Nearly four out of five (79%) graduate student parents said that parenting had slowed their progress toward their degree or had led them to make sacrifices in their degree program. The experiences of fathers and mothers were different in different programs: among professional students, more fathers (79%) than mothers (71%) reported slowed progress, but among PhD candidates, more mothers (84%) than fathers (78%) reported slowed progress (Table 48). Graduate student parents reported some benefits of parenting while in graduate school: about 70% said that their parenting was benefited by a flexible work schedule and that parenting made them more focused and efficient in their work (Table 48). Overall, however, parenting while in graduate school is hard. Compared to nonparents, parents were less satisfied with the amount of time they had to work toward their degree, do housework, and sleep, and they were much less satisfied with the amount of time they had for themselves. For all of these measures, mothers were less satisfied than fathers with their available time. Not surprisingly, graduate student parents were almost twice as likely as nonparents to report high stress levels (Tables 43, 49). One mother described her experience of the conflicts between graduate school and parenting: To be a good student in my department, you need to be involved. But working 20 hours per week and having responsibility for a child makes it very hard to be involved in student organizations, take internships (they don’t pay enough to cover day care), go out of town to conferences, etc. I love my daughter and wouldn’t trade her for anything, but having her while in grad school has meant that I have not been able to be the student I wanted to be.
– female, non-international doctoral student in a non-STEM field
Despite the challenges facing graduate student parents, many students feel that graduate school is as good—or bad—a time as any to have children. We asked students what they thought was the optimal time to have children: half said that the best time is after establishing a career, but one third said that the best time is before establishing a career, and 14% said that when it comes to career planning, there is never a good time to have children (Table 50). Women felt the conflict between career planning and family planning most acutely. More than twice as many women (19%) as men (8%) said that when it comes to navigating a career, there is never a good time to have children. The difference between women and men was especially acute among doctoral students, and even more acute among PhD candidates: 31% of women PhD candidates said there is never a good time to have kids, compared to 9% of men PhD candidates. Overall, two-thirds (66%) of male doctoral students but only half (52%) of female doctoral students were confident that they would be able to have kids and succeed at work. However, two-thirds of the women we surveyed did still plan to have children at some point, and even among women PhD candidates, 70% anticipated having children despite their sense of the potential career costs (Tables 50, 51). How is the university supporting graduate student parents? The most concrete way is through its Child Development Center: approximately one-tenth of parents with children who require daycare use the Child Development Center. The vast majority (87%) of students with children in the Child Development Center are satisfied with its quality, but many students were unable to use it due to lack of availability (Table 52).
REPORT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN GRADUATE SCHOOL CLIMATE STUDY
47