Full-time PhD and 3 children??

[stirringbeast]

Hi, I would like some opinions on this please....I am 36 and have 3 dcs aged 4, 7 and almost 10. I have been a SAHM since my first dd was born, it was what I really wanted and I am lucky that my DH earns a very good salary (but also works long hours and sometimes travels).

Although I've very much enjoyed my time at home, I've been feeling more and more restless and discontented recently. Our youngest is just off to school and I feel this is the time for me to move on a bit. So, I've always wanted to do a PhD. I think I would really enjoy a career in academia. I have been accepted for a PhD starting in the Autumn, but now I'm panicking. I decided I had nothing to lose by applying, but now I have to decide whether I'm really going to do it.

I'm worried about the effect on my dcs. I have always been around for them, taking them to school, clubs, playdates etc. I will now need to use after-school care so no more of that. I'm also having a confidence crisis over whether my tired old brain can read anything other than recipe books. And I worry it's just taking on too much and I'm going to run myself into the ground.

The uni won't agree to part-time so it's this or nothing (well, not nothing, but other options like getting a different job are not what I really want).

Has anyone done anything like this? Am I crazy to contemplate it? One minute I think it's a ridiculous idea and the next minute I tell myself that loads of mums are working full-time and coping.

Thanks for reading.

You are not crazy to contemplate it.

As you say, loads of mums work full time; this is no different, and your children are all school age now anyway.

If you are worried that your brain is going to mush, it's a sure sign you are ready to rejoin the adult world!

Remembering my doctorate it should be fine. Do use after school clubs if you can, maybe hire someone to pick them up from school. But doing my doctorate would have been far more child friendly than the PGCE I'm doing now.

Thanks for the replies. I'm feeling quite positive!

However I still can't imagine having to sort all the dcs' lives as well as basically full-time work - I seem to spend my whole time doing things for/with them as it is. I've been totally focused on the family for the last 10 years. It's going to be a huge shock for them - definitely easier for them if I found some part-time work which would not be so all-consuming. But very excited to think about being in a university environment again!

DH does what he can to help but he has a very busy job so I don't think I could rely on him picking them up etc. He leaves the house 7.30am and is usually back around 6.30pm. He is also away about one week per month.

It's the little one I think it would be hardest on as she's tired after school.

They will adjust. It'll probably be more of a shock for you having been home for ten years rather than for them!

Children are pretty resilient and adaptable - as long as they are loved and properly looked after. And it will be good for them to see you getting out and using your intellect and qualifications. It won't mean that you stop doing things with/for your family - it will simply mean that there is another important dimension in your life too.

Thanks violet.

I do feel like I should go for it. I know there will be difficulties but I feel so excited about doing something for myself again. And it's true that the kids will see that, maybe not straight away, but if I'm fed up I get grumpy with them which is not good for anyone.

Could be a shock for DH too who is used to me being very domestic! Hmm....

Hello SB. I am a mother of 4 and have been doing a PhD in a 5-star rated university department. It is very hard. Far, far harder than I ever thought.

Academia is a dog-eat-dog world, where mainly men enjoy cutting down their peers. Research is a very personal thing and so you deliver your paper and then everyone enjoys criticising it. You have to be very robust in your responses. It's a very masculine experience. I am doing an arts/social science PhD. The scientists are more consensual as they work in teams.

The Senior Common Room is very lonely for a mother. The lecturers and research students do not enjoy talling about anything normal and spend their time point scoring - it's a strange experience and not very pleasant.

Most of the PhD students are in their early 20s and so, socially, you will be completely different. This is isolating but manageable.

The PhD is very difficult. You have two advisors, who send you up research cul-de-sacs and so there is a lot of time wasting. You spend hours and hours on the research for very little reward. Everyone is out to criticise you. If you have a supportive advisor, that is great but then the advisor him or herself is up for scrunity and sometimes can be given a rough ride if you are not up to scratch.

You are expected to conform to a standard (e.g. academic language) and if you vary from the norm, it is a struggle. Research goes in fashions and if you are not fashionable, things are more difficult.

You have acres of paper and, worse still, Internet sites to plough through and just when you think that you are getting somewhere, the goalposts change. All this is very difficult when you are looking after young children as well.

If I had my time all over again, I would sign up for a PhD with the Open University because they are used to students with different lifestyles.

When I embarked on my PhD, I really thought that I could do it. I have close family at high level university positions, I have a good degree and an active brain. Nothing prepared me for the uphill task. It is do-able but you have to be strong and very committed.

In my university, many many PhD students fall by the wayside. Mature students rarely get through the hoops. My best friend, who is a scholar and has no children to distract her, submitted her thesis, had a viva and has been told that she has one year to resubmit it. So even when you get nearly to the end, goalposts are moved.

I am an optimist and I believe in following dreams. So go for it but be aware that it is a very bumpy and arduous route to take.

I suppose a lots depends on what your subject is, how motivated you are and how much support you receive from your supervisor.I completed my PhD more than twenty years ago when I had my first child who didn't seem to realise that she was supposed to sleep occasionally. My topic was a humanities subject which I found (and still find) exciting. I worked in various UK departments where women were very much in the minority but my male colleagues were very normal, supportive, talked about their children, what was on TV ...oh and also about their research interests. It was a lively, stimulating environment-hard work, especially after my second child was born and inherited his sister's aversion to sleep. My doctorate was on Spanish history and my DD is now studying Spanish at uni and DS is studying history.
I would say that if you're really interested in the subject, you should go for it.Children are resilient and, although they may have a moan if you're not on call all the time,in time you'll find that they'll be very very proud of you.

Have name changed for this thread so I can be open!

I should be completing my full time, funded PhD with the Open University this autumn. I am hoping to get an extension as a number of things have upset my planning! It will also mean I am at home to see my youngest son through the transition to secondary school .

I am funded - I think unless very well off this is essential. I get £13,000 per year free of tax via a scholarship. I also get reduction on Council Tax etc as a full time student. Why essential; I have spent a fortune on books when I do not want to travel into the Library (I have an 85 mile one way trip for Uni!) and computer equipment to work from home.

I have completed nearly all my work at home and travel into the Uni very very infrequently. I did the MRes year and had to be in two days a week for that but now only go in every three months or so!

This has huge child care advantages (mine are now 16, 12 and 11) but also means I have to be very determined to get work done at home. I should be writing up now (although I have not finished data analysis by a long way) and find cleaning the oven has never been as attractive!

I love the work but lack the focus at present. There is always so much to distract, I have had two major operations during this time, have been confined to a wheelchair for three months, have had close family (including children) ill and in hospital for sometimes extended periods of time. It has not been straightforward at all.

Having said that I have no doubt whatsoever I will complete. It is not fashionable to acknowledge this but an awful lot of people on so called full time PhDs actually also work part or even full time (yes officially not allowed with scholarships but happens, a lot). In my opinion you do not need to work full time at it - although I think I might need to work full time properly for a few months now to get sorted .

Mine is a mixed methods making analysis complicated, using a narrative framework to understand a variety of data including quantitative survey data. I have just said this as it makes a difference I think. Of course if your PhD will involve lab work rather than field work you will need to be in the lab and might find you do longer hours at a time, although on the other hand they might be more predictable and therefore more amenable to planning than some of mine.

Would I do it again; no question. Effectively I have been paid to stay at home with my boys and yet have access to some of the finest writing and brains in the country. i have also really enjoyed travelling to International Conferences!

Will it help me get employment; no I think it will be very hard in this economic climate (and I was a Senior Lecturer pre children). In fact I am thinking of a career change...with yet more studying I have yet to work out how I will fund myself for this though!

I will keep this name available and answer anything I can. Overall, I would say go for it! Just make sure you set up, and stick to, working/writing routines!

Earthmother, Yourbrilliantcareer and Forthisone thank you all for your very informative responses. You are all helping me to think realistically about this opportunity.

I would be in a humanities/social science department. There would be a fair amount of lab work so I will need to travel to the university most days, although not sure about details as yet. I'm lucky that the position is funded. I really don't think I could do the majority from home - home is domestic to me and I suspect I would lack focus unless in a "work" environment. However I'll have to review this as time goes on, but at the moment I'm assuming I'll need some kind of after-school care.

Good luck to all of you who are still completing....

I did a funded PhD in an Arts subject straight after graduating. It took me three years, and was hard slog in a reading-and-writing kind of way.

I would not contemplate doing one now that I have children! Mine are 6 and 8, and there's no way on earth that I could fit it in around school events, 21 weeks of school holidays, etc, etc - quite apart from cooking, washing, shopping, gardening, occasionally hoovering, etc. It may be that I don't have the requisite self-discipline (though completing a PhD in three years suggests that I am generally ok at time management).

Beyond the PhD, I would think very, very hard about a job in academia. Academic jobs are very hard to find, and you need a publications list a mile long to be considered for most of them: a PhD is just the start of it, and you will be up against megastar (often male) twentysomethings whose ambition is a professorship before they're 30, and who've got all the publications to prove it. Plus I resigned from an academic job - partly because of the chauvinistic, bullying work culture, but also because it was completely incompatible with family life...

Last paragraph from Vic well worth taking note of. For the rest I guess it depends how you feel about housework. My older kids are very proud of what I am trying to do and helped a lot; with technical support (!) as well form the eldest

Still glad I am doing it though. I have met some fab people and had a great time!

Forthisone, having older children might help, in that they are presumably less completely egocentric than littlies (please say they are!!) I laughed at the technical support, too. I wrote my PhD on an Amstrad word processor in the days before 'normal' people had PCs!!

I do admire you enormously, forthisone. I think you will have achieved something for you all to be proud of.

(I still wouldn't recommend academia to anyone, though!!)

Can I just add something? Hope it's not too late. I haven't read all the responses above, but here's my experience. I did my Phd before I had children, but I did work part-time throughout. So although it was officially full-time, I probably never worked more than three days a week on it, and often only devoted two days. To add to that, I was in a phase of my life when I was going out (and sleeping in) a lot. I also took six weeks out two years in a row to go travelling. Let's just say I wasn't totally focused. Anyway, I completed it in in the three years, it passed, no problems. In case this is also relevant, I was at one of the UK's leading universities, so I would say standards weren't totally lax. It was a social science subject.

I would say that doing a Phd is hard work, but it is also incredibly (I found!) flexible. The big mistake I made was not to have published during my Phd - and that would have been more achievable if I'd been more focused and spent more time. Now that I am a research fellow, I am desperately trying to make up for that. So I am working hard but it is still more flexible than any other job I could possible imagine. Nobody knows from one day to the next where I am, what I'm doing, all they care about is outputs. That has advantages and disadvantages. As others have said, it is a hugely competitive environment. I also often feel very isolated, but I actually prefer to work on my own so that's manageable on the whole. I've had to toughen up in order to give and receive criticism. It is not on the whole a supportive environment. However, when it's going well, it's great, you get massive sense of achievement and just fulfillment from getting to study a subject you find (hopefully) really really interesting. I am terrified about whether I will get a job at the end of this contract. But if I don't I will be glad that I tried.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

stirringbeast, I did my PhD before having children. It was in science, so not exactly the same as the field you are in, but I would like to make a comment about work life AFTER a PhD.

I'm currently working as an academic scientist full-time and I have 1 pre-school DS. My contract will finish this year and I haven't been able to secure any funding for any further work because there really isn't that much funding out there for anyone researching anything that isn't 'economically beneficial' . Most research positions are short-term and permanent positions are few and far between (and incredibly competitive). I have had to move to 2 different countries in the last few years just to find work in academia. This is fine as long as you don't have kids to uproot, but the thought of another move is really bothering me this time because I have DS. I'm in a really male-dominated field and though my colleagues are friendly and I like them they would sell their own grandmother to get funding. You also have the awkward situation that you are directly competing with colleagues for the same money.

I love doing research, but in the current economic situation there really aren't many jobs or funding opportunities out there for academics. I have no idea what I'm going to do next and unemployment it looming....

I did my PhD before having my 3 kids and it was an excellent experience. However it is also quite a lonely one ... I always say that it is more about perseverance than intelligence! I imagine that the first couple of years would be great for you but the writing up might prove hard ... however your kids will be a bit older by then. Different departments have very different feels about them. I was lucky with my PhD experience.

However I would second the fact that it is not necessarily a great way to get employment later... no jobs and a lot of effort to get funding.