Taking the Plunge

The decision to have a child (or children), while different for everyone, is always a personal one. How does such a fundamentally personal choice fit in with the academic professions? Although it's different for everyone, we believe there are some common concerns shared by many folks considering parenthood: Are we ready? Is this a "good" time? Would there be a "better" time? Do we have the resources (financial, social, time-wise)?...The list goes on. We set up this blog because we know we're not the first ones to ask these questions; many of our friends and colleagues are dealing with similar issues. We're hoping that this blog will be a resource, and perhaps even a source of social support, for people going through these tough decisions.

For us, two healthy, young-ish doctoral students with supportive families, our primary concern revolved around timing. In short: was this a "good" time to have a baby? Jo was just about to begin a year of fieldwork in India after which we would be living in the Amazon for another year for Dave's fieldwork. Would there be a "better" time...perhaps one in which our first child would not be born in a foreign country, would not live the first year of its life in an Amazonian agrarian settlement, far away from its grandparents and other resources? Would our lives "calm down" after field work? Would dissertation writing, applying for jobs, or tenure track positions provide any respite? After a lot of hemming and hawing, we started to think that perhaps not. While life as an academic certainly has its perks, neither of us saw a stress-free, deadline-free point on the horizon.

With this realization, we began to wonder: Was this, perhaps, the "perfect" time, one in which we would be more "around" (i.e. not in an office or on a campus) and would be able to be an all-day part of our baby's life? Would living the first two years in India and Brazil imbue our baby with appreciation for cultural diversity, tolerance of adversity, patience, or perhaps lead to the easier acquisition of a second or third language?

As we spent three months awaiting our research visas to India, living in limbo, we pondered these questions incessantly. Our various graduate-school friends with children provided their insights and shared their experiences. But again, everyone's situation is different, and the decision was squarely ours. Deciding that "no time is a good time", that starting life with feet in diverse cultures couldn't be a bad thing, and that remaining committed to the challenge of integrating family life with that of academics...we took the plunge.