Comments | _marriedlife_: Career students vs. family planning

mikaboo in _marriedlife_

Career students vs. family planning

Feb 17, 2010 15:51

My husband and I have been married almost two years, and we are both in undergraduate programs. Since we are not the typical age for undergrads (I'm 28 and he's 34), we will have the difficult task of deciding when is the "least inconvenient" time to start a family. My husband will finish his BSc in Computer Science at the end of next year, however ( Read more... )

Comments 51

klarenka February 17 2010, 21:06:15 UTC

My husband is in a PhD computer science program; he's in the middle of his first year. We will start working on conceiving once he's near the end of his Master's coursework, about 5 semesters worth of classes.

Our reasoning is that once he's finished with those 5 semesters, there are far, FAR fewer classes that he has to attend. He will likely have to teach some classes, and do research (obviously), but will have more flexibility in his schedule.

lostreality February 17 2010, 21:07:57 UTC

I'm in academia (6th year phd student, woo!) and while I have no kids myself, I've seen several grad students do it ( ... )

lostreality February 17 2010, 21:10:30 UTC

oh and if you are planning on having kids while a grad student, pay close attention to the maternity leave policies for grad students at the schools you are applying to, cause a lot of them don't have any.

I wrote an article about women having kids while in grad school (based on my masters thesis) that you might find helpful (at least the lit review part might be helpful): http://www.springerlink.com/content/p36u147248k561n0/

klarenka February 17 2010, 21:13:41 UTC

Out of curiosity, did you find any information/interesting stats about paternity leave for grad student fathers?

lostreality February 17 2010, 21:20:30 UTC

I didn't collect specific data about paternity leave becuase the focus of my thesis was mothers.

However, I did look over the maternity leave policies, and if I recall correctly (from like 4 years ago when I did this research), among those schools that did have a leave policy (65% of the top 20 phd granting institutions) some treated pregnancy and birth like a medical leave, and so they only gave it to the mother in that case, and some schools treated it as a family leave and it could be taken by either parent as long as they were the 'primary caretaker' language which I presume is specifically aimed at men, given that women who are not primary caretakers still need some time off to recover from the birth itself.

Thread 16

babyfevertime February 17 2010, 21:13:44 UTC

The people I know who had children during grad school and successfully kept their wits about them had one thing in common: they treated their studies like jobs. They dropped the kids off at daycare, went to the library, studied and worked between classes, and when they picked their kids up from daycare, they were in "at home" mode until the kids went to bed, and then they helped with house chores and spent time with their spouses. The usual work/life blur that is graduate school does not work when you have small children because small children are so unpredictable and need so much attention.

Just a bit of advice there. We waiting until we were finished with our graduate degrees and I'm so glad we did, but we finished at age 26.

babyfevertime February 17 2010, 21:14:02 UTC

My degrees aren't in math. We finished at age 25.

mikaboo February 17 2010, 21:21:03 UTC

That's a good way to go about it, and knowing my work ethic, it's likely the only way things will work out. Hopefully by the time my husband gets a job, we will either live in an area with family that can help, or be able to afford some kind of reliable childcare.

purplesocks February 17 2010, 21:29:58 UTC

I haven't actually done this yet, but this is exactly what I'm planning on doing. I have a masters' and plan on starting a PhD in 2011 or 2012. Once I'm secure in the program, my husband and I have decided that it's baby time ( ... )

neoqbacca February 17 2010, 21:30:09 UTC

I'm a counselor at a community school with students who have usually been expelled. Most of my students have felonies involving drugs, weapons, or gang violence.

When I first started, I was convinced I was going to get shanked for my engagement ring when walking with students between my office and a classroom. Two years later, I don't worry about that at all.

I think it really depends on the population you work with. My students don't commit random acts of violence, instead it's gang political violence. I think it might be different if I were working with people who hurt random strangers.