@reshetima
I totally get the points about academic careers being a vocation (though that can be an excuse for absurdly overpaid vice-chancellors to reduce academic pay and conditions over time - we're not in it for the money apparently
), but what we're saying from the coal-face of academia is that most PhD graduates today haven't got any prospect for even that sort of vocational career that takes you to the lofty heights of the House of Lords or whatever. It's all very well not minding short-term contracts in your 20s, but if you're 35 and cannot get a mortgage, or contemplate starting a family, than the vocation may not be worthwhile after all.
Yes. Thank you! That is what I was trying, obviously very clumsily, to say.
I did a PhD with no expectation of a starry career; I just thought I would like to teach or teach and research, and I put the work in. I would continue taking short-term contracts if I had a reasonable expectation of getting them year on year, without too much unpaid time between - but this is no longer a realistic expectation in History. There are so many of us who have had really quite prestigious postdocs and PhDs who simply, literally, cannot find any teaching job in academia, including hourly paid teaching. At that point, whether it's a vocation doesn't come into it.
I think the overriding temptation if you're starting a PhD, like the OP's DC, is to think 'oh, it'll be fine, I'm sensible, I will have alternatives to an academic career in mind and won't get too invested'. But then, you land a fellowship at Oxbridge or a Leverhulme grant, or you become a co-director of a big centre, and you feel you've hit the jackpot and you'll surely get a permanent job, so it's worth it to keep trying and putting up with those short term contracts and unpaid gaps. And it should be worth it, but at the moment, it is not.