Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
The Graduate Adviser

When Your Graduate Students Have Babies

Should advisers keep silent or raise the family issue early on?

By Leonard Cassuto September 2, 2014
Careers - Student With Baby
Zsolt Botykai / Creative Commons

More than two dozen doctoral students have chosen me as their dissertation adviser over the years, but only one ever interviewed me for the job. Let’s call her Diana. She and I knew each other already, of course. She had taken one of my courses and done wonderfully well. I was excited at the prospect of working with her.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

More than two dozen doctoral students have chosen me as their dissertation adviser over the years, but only one ever interviewed me for the job. Let’s call her Diana. She and I knew each other already, of course. She had taken one of my courses and done wonderfully well. I was excited at the prospect of working with her.

One moment stands out from our conversation. I was telling Diana that she would be the CEO of her own dissertation—and of her whole graduate education—and that I would do my best to support her and guide her through the decisions that she would have to make over the coming years. “You may choose to start a family while you’re in graduate school,” I said to Diana, “or you may not. Whatever your decision, my job will be to support you and help you reach your goals.”

I saw that comment register on Diana’s face. A few days later, she officially chose me as her adviser.

Diana told me a few years later that my willingness to raise the question of children had helped her make up her mind. I try to initiate that sort of honest exchange with advisees from the start because I believe that I have to. The length of graduate school, coupled with where it usually falls in students’ lives, makes raising the issue a necessity. Average time-to-degree for a Ph.D. in the humanities stands at about nine years in the United States. That’s a staggering and disgraceful span, but it’s also a reality. If someone starts graduate school right after college—which I do not recommend, by the way—then she will finish in her 30s. People have important life decisions to make during that time, and it’s artificial to pretend otherwise, not to mention ethically questionable.

There has been much salutary discussion recently about how graduate students who want to have families should confront those logistical difficulties and do what’s right for themselves. Amen to that. But that conversation—started, I should note, by graduate students—generally avoids the question of what the adviser should do when graduate students face those life questions. It’s as if there’s an implicit assumption that advisers, acting out of either malice or ignorance, will sabotage their students’ best-laid family plans.

For my own part, I believe that most advisers mean well. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know what to do.

The life decisions that my advisees face, including whether (or when) to have children, ought not to be any of my business. That’s essentially what I told Diana. Of course, I could have said nothing at all about it. One might argue that keeping silent would have been the best way to show that such things are not my affair. But such a passive approach seems wrong, and the reason has a lot to do with the shape of the adviser-student relationship.

I chose to speak up because, like it or not, I play a role in my graduate students’ whole lives, not just the dissertation part. Diana depended on me in a way that was professional and personal at the same time. Her thesis—and her long preparation for the job market, including the familiar decisions about what to publish and how to balance article and dissertation writing—took up a large chunk of her time. So my actions as her dissertation director affected her whole life, not just her thesis.

Acknowledging that fact is part of my job as a student’s adviser. Just as second-wave feminists recognized that the personal and the political could not be separated, graduate advisers should likewise accept the inextricability of the personal and the professional. If I fail to recognize that personal decisions are marbled together with professional ones (by, for example, saying nothing about the possibility of children), I’m not making those personal issues go away. I’m just avoiding them. Moreover, students like Diana wouldn’t know the reason for my silence, and so questions would still hang suspended between us.

Thus a paradox: Even though Diana’s decision about whether to have children was none of my business, I had to make it my business to tell her so. That’s because my support is important to her emotional well-being and therefore to her professional progress. It’s a sorry statement about the professional world of graduate school that I have to go out of my way to state something about someone else’s personal life that ought to be obvious, but the situation is hardly unique. Other professions in the United States are likewise unevolved. The only difference may be that we professors think that we’re more progressive than we actually are, at least in this area.

ADVERTISEMENT

Diana later described my statement of support as “contractual.” That may sound dry and businesslike, but it’s exactly what I’m looking for. My professional commitment to support Diana’s personal decisions cements the relationship between us in a way that is both professional and personal.

Diana went on to have two children, one on each side of a dissertation fellowship that she won. This past summer she defended her excellent thesis, one of the best I’ve advised. She plans to test the academic job market this fall. Her story isn’t over, of course, nor is my part in it. But I believe that neither of us harbors any significant regrets about how we’ve together shaped the professional—and personal—arc she’s chosen.

The choices now before Diana—and many other graduate students—are polarized in ways that most of us take for granted. The world of professors’ jobs is split between “serious,” all-consuming, tenure-track jobs and poorly paid, contingent adjunct work.

That split is thoroughly gendered. The recent and already influential book Do Babies Matter?, by Mary Ann Mason, Nicholas H. Wolfinger, and Marc Goulden (Rutgers, 2013), unveils a disturbing picture of gender and family in the ivory tower. The authors found that women make up a majority of adjunct and other part-time faculty members, and that mothers of young children tend to remain locked in second-tier positions or leave academe altogether. Those who aspire to tenure-track jobs are statistically very likely to be passed over. Thus, fewer women than men occupy the tenure-track ranks, and the women are less likely than their male colleagues to be married and to have children. In effect, men get rewarded economically for having children, while women pay a price. Consequently, even though women make up a majority of the faculty in many fields (including Diana’s and mine), the implicit professorial stereotype continues to be a man with children and a wife at home to care for them.

ADVERTISEMENT

Professors mostly lean left, so I doubt that many of us are comfortable supporting a retrograde system that treats our graduate students so badly, but we do. We have to change it not only administratively but also at the ground level of the adviser-student relationship itself.

“Meet your students where they are” may be a pedagogical cliché, but it applies here. You don’t have to teach or advise graduate students to know that they don’t all have the same talents. That’s obvious. But they don’t all have the same professional aims, either, and that’s less obvious because most graduate education is designed as though they did. Not all graduate students want to be professors. And some of those who do also want to become parents.

There’s plenty that advisers can do to help graduate students who decide to become parents. Telling them that it’s OK, however silly it may feel to say so out loud, is important. But it’s only a first step. Advisers can also help by alerting students to any university benefits available to them, such as parental leave. (You might think that students would be aware of such things, but that’s not always the case. I recently delighted a pregnant graduate student—not Diana—simply by alerting her to the possibility of maternity leave. It hadn’t occurred to her because neither the program nor the university did enough to make her aware of such entitlements. And the authors of Do Babies Matter? make clear that such scenarios are typical.)

Graduate students make life-altering decisions and balance competing responsibilities on the long road to their degrees. Advisers need to be aware of those personal pressures and make a point of raising them, even if—perhaps especially if—their advisees don’t. Parenting is only a case in point. The larger point is that graduate education needs to shed its one-mold-fits-all design. And advising, if it’s to be worthy of the name, must avoid the dogmatic form that follows such inflexible design.

Treat graduate students as adults with lives, suggests Bruce M. Shore in his valuable new book, The Graduate Advisor Handbook (Chicago, 2014). Advisers who don’t acknowledge the personal aspects of their students’ lives are (and here’s that paradox again) acting unprofessionally. We need to support our students as they seek their own kinds of lives—and the best way to help them take the measure of their whole lives is to reconcile the personal and the professional.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
cassuto_leonard.jpg
About the Author
Leonard Cassuto
Leonard Cassuto is a professor of English at Fordham University who writes regularly for The Chronicle about graduate education. His newest book is Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, from Princeton University Press. He co-wrote, with Robert Weisbuch, The New Ph.D.: How to Build a Better Graduate Education. He welcomes comments and suggestions at cassuto@fordham.edu. Find him on X @LCassuto.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin