Taking a ‘Fertility Friendly’ Track?

It takes hard work to get a professional degree or a doctorate from Harvard.

It’s even harder to do it while serving as a House residential tutor.

Imagine juggling all that with a newborn baby in your arms.

Irene L. Newton, a tutor in Winthrop House who is expecting a child in August, says that Harvard University Health Services (UHS) doctors were surprised by her choice to have a child.

“When I went to UHS, to get confirmation from the doctor on my pregnancy,” says Newton, “the doctor told me ‘the results are positive. Is this a planned pregnancy?’”

“People have the impression that you shouldn’t do it, that you should wait. They doubt your judgment,” she adds.

But Newton, a doctoral candidate in organismic and evolutionary biology, figures that she would likely be well into her thirties by the time she’ll have a secure academic post. And that might be “too late” for childbearing, she says.

“We might have ended up having to use fertility treatments if we were to wait,” continues Newton. “You can take an extra year in graduate school, so we thought it would be a good time.”

“My husband and I are both on an academic track, which is a fertility unfriendly track,” Newton says. “If you want to have any kids at all, there isn’t really any safe time,” continues Newton. “It is going to weigh down your academic career.”

PRESSURE AND SUPPORT

Grad students who are pregnant or have young children say they’re concerned about the way their professors and peers will react to their parenthood decisions.

“It is often fellow classmates who put pressure on you,” says Adams House residential tutor Lilly B. Piper. “Once they find out you are a parent, they question your commitment level,” she says. “They expect less of you and think that you won’t be able to pull your weight on group projects and assignments.”

According to Newton, however, as much criticism as parents might face from their peers, the opinion of a tutor’s academic adviser is often the most important.

“Telling advisers you are pregnant is a really hard thing because they think you are going to leave the program,” says Newton. “I made an outline of all the projects I was doing, how I was going to complete them, and she has really been very supportive about it.”

Newton’s adviser is Colleen Cavanaugh, the Jeffrey professor of biology and an associate of Leverett House.

“I empathized about the timing overlap of graduate school with a woman’s biological clock—and...emphasized the health advantages for younger pregnancies,” says Cavanaugh.

Sharon L. Howell, a tutor in Adams House with two children, says her professors likewise told her that it might be a wiser choice to have a child while working toward a doctoral degree, rather than later on, when she might be a tenure-track faculty member facing stringent deadlines.

“My advisers were the ones who encouraged me to have kids at this point,” says Howell. “One of them had had her kids while school, and she thought it was actually a good time because you don’t have the pressure of a tenure track. You have much more flexibility, especially without the time constraints.”

Still, time constraints might feel binding for doctoral candidates who are simultaneously serving as students, teachers, tutors, and parents.

“Time management is the most delicate part,” says Piper. “For me, the decision was to make my family my extracurricular.”

Howell seconds these notions.

“The job as tutor can consume as much time as you give it,” says Howell. “We could become ensconced in the dining hall, so we have to be really disciplined.”

Expecting their first child, Newton and her husband hope that their child’s birth will not diminish their contributions to Winthrop House life.

“We don’t want to be worse tutors,” she says.

—PATRICK S. LAHUE