[name_f]My[/name_f] husband and I are still young (24) and working on our Masters degrees (church history for me, theology for him). I’d assumed that we’d wait until after we were done with school, dissertations, and settled into a teaching job before we had children, but lately I’ve been rethinking things.
Make no mistake, graduate school is demanding. But it’s also surprisingly flexible–I’m in class 9 or 12 hours a week, and for the most part I set my own work hours. [name_f]My[/name_f] husband’s schedule is similar. Speaking to friends who have recently taken on full-time jobs at universities, it seems like the first few years of teaching are incredibly hectic as you develop multiple new courses simultaneously and also try to impress your boss and work towards tenure. I’m beginning to wonder if being pregnant/having a young child might be, from a time/schedule perspective, easier while working on course work/dissertation than during those first couple of years of teaching, especially if my husband and I can coordinate schedules so that one of us is home with our child as often as possible.
The prospect of having children younger is also appealing to me. I know that fertility begins to drop rapidly during one’s late twenties/early thirties, that the younger the mom the fewer complications, the quicker bounceback after birth, more energy for chasing little ones, etc. Until I decided to pursue a PhD, I always planned to begin having children around age 26 or 27. If we wait until after dissertations are complete and teaching load calms down a bit, we might be 32 or older. That’s not old, but starting a family earlier is an attractive option to me.
We don’t have to decide immediately, but since we’re planning to apply for PhD programs this fall, I’d want to research maternity leave, insurance, leaves of absence, etc. at the schools we’re applying to. I’d love to get more opinions from moms (or dads) who were pregnant/had children while they were in demanding graduate programs or from those who decided to wait. Pros? Cons? Was your department/advisor friendly to your pregnancy announcement? Did you find your early teaching workload heavier than your graduate workload?
I’m not in a “demanding” or even an “in-person” graduate program, but I have done some coursework during pregnancy (undergraduate; biochemistry) and my kids’ early childhoods (distance graduate-level, biology). I’ve had plenty of flexibility and support, in fact, so you should probably take this with a huge HUGE grain of salt.
I’ve found that first-pregnancy makes it tough to stay motivated with respect to academics, or really much else besides daydreaming about and romanticizing impending motherhood. Actually, my fourth pregnancy was just as distracting; I had some complications (severe nausea/vomiting, cholestasis, etc). None of it is terribly conducive to getting anything done, especially when you are finishing up a degree and would much, much rather be screwing around on the internet and finding the perfect baby name combination, birth announcement, baby’s room furniture, etc, etc, etc.
Heck, my motivation is STILL flagging for finishing the masters, and the baby is almost 8 months old now!
However, if having children is important to you, you should still do it now or at least sooner than later. I’m incredibly biased (and, ironically, very fertile to be saying this), but there are no guarantees when it comes to fertility. It’s too precious a thing to mess around with, in my humble opinion.
[name_f]My[/name_f] husband and I also decided to have a child while in school. I can say that it is really a motivator. We were also able to avoid daycare through alternating schedules, which would not have been possible if we were both settled into careers. I can’t imagine the agony of dropping a newborn off at daycare five days a week, but I know people who feel that they must. Unless you’re a stay at home mom after college, you are probably not going to be able to spend as much time as you think with your child. The most obvious con is that it’s more difficult financially to have kids before starting a career, but everything always works out. I don’t think I’d trade all the time I’ve spent with my daughter for fancier baby gear…and that is coming from someone who was so picky that I didn’t even have a baby shower for fear of plastic toys and pink onesies.
There is no perfect time. If you do it now, your attention will absolutely be diverted from your graduate studies, and your work won’t be as good as it otherwise would be. If you wait until after you’ve finished your doctorate, your early career-establishing years will absolutely not be as good as they otherwise would be. You can’t be singlemindedly devoted to your job, unless you’re willing for your spouse to assume >90% of the childrearing responsibilities. If you want until after you’ve landed a decent teaching gig (which in the humanities is winning the freaking lottery), then you won’t be writing as many papers, attending as many conferences, taking on as heavy a courseload & advising load as otherwise. At every single stage of your career having a child will make things worse and harder and make you less efficient and less pre-eminent.
But it’s worth it.
Also for normal healthy women fertility does not start to steeply decline until around age 37.