Donald Trump’s “America first but not alone” speech at last month’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos may have hogged the headlines, but the meeting of world leaders was also chosen to launch the largest ever global survey of primary schoolchildren’s career aspirations.
Naturejobs journalism competition winner Ulrike Träger.
If you look for advice on work-life balance in science online, the message seems clear: it’s possible to fit a 10-hour work day around quality time with your kids and family as long as you’re organized. Flexible hours of working in the lab help. Experiments don’t mind when you do them, and can be postponed until your kids are asleep. But still, long hours are expected in order to be successful, and finding childcare during midnight experiments is not always easy if you don’t live close by. So for many (including myself, a post-doc in my late twenties pondering the right time to start a family) the prospect of having to plan each and every minute of the day to be a good parent and scientist is daunting. This leaves promising young scientists everywhere feeling like they have to choose between family and career.
Contributor Anne Priestly
To be honest, I wasn’t 100% sure getting a PhD was the right choice for me. I still wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do for a career. But then the opportunity came along that gave me the chance to pursue a postgraduate degree in biology and I couldn’t pass it up.
I was 30 years old and I already held a master’s degree in environmental science. I also had two wonderful kids and was fully involved in raising them.
My youngest child had started primary school a few weeks before and there I was at an induction session for new postgraduates. That’s right, starting a PhD when I was already busy (and sometimes overwhelmed) raising a family. I had been an at-home mom for almost six years and it felt strange to be standing there with a bunch of students fresh out of university. But it also felt like it was the right time for me to take some steps to reach my own career goals. Continue reading
Kay and Keeva at SFN{credit}Courtesy Kay Tye{/credit}
Dr Kay Tye, from the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, recently had a baby. Keeva is now 10 months old, and has been to the lab, on multiple trips around the world, and even gets a photo in Nature before her first birthday. In March 2013, Kay featured alongside other fantastic female scientists in the Nature article: From the frontline: 30 something science. At the time, Kay was 5 months pregnant, and was just beginning to dial down her work levels to prepare for her daughter. I caught up with her, just over a year later, to see whether her opinions on having a child whilst being a scientist had changed.
What response did you get from the article in Nature?
I got mixed responses from both ends of the spectrum. Some people really liked that I wasn’t afraid to admit I have other interests besides science, others were critical of the “one can have it all” attitude. Specifically, I was criticised for being “dismissive” of the amount of work parenthood entails. Some said that it would have been more appropriate to feature someone who already had children.
I have always wanted to be a mother, and have always looked up to women with successful careers and families, and never intended for my comments to come off as dismissive in any way. I always worried about if I would be able to make it work, and tried to focus on my mentors and role-models (including my mom, my PhD advisor, and other leaders in my field) who have had successful careers and happy families. Continue reading
Many scientists at top US institutions have had fewer children than they wanted as a result of their careers, according to a new study.
Nearly half of all female scientists and a quarter of male scientists said they would have liked more children — and a quarter of both women and men said they are likely to consider moving to a career outside science as a result.
Sociologists Elaine Howard Ecklund from Rice University and Anne Lincoln from Southern Methodist University surveyed 2,500 scientists at more than 30 leading universities in the United States for the study, which was published last week in PLoS ONE.
The survey showed that 36 percent of male postdocs and 22 percent of female postdocs had children, rising to 75 percent of male faculty members and 64 percent of female faculty members. Female faculty members had fewer children on average than their male colleagues — 1.2 children for women versus 1.5 for men.
Despite women being more likely to have wanted more children, men were unhappier about having fewer children than desired. Both men and women with children worked fewer hours than those without children. However, contrary to the researchers’ expectations, women with children worked the same number of hours as men with children — approximately 54 hours a week on average.
“Academic science careers are tough on family life,” says Ecklund, citing long hours and the pressures of working towards tenure as the main pressure points. She and Lincoln suggest on-site day care and improved mentoring programmes may help improve scientists’ work-life balance. “Universities would do well to re-evaluate how family-friendly their policies are,” says Ecklund.
What’s your reaction? Are you putting off having children as a result of your career? Is the situation similar outside the United States? Share your thoughts below.