Baby or Career? Internet fairy, where are you?
admin October 6th, 2007
Well internet, I pose to you a question. Should I have a baby, or should I start my new career?
Really, I suppose the question is more nuanced than this. Really it is, should I go ahead and try to get pregnant now so that I can have a baby this summer, a perfect time when my family would be more able to help, a perfect time when I (hopefully) will have just graduated and so will be wanting to take off and reevaluate anyway, a perfect time because my brain is telling me almost daily that really I want to be pregnant already, a time my husband and I have been planning for months. OR. Or should I plan on being accepted into these incredibly exciting internship opportunities (not near home) that could be huge stepping stones on my way to branching out into a new career, a career that comes with a huge learning curve, acknowledge that a pregnancy, or worse a new infant would make that experience much more difficult if not impossible, and once again try putting off this huge life development? Of course it could happen that I could try to get pregnant now and it would take a while. It could also happen that I could put off having a baby just to be rejected from every program that I am hoping for. But I can’t plan for that. I have to plan as if I know what I am doing. The problem is that I have no idea what I am doing.
Can you do an internship i and be pregnant or breastfeeding? Even more pressing can you do one, possibly unpaid, most likely geographically separated from your income producing husband? I am thinking it would be almost impossibly difficult. I hate this. People ask why young women inherently have a more difficult time gaining high powered careers than men. I am mid-upper 20s. This is the time. This is the time for both career and family, and doing both right now just seems impossible. This is the reason. Internet, what do I do?
Hiya:
Wow. What a choice. I am 47. When I woke up today, I lay there for a while, just regretting. I only have one child, that’s all I will have. It’s now too late. Ten years of infertility kind of snuck up on me when we were doing things like recovering from the technology crash and dealing with the house that we bought.
Seriously, you are in your late twenties, right? That means that you’re around 28. You need to probably really start in the next three years or so if you want to avoid any chance of infertility.
One of the things to take into consideration is that a whole lot of your professional life hinges around networking. If you work for just one kick-butt place, people from that place will spin off, go to new places, and … voila! Your reputation gets you into a lot more doors.
Speaking from a dispassionate point of view, I’d say that you should go into a position first and give it a year or so before you do the baby thing. This will give you an identity outside of school, and will at least help you touch base with people who can later help you jump back onto the work-mobile.
Whenever a woman takes time off to go to work, she has to pay for it. Sometimes, it takes about three years or so to make it back to where she was, and sometimes she never makes it back. Sometimes, her ideas about success and what matters are irrevocably changed, so that she never does go out and become a careerwoman but just does other things.
The good news is that you have a lot more options available to you. I don’t know what you do (just followed your lovely comment on being an only child from our blog), since you mention science writing but not what you’re getting your PhD **IN**, but there might be an opportunity for you to sidestep some of the intern stuff, and go off to do things on your own.
So let’s talk about the OTHER choice. The illogical, hind brain-driven, the “it’s time to be a mommy” choice. And I say “You betcha.” Take out the birth control and see what happens!
One of my very good friends has three children. She had her first during her first year at Columbia Law school (she got a 100% on the LSAT, btw,) and her second child while she was still in law school. She got out, found a different, more family-friendly law career,a nd is doing very well, thank you.
There is an entire industry of biotech companies, there are new companies out there like 23andme who are marketing genome services, and the entire social networking (e.g. web 2.0) world is alive and bouncing.
In our family, we sneer a bit at academia. My husband was given a full scholarship to a renowed college, but never took any of the GE classes. Instead, he sat in on graduate-level stuff and took the high-level courses. Eventually, his adviser told him that if he wouldn’t take the general stuff they wouldn’t pay for him, so he quit. He went on to start his first startup company, and I think that it was a year later that the Dean of the school came to the door to ask for a job. Later on they sold the company, and my husband was named “Chief Scientist” of an established company at about 29.
The feeling that we have about academia is that it’s not as much of a meritocracy as the academicians would have you believe. It feels more like a bunch of mid-level management types, mired in bureaucracy, making others jump through tons of hoops before they can … what? Become professors and make other people do the same thing?
Now obviously, that’s a bad attitude. But it’s something to consider. Leave academia. There are tons of really interesting jobs OUTSIDE of academia, no matter what the nice profs say!
And I’m sorry, but “become a science writer” seems like a fairly low target to aim for. Don’t you “own” any knowledge? So become a consultant, spin it into a startup, start your own science-based web 2.0 startup.
If I were you I’d start to do a little networking NOW, before the baby and all. Find out what’s OUTSIDE of academia. Here in the silicon valley, most people consider that academicians are afraid of life — that’s why they stay behind their ivory towers. Furthermore, we don’t really hire PhD’s here. They are known for not working very hard (!) (Not my words, honest.)
For the first year, you’ll just do baby stuff, but then you might just want another one. With who you are, what you do, is there a way that you can keep yourself going, keep yourself involved with your chosen area? Because that might just be a good thing for you.
You’re right, it’s a hard choice. My suggestion? Put off the kids for two years. Have them when you’re 30. In the meantime, go and find a different career path. Look into different options. Do NOT go through academia - look to other pathways. Check it out. Do this for a year. Then think about it.
It sounds as though you have a lot of difficult choices going on in your life right now. Might be a good idea to deal with them before the “wild card” option of having a baby MAKES you opt out. That way you won’t beat yourself up later.
Wow, what a long and thought-out comment. People comment so infrequently here, I just now stumbled across it. Thanks, Kate!
I think for the most part you are right, though due to many factors I have made the decision that now is the best time to do this kid thing. You are also correct that “be a science writer” doesn’t sound very ambitious, but it is a code for many things that I am planning to start. I have some ideas for small start-up companies that I can begin with low overhead and see if they work out. I want do diversify after so many years of specialization, and this includes all different kinds of self-work. If I hate it, then I think I’ll get out of academica anyway. I just don’t think it is the fun place it used to be.
Keep those comments coming. Alternate viewpoints are always welcome.