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Integrating Children with Professional Life

Having children and integrating them into one's professional life provides a vivid illustration of how women's life timelines differ from that of their male colleagues, and of the conflicts that can result. I choose this topic not because it is a given that all women will choose to have children, or can have children. Many women in all walks of life, including mathematics, have rich and rewarding lives without children. However, this topic brings into focus issues that arise for women with respect to many aspects of their lives--issues of timing, relationships, connection to math community, personal and professional conflicts--all of which apply to women with and without children [16].

Simply deciding whether or not to have children is difficult for many women, but timing is particularly problematic. Women hear three strong, conflicting messages. They are told that, biologically, the ideal time to have children is as early as possible. However, the present social climate dictates that fewer people are marrying or having children early in life; there is social pressure to wait until when one is established in a relationship and a career. Professionally, the ideal time is to wait until after tenure. So these three pressures-biological, social, and professional--must be considered in turn.

Many women mathematicians did indeed have children early in their lives and felt that was a good decision. For example, two mathematicians, Lenore Blum and Fan Chung, each had a child in their later years of graduate school. And like many women at this time, they played down having a child for fear of not being taken seriously in their professional lives. In fact, when one of Lenore's professors saw her with her four-month old baby, he said ``where did that child come from? Whose is it?'' He had been oblivious to her pregnancy and birth. When Fan had her second child in her second year at Bell Labs, her manager wondered what she was going to do. Would she quit now that she was having a child? He was unaware that she already had a child who was two years old who was clearly not interfering with her work. In both cases, it was crucial that they had access to full-time child care and supportive husbands. Joan Birman had three children before and during graduate school. She returned to graduate school at New York University later in life, starting part-time in a Master's program. Realizing her ability and desire to work full-time towards a Ph.D., she was able to get graduate support, most of which went toward caregivers for the children.

These women found ways to have children early in their lives and still continue with their mathematical development. This was during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when most women had their children early in life. But today, those who many tend to do so later in life. And those pursuing higher education rarely think in terms of having children early in their lives.

If, however, one waits until one is settled personally and professionally, other problems can arise. Women in their late 30s and early 40s have more trouble conceiving, more complications with pregnancy, and higher incidence of Down's syndrome or other genetic disorders, and are likely to be more physically exhausted once the child is born. It is also more difficult to adopt a child after 40. This is not meant to be alarmist; many women have children later in life without problems. Nonetheless, many women do experience the profound disappointment and frustration of having waited to have children and discovering at this later stage of life that they are unable to do so.

Given the biological issues of having children late and the changing social realities that make having children early very unlikely, only the middle period remains--after graduate school, but before tenure. But, as everyone knows, this is professionally the most pressured period of all. In a few short years, one has to establish oneself in one's field, make connections, go to meetings, publish, and teach many courses for the first time. Very often women also assume a disproportionately high administrative and service workload. Having children during this period is clearly risky business. If the pregnancy is easy, the birth smooth with no complications, and the child a happy, healthy one who likes to sleep a lot, and if the parents are willing and able to put their child in full-time day care, then one's professional career can stay on track. However, if any one of these factors goes awry, the consequences can be extreme because the cost of not staying professionally productive is very high.

In addition, it is still common to be perceived by colleagues as not fully serious about one's work if one has a child. At the early stages of one's career, judgment by one's peers and colleagues can have enormous impact. The implicit message--that either one is a mathematician, or one is a mother, but one cannot do both--is tied to the assumption that it is men who do the mathematics and women who do the mothering.

So, from the perspective of a young woman who wants to become a mathematician, there seems to be no period of her career that would be favorable for having children. This is why a career in mathematics and having children seem to be in conflict. These problems are not unique to mathematics or even to academia. Still, the mathematical community needs to fashion for itself ways of dealing with this conflict, for there are at least two aspects of the discipline of mathematics that exacerbate this problem.

First, there is the pervasive myth that mathematicians do their best work at a very young age. Philosophy professors may be entering their prime in their 50s or later, but this is rarely the image of a productive mathematician. As G. H. Hardy says in A Mathematician's Apology, ``If then I find myself writing, not mathematics but `about' mathematics, it is a confession of weakness, for which I may rightly be scorned or pitied by younger and more vigorous mathematicians. I write about mathematics because, like any other mathematician who has passed sixty, I have no longer the freshness of mind, the energy, or the patience to carry on effectively with my proper job'' [17]. He goes on to say, ``No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game'' [18]. This powerful myth of the young, virile mathematician contributes to the pressure young women (and men) feel, despite the fact that there are many examples of prominent mathematicians who did excellent work in their later years [19]. In fact, most of the women I interviewed found that their work improved as they got older.

Second, academic careers in general, and mathematics in particular, exacerbate the problem because of the linear trajectory of career development: graduate school, postdoctoral study, assistant professor, associate professor, full professor. Any deviation from this norm is suspect. In particular, people strongly believe that to take a couple of years off in mathematics makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to return. As a result, there are very few reentry points to a career in mathematics. The consequences are more severe for women than for men since women are more likely to take a year or two off, for example, to have children.

As more and more men assume an equal share of domestic responsibilities, the more these problems will affect men as well as women. Increasingly, men face serious conflicts between personal and professional life. For this reason, the entire mathematical community should be concerned with these issues. In general, though, women still assume more of the domestic responsibilities and are still the ones that bear children. Traditionally, men who have pursued careers in mathematics have not had to choose between their professional life and personal life. Even now, as the traditional structure of ``wife at home, husband at work'' becomes rarer, we still do not expect a man to choose between his career and having a family. We should not ask a woman to make that choice either.

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