WARNING: In this post, I’m going to focus on the difficult parts of parenting. I won’t dwell on the (many!) positive aspects, because I’m assuming that if you want to be a parent you already value those. Also, there’s a lot of bullshit around parenthood, with society painting a rosy picture and expecting parents to be superhuman. So you get a lot of information about the beautiful aspects of parenting, and instead not much about how hard it is, or about how to cope with the difficulties. With that out of the way, let’s get the conversation started!
I really enjoy research. But I also want to have children, and I fear that the two may be incompatible.
I always say that being a researcher is the best job in the world, because you get paid to learn. But I also always say that the job comes with a lot of taxes, which are paid with personal life. Not necessarily the optimal conditions for parenting, huh?
Yet there are people who have children and are researchers. So it must be possible. How?
Well, in my view, it’s the result of a willful suspension of straight thinking. To have children as working parents, one must undergo a period of craziness. It’s never a good time to have them —not in ours, not in other professions. So you need to close your eyes and listen to your heart and simply go ahead with it. And once the baby is there, well, you find a way, because you have to.
Erm, sorry, but that doesn’t sound too good.
I know. But, hey, I got two children this way. :) And I find them awesome and I’m still a researcher.
And how did you cope, especially when they were little?
The truth? Barely.
Hey, will you stop that?
Sorry! Ok, let me summarize what I learned, see if it’s useful for you:
Don’t quit research before you want to. This is based on advice by Sheryl Sandberg, a former COO of Meta, in her book Lean In. She observes that women [and no, what I’ll be writing in this post does not only apply to women! stay tuned] are often reluctant to accept a better position that is highly demanding if they see it as incompatible with having a family. But, crucially, they do this before they actually want to have children! Her advice is, accept the promotion if you like the job. You’re always in time to quit it if you want to, or need to, at a later point. At that point, you’ll at least have a better CV and more savings; and it can well be that you can make it work after all.
Don’t ask yourself whether having children is going to slow your career down; be aware that it will, and be willing to accept the consequences. It can be hard to see everyone around you progressing in their careers while you are relatively stuck. But, good thing about children? They grow up! And then you can go back to being a normal human being.
At the same time, don’t forget about your career. When my children were little, I was totally immersed in Baby Ocean, and my mom always told me: “Kids grow up and leave. You need to have a life of your own, and you love your job. Don’t forget about your career.” And she was right. One day your head emerges from deep inside Baby Ocean, and you rediscover that there’s a whole world out there. If you’ve swum too far out, it can be very difficult to reach land again. I have friends who abandoned their careers when they had children, and they are now struggling to find themselves, at forty-something.
Be aware that prioritizing your career at times (even if you prioritize family other times) can feel selfish. But remember that, for kids, having happy parents is the best foundation for their own happiness. So you’re actually helping your kids by pursuing your career. This is of course within reason: If you rarely see your kids or put them to bed, think twice about your parenting!
Be kind to yourself. This is always good advice, but especially when you have kids. Things are going to be messy, and you’re going to feel like both a bad parent and a bad researcher. Try to lower your standards and embrace (or at least tolerate) messiness. In fact, the way I see it, until your (last) child turns three, if you survive, that’s already a lot. Don’t ask yourself for more than that. Really. Get into survival mode and remember that summer is just a season.
And the best piece of advice about parenting that I ever got, this one from my aunt: get as much help in practical matters as you can. When our second child was born, we got a cleaning person for 4 hours a day 3 days a week; I don’t recall ever doing laundry in that period!
But that’s expensive!
Indeed. But think of it as an investment. If you can delegate practical matters and focus on parenting and work, you’ll maximize the chances of getting to the next step in your academic career, which will bring more income and more job security. Crucially, you’ll also alleviate the inevitable tension at home, both with your children and with your partner (if you have one): Kids really strain relationships,* and a good part of that comes from the increased workload at home.
* Please DON’T do that stupidest thing of all, having kids to save a relationship…
A friend of mine is a good example of this investment view. She ran out of funding for her PhD before finishing it, and she got a part-time job so she could keep working on it. Shortly after, however, she had a child, and she soon realized that a PhD, a job, and a baby was more than she could handle. She reviewed her priorities and chose the PhD and the baby —and quit her job. That meant that she had to rely on her partner for economic support while she worked on her PhD, something neither she nor her partner liked. But she actually finished it in less than a year and immediatly found a much better-paid job as a post-doc.
Last but not least, I’ll finish with a piece of advice specifically for women: If you have a male partner, make sure that he does his share of childcare. Even if you have always shared work equally at home, sometimes partners sort of assume that the baby is mostly your thing (it doesn’t help that society assumes the same, of course). Educate your partner so he also takes up his part. There are some parts of childcare, especially in the first few years, that are best done by the mom (including, but not only, breastfeeding). But there is so much to do, that there’s plenty of work for both. For instance, my partner was the one bringing the kids to the doctor and buying them clothes; and we took turns taking them to and from daycare and caring for them in the afternoons.
Thank you. Still one last question, if I may: Has it been worth it for you to have children, despite the difficulties?
Yes, it has. I wouldn’t change it.
[Disclaimer: This post expresses my opinion, based on years of experience, therapy, readings, and podcasts. Use at your own discretion. Written in June-September 2024, CC BY-NC.]