untitled

CHAPTER 8 • PARENTHOOD & SCIENCE CAREERS 83

make the importance of everything else fade

in comparison.

Simultaneously building a career and rais-

ing a family demands tradeoffs among time,

money and intimacy. For example, parents

may wish to be the one to take their children to

the pediatrician or participate in school field

trips. However, if others do the laundry

and/or grocery shopping, there is little emo-

tional “expense” to the family. Invest in the

best possible childcare and homecare you can

find. Even if one entire income is devoted to

these needs in the early years, it should be con-

sidered an investment in career and family.

Work hard, long and efficiently when pos-

sible in order to be free of guilt when the chil-

dren need you. Conversely, go on every field

trip you can so when you can’t, you won’t

hear, “but Mom, you never come!” Try to

avoid regularly constraining both ends of the

workday. Many partners develop a pattern

whereby one goes to work early, even before

the children wake up, while the other gets the

children to school or daycare before going to

work. The partner on the early shift may be

able to get home correspondingly early, and

supervise homework while cooking dinner,

allowing the late shift partner to work into

the evening. In this way, each can take advan-

tage of precious quiet work time, while max-

imizing the hours in the day that children can

enjoy parental attention.

All parents are anxious to maximize time

with their children. Scientists may be more

anxious than most, because time is particu-

larly precious, and maybe because anxiety is

in their nature. Here are some nuts-and-bolts

suggestions from one mother’s thirty child-

years of experience:

• If just those and all those for whom you are
  directly responsible (typically children and
  spouse) are at home, don’t answer the
  phone. That’s why God invented voice
  mail. There’s nothing that can’t wait. An
  involved conversation easily derails an
  activity or conversation.


• Eat dinner together every possible night.
  This may mean late dinners and/or resum-
  ing work (preferably from home) after chil-
  dren are in bed. As my grandfather the Rabbi
  used to say, “there’s no greater blessing than
  eight [or ten or six] feet under the table.”


• Eliminate music, telephone or other dis-
  tractions when your children are in the car.
  The conversation it can inspire is amazing.
  A typical moment: total silence from your
  five-year-old for three blocks, followed by a
  voice from the backseat: “when people die,
  the world still stays here... right?”

“Quality time” is defined by a

common focus and the opportu-

nity for satisfying conversation.

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CELL BIOLOGY

If those for whom you are

directly responsible (typically

children and spouse) are at

home, don’t answer the phone.

That’s why God invented

voice mail.

As my grandfather the Rabbi

used to say, “there’s no greater

blessing than eight [or ten or

six] feet under the table.”