Deciding to Have Children

I just read an article about making the decision to have children (see here). The article discussed several considerations including those that are financial, emotional and biological. The article also discussed the career-related considerations that particularly affect women.

While I know that women who want a career and a family obviously must think about how the responsibility of a child will mesh with their career progress, this article struck something with me. The article mentioned some women who didn’t have children because they didn’t see how it would fit in with their career. If women feel that they might have to forgo children in order to have a career, isn’t there something wrong in the world?

I know I did think about my career in deciding to have kids. I don’t think I thought seriously about kids until I was in graduate school. After I started my classes, I knew that I didn’t want to have kids until I made it through my classes. I knew that once I was working on my dissertation, I would have more flexibility to manage a baby.

However, I did not think about the long-term effects of children on my career. If I didn’t’ have children, I would likely be in a tenure track position at a university. Instead, I have pieced together a mish-mashed career of teaching, consulting and writing. However, instead of feeling like I gave up a career for kids, I feel that having kids motivated me to pursue a more interesting and fulfilling career path than I would have otherwise.

So while I in no way advocate jumping into parenthood without a thought, I do believe we think too much about finding the right time to have children. There is no right time. I think you should have kids when you want, and then figure out how to make your career work around them.