty were advocating to the grad students that waiting until they had tenure and buying ova was the way to go.  At the same time, pamphlets on egg donation were showing up in grad student lounges and posted on bulliten boards.  I wonder how they got there?  Every time I saw them, I kept wondering if I was going to see a faculty baby that bore a striking resemblance to a current PhD student.  I threw the pamphlets and flyers in the garbage.  Then I threw away my birth control. 

[temporaryname]

If people want some advice: have children when you're a graduate student. Don't put it off. It only gets harder and harder, even if you have a housekeeper and good daycare.

I don't think it's the right thing for everyone, but that's the route my partner and I went (with her not in grad school, but with an industry job and really nice health coverage--the health coverage is the difficult part for a lot of grad student couples), and it was an excellent choice for us.

Of course, it was also normal in my graduate program for students to have a child or two. Other program/institutional cultures might make this extremely difficult.

[tinyzombie]

I went with this plan, myself.  I had kids in my 20's, one in grad school and one as a postdoc.  Several of the female faculty at my grad school were purchasing ova.  Several of the grad students were selling ova.  CREEPY! 

I'm curious: do you also think that sperm donation is creepy?

I thought macaroon was implying the potential creepiness of faculty ending up with grad student ova from the same department.

YES!  As they were using the same clinic, HELL YES!   

Ah. Makes much more sense. Duh, TZ.

<wanders off in search of more caffeine>

[polly_mer]

If people want some advice: have children when you're a graduate student. Don't put it off. It only gets harder and harder, even if you have a housekeeper and good daycare.

I don't think it's the right thing for everyone, but that's the route my partner and I went (with her not in grad school, but with an industry job and really nice health coverage--the health coverage is the difficult part for a lot of grad student couples), and it was an excellent choice for us.

Of course, it was also normal in my graduate program for students to have a child or two. Other program/institutional cultures might make this extremely difficult.

Yep.  Some of the hard core engineering and physical science programs with a minimum expectation of 80 hours a week in the lab or on site will frown quite a bit on babies during graduate school and likely not give an inch in expectations or have good plans in place for things like maternity leave.  I'm sure some people would be shocked to discover that maternity leaves are not guaranteed by law even under the FMLA except under certain circumstances that students likely will not meet.

[oseph]

I think the problem is that "best" really = "best given my individual circumstances."  There's a lot of good research that having babies in your 20s is "better" that in your 30s in terms of fertility and birth defects and other conditions.   Obviously it is not "better" to have a baby in your 20s, however, if your family, emotional, and financial circumstances aren't then suited for child-rearing.  It sounds like most of the posters here who had babies in their 20s were in good family, emotional, and financial states then.  Certainly they wouldn't wish those of who weren't ready in our 20s, for a variety of reasons, to have had babies then if we weren't ready or were unable.  So while technically, yes, my body would have been better suited for childbearing back then, a baby at that time would have been disastrous for me.  I was lucky to be able to have one in my thirties, and even then it still wasn't under ideal circumstances, but at least some of the pieces of the puzzle had fallen in place.  Really there was no "best" time for me to have a baby, but there were better times and worse times.  The fact that I had no partner and no money and definitely not enough emotional maturity throughout much of my twenties trumped the fact that I was in my twenties.  Also the fact that I was infertile for part of my twenties.  So I ended up with a so-so time in my thirties - not great, not horrible.  That's kind of how life works - sometimes the timing is great, sometimes it is awful, and you muddle through the best you can without worrying whether you made Good Life Choices.  When you start going down that road, you become my MIL, and you DON'T want to do that.  Obviously on the extremes of the age spectrum, there are some tough choices to be made and risks to be calculated.  I certainly do not congratulate myself for having had a baby before the age of 35, nor do I beat myself up that I wasn't able to start at 25 and have a second child before 30.  I am damn lucky that enough of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place that I could have a baby before 35, and sometimes I tell myself that I am damn crazy for doing it when my life was ridiculously complicated anyway.  It is what it is.

[macaroon]

If people want some advice: have children when you're a graduate student. Don't put it off. It only gets harder and harder, even if you have a housekeeper and good daycare.

I don't think it's the right thing for everyone, but that's the route my partner and I went (with her not in grad school, but with an industry job and really nice health coverage--the health coverage is the difficult part for a lot of grad student couples), and it was an excellent choice for us.

Of course, it was also normal in my graduate program for students to have a child or two. Other program/institutional cultures might make this extremely difficult.

Yep.  Some of the hard core engineering and physical science programs with a minimum expectation of 80 hours a week in the lab or on site will frown quite a bit on babies during graduate school and likely not give an inch in expectations or have good plans in place for things like maternity leave.  I'm sure some people would be shocked to discover that maternity leaves are not guaranteed by law even under the FMLA except under certain circumstances that students likely will not meet.

Yeah, I found that one out the hard way.  Apparently, there aren't even legal precedents that prevent discrimination against a pregnant student in higher ed.  For the most part, with undergrads, they just take a semester off.  No harm done. 

I was told when I had my first baby that if I wasn't back at the bench within a week, I'd lose my candidacy.  :-(.  They were probably mad at me for having that baby instead of selling them my ova.  Or selling them the baby.

[terpsichore]

The phrase I've seen bandied out is that one can have it all, just not all at once, because there aren't enough hours in the day or energy in the body.  However, that being said, the creative ways to deal with personal situations aren't necessarily limited to the ones that are most vocally proclaimed by certain ideological groups.  I was particularly struck by one book I read where a small group of women friends fought for an on-site daycare center and then discovered upon having their children that daycare in that way in and of itself was not particularly helpful due to factors they hadn't considered since they had no emotional experience with children.

Do you recall the name of the book (or the author)?

[the_logical_poster]

Once you hit 35, you are "geriatric" according to the OB/GYN community,

The OB/GYN community also labels women who have multiple miscarriages as "habitual aborters."  I'm thinking a terminology makeover may be due in that field. 

There are the lovely terms


elderly primigravida
cervical incompetence
pelvic insufficiency

What about pelvic complacency?  Redundancy?  Inconsistency?

[polly_mer]

The phrase I've seen bandied out is that one can have it all, just not all at once, because there aren't enough hours in the day or energy in the body.  However, that being said, the creative ways to deal with personal situations aren't necessarily limited to the ones that are most vocally proclaimed by certain ideological groups.  I was particularly struck by one book I read where a small group of women friends fought for an on-site daycare center and then discovered upon having their children that daycare in that way in and of itself was not particularly helpful due to factors they hadn't considered since they had no emotional experience with children.

Do you recall the name of the book (or the author)?

Unfortunately, I don't.  I was reading a lot on that topic about several years ago while I was trying to figure out what next step to take with my life so this example was one chapter of one book during a time when I was reading several hundred pages a week on the topic of women with careers and children.