For me having kids was more important than having a career. This is probably how I was raised. That's why I dropped out of school (as an abd) when married my husband. I think I was not that serious about studying when I had the "husband itch". I felt like I needed to get married in order to have kids.

Your generation is probably different and you may not have the pressure on you to create a family that young.

I still kept the desire to be in academia and was lucky to land the job at NEIU when I was 9 months pregnant with my 2nd daughter.

When I went back to school to finish my doc (and redo the whole gamut of exams and courses for a cs PhD instead of math PhD) I already had my 3rd daughter and a pressure from my dept. If it were not for the pressure I probably would have taken longer and maybe missed the opportunity to finish my thesis on time.

For me I think it was also the shame of not finishing after for years I was telling everyone I was working on my doc.

My husband those years was very supportive. I remember spending the entire weekend in the lib and he took care of the children.
But during the week he wasn't there...Travelling for his job. So that was very hard...Cooking, bathing the kids and keeping a full teaching load. I think we, the motivated kind of women, can do easily 2 things (house and carreer). But it's a super woman who can juggle 3 things...

So my advice to you is to do 2 things at once but don't rush into the 3rd. But don't wait too long for that 1st child, if you want one. Tenure clock may have to slow down for the biological clock. And that's the price that many women pay. I would have liked to apply for a better university, be more of a hard research person, publish more. But I enjoyed my babies and i wouldn't give up on that most wonderful experience.

I have a friend who went for the career more than me. She had 4 children (2 +2 at different times). The 1st 2 were raised by her parents. The latter 2 by a nannie. She's married to a successful doctor.
But she was not a mom like I was. I think she missed on life in that respect. But I cannot judge her. We are each so different.

Taken from a letter to female student protege.

--

Dr. Netiva Caftori Computer Science dept & Women's Studies program
Northeastern Illinois Univ. http://www.neiu.edu/~ncaftori, www.netiva.net,
5500 N. St. Louis Ave. www.netiva.org email: n-caftori@neiu.edu
Chicago, IL 60625-4699 Tel: 773/442-4718 Fax: 773/442-4900