Let us say that you marry a fellow graduate student and both of you manage to complete your PhDs. (The fact that you have each other’s support may make that more likely.) Now it is time for you both to find jobs. First of all, there are very few jobs (see Reason 8), and the available jobs are probably nowhere near where you are now (see Reason 16). Having spent years of your lives devoting yourselves to your respective disciplines, you are both heavily invested in your fields. At the same time, neither of you is better qualified for anything other than being a professor (see Reason 29). You will be very lucky if either of you is offered an assistant professorship; you will be extraordinarily lucky if both of you are. In that unlikely event, if you are offered a job in Texas and your spouse is offered a job in Minnesota, which one of you is going to accept the position? Academic jobs are so precious that there are married couples who work hundreds of miles away from each other, but do you really want to do that? An alternative is to move with your spouse and hope that you will land a job within commuting distance of your new home. Another is for one of you to start from scratch in a new profession.
It's beside the point of this post, but I could so not be in a relationship with another academic (it would turn into a competition -- who published first? who got more awards? who got the better job?).
ReplyDeleteThe two-body problem, though, also applies to couples when one is not an academic. If you're headed to Nowheresville USA for that precious tenure-track job and there's nothing else in the town besides the college but a WalMart and a gas station, what's your partner with a background in computer engineering (or communications, or international relations, or some other profession) supposed to do?
It is worse when you're both academics, though...
The two-body problem is indeed a concern for many people. It was something that I certainly did not think about when I entered graduate school, but it is a concern for me now. What happens if one person is further along than the other, and must go on the job market a year or two before her spouse? Or, does one person purposely drag out her time in graduate school in order to finish and go on the job market at the same time as her spouse? There are some universities and colleges that do "spousal hire." In that case, if one person is offered a job and the university really wants to hire that person, they may be able to find a position at the university for her spouse as well. I have heard of several successful cases of happening, but I haven't heard of anyone being hired like this recently. It is so hard these days for universities to find the money to hire anyone, how would they find enough funds to hire two? What if the couple is not yet married? Spousal hire does not work in that case. It is even harder if the couple is in the same field, or related fields. It is a daunting problem that can create a lot of anxiety.
ReplyDelete"What if the couple is not yet married? Spousal hire does not work in that case."
DeleteNot true. I've seen it happen at my university with an unmarried, un-engaged heterosexual couple. I'm not saying it happens frequently, but it clearly does happen. Please cite the source of your information.
It recently happened at Yale.
DeleteThis is the first of all the comments that I completely agree with. It is already hard enough with the moving around for academic jobs and having a significant other moving around with you are realizing that your life paths just aren't the same. But to have two people in competition, not to mention two people who are likely in the same field, has been extremely stressful on some of my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how this can be a reason not to go to gradschool. I just don't get it....you can't plan to not fall in love with someone while in gradschool or to not date someone in your profession. This is a ridiculous reason.
ReplyDeleteA little off topic, but the idea of the spousal hire is just amazing to me. My university is so hard up it can barely pay the people that it wants to hire, much less their spouses as well. Does it ever still happen?
ReplyDeleteI think this is a good reason because it falls under the category of 'things a 22-year-old could never imagine while contemplating grad school.' But it will still present a serious issue for many by the time they are in their early thirties and looking for a job.
ReplyDelete@Anthea: If you didn't go to grad school, you wouldn't experience this problem. And believe me, it's a problem.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that this problem exists outside of academia, but it's particularly challenging in academia due to a shortage and nature of academic jobs. And I certainly agree with Anon 7:41 AM.
JMG, If I didn't go to graduate school why would I bother answering this question??? JMG - you are terribly presumptious! Yes, the two body problem is serious issue that univerities, as hiring entities, have to deal with and on the part of the couple concern it is traumatic. However, I think that making a decision on 20/20 hindsight of anything let alone how you think about life at the end of having lived through life at graduate school it just too hypothecal. The fact that a two body problem might occur [emphasis on the word might which is conditional] is a pathetic reason to decide not to go to graduate school. If we spent our lives saying well, I don't want to follow this career track since I might have problems at the end of having done some training/etc then there's the strong likelihood that we'd never do anything, take any risks, or do anything. It's a defeatist attitude. It's also a case of counting your chickens before they hatch.
ReplyDeleteI bet your oppinion will have changed at the latest when you turn 35.
DeleteNot all of the 100 Reasons are applicable to all people. This one is important for those for whom finding a partner and maintaining a relationship is as important -- if not more important -- than which career direction to go. I know quite a few people who met and married/moved in in grad school and were happy (from a relationship standpoint, at least) in grad school. When they finished and the two-body problem came up, they weren't so happy. They end up living far apart. Or, one ends up with a tenure-track job and the other adjuncts or stays home. If they have kids and are working in different locations, sometimes hundreds of miles away, the one who travels never sees the kids. The distance and the career dissatisfaction lead to other problems. Again, if a good family life is important to you over and above your career, then this Reason is certainly one to consider seriously. It's not a defeatist attitude to think about your priorities -- and to speculate about how they might evolve as you get older.
ReplyDelete@Anthea
ReplyDeleteOk, perhaps I was a bit too short with my opinion. I agree that the two-body problem on its own is a pretty bad reason for not pursuing graduate studies. Like you say, the fact it "might occur" is entirely hypothetical, and it would be extremely risk adverse not do something because of it. Obviously, life is all about taking risks, and looking at benefits and costs of those risks.
I would say that spending a decade or so of your life dedicated (professionally and perhaps emotionally) to becoming a professional in some area (academic or not) only to have that goal totally destroyed because you met someone, fell in love, and they got a job first is very disheartening. Someone in that position may even begin to feel angst and great resentment to their partner, and the relationship may turn sour, causing more problems. Of course, this is all hypothetical, but still quite serious. Combine several years of poverty, limited job options outside of your training, and the stresses of graduate school itself, and you don't have a pretty picture. Outside of academia, there's less of a chance of this happening (I'd say) and the economic consequences of marriage are less severe. It's something to keep in mind, and definitely something almost no one going to grad school is even vaguely informed of.
Full disclosure: I did a two year thesis-based MSc in Ontario, with two wonderful supervisors. I'm not working in industry in a field almost completely unrelated to my MSc training.
Be aware of what's important.
ReplyDeleteI met my wife in grad school -- Texas (she Astronomy, me Physics). She finished, i quit and picked up a computer background. I followed her to her first post-doc at UBC. But after a winter of house-husbanding got a job at Microsoft. Another year of commuter marriage and she came down, we bought the house, and immediately started on the kids. She did a little work at UW, but basically wanted to be with the kids.
I sit here, my oldest is off at UW, sampling various flavors of engineering trying to figure what suits her; boy is in his room working hard as usual, and my youngest (and goofiest) is next to me working on her English paper.
And nothing my wife did in Astronomy, or i did in Physics or at Microsoft (and i had a good career there with a lot of freedom and wrote a lot of code) ... nothing is remotely in the ballpark with the satisfaction we get from our kids.
This is the fundamental truth. And one which our media\culture hides from smart young people -- particularly young women -- with disastrous (personally and societally) results:
Nothing -- *nothing* -- is more important, more complicated, more satisfying than raising the next generation of human beings to carry on our civilization. Nothing.
Thank you Jim! This is a very wise and true comment you made.
DeleteJim, you're on the wrong blog, you need to be on - "100 Reasons To Have Kids, Written By Those Kind of Annoying Parents Who Go On And On About How Wonderful Kids Are To Anyone Within Earshot As If Having Kids Is The Be-All End-All To Life And As If It's Some Sort Of Project, Forgetting That However Good A Job You Do, Most People's Childhoods Aren't That Rosy What With School And Other Kids Being Mean, Etc. And That Plenty Of People Don't Or Can't Have Kids And Still Have Great Lives Anyway"
ReplyDelete@Jim
ReplyDelete"Nothing -- *nothing* -- is more important, more complicated, more satisfying than raising the next generation of human beings to carry on our civilization. Nothing."
...to you. Nothing is more important to you. Many, many people do not have any interest in raising kids, and don't consider it an important priority in their lives.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI thought your comments were warm and informative. Thank you for sharing.
Brian
Just to advocate for Jim a tiny bit, he has a point about raising kids being the most important thing we do. Because even if you don't have kids yourself, anything that you produce in your life is in some way or another for the benefit of *somebody's* kids.
ReplyDeleteNow, whether someone finds raising his or her own children satisfying is a completely separate issue, though.
"Nothing -- *nothing* -- is more important, more complicated, more satisfying than raising the next generation of human beings to carry on our civilization. Nothing."
ReplyDeleteI don't think raising kids is necessarily the most important thing... like say one guy spends his life finding a cure for cancer and finds it, but doesn't have kids, well then the lives he saves vs. the lives he could have created would be outnumbered, and his work would have a more lasting and widespread effect than if he'd spent the same time raising a kid or two.
As far as more complicated... not really, it seems almost everyone is able to do it to some degree, unlike something like rocket science or brain surgery where very few people have the technical knowledge and skill. It's probably one of the most exhaustive things if you're putting a lot into it I guess (but then probably not more so than say a voyage to Antarctica, etc.)
More satisfying... maybe for some, but given there are so many deadbeat dads, they obviously didn't think it was satisfying otherwise they'd put more into it. And some people spend their lives trying to be the best at something else or creating something else or figuring out something else, so they obviously find that more satisfying.
"This is the fundamental truth. And one which our media\culture hides from smart young people -- particularly young women -- with disastrous (personally and societally) results"
ReplyDeleteHere's a fundamental truth which graduate departments hide from smart grad students of all ages--particularly women--if you are a graduate student with caregiving responsibilities, you'll be lucky to get any sympathy from other grads/faculty/administration. Yes, there are exceptions, but if you're behind normative time because you've been taking care of others, you're probably still getting a nasty letter from your school's bureaucrats. When you wrangle over selecting discussion section times with 8 other TAs, they will not be impressed with your need for the conveniently scheduled sections so that you can take Mom or kids to the doctor, etc. I could go on, but won't.
And honestly, smart young women aren't being duped by "our media/culture" about the (alleged) rewards of parenthood. They know too well about the continuing wage gap, the sandwich generation (caring for aging parents and children simultaneously), how gender impacts working women in and outside of the academy. Calls for young women to rediscover the supreme satisfaction of childrearing sound alarmingly like a prevalent political agenda that at best doesn't further the conversation here.
Anonymous 12:19, I think that Jim's thoughtful comments apply to both men and women. Anyone can be distracted from the most fulfilling parts of life by a career. It's sad to realize that you've missed out when it's too late to do anything about it. The reality is that women have a shorter reproductive window, so it's something that they have to think about. If you have children (as it sounds like you do), then they mean more to you than your degree ever will. You're supremely fortunate, even if your department isn't very understanding of your situation.
ReplyDeleteMaturity helps you make these decisions. A two-way relationship is about figuring out what's best for both of you, not what's best for one or the other. My husband and I are in the humanities...we met in the first year of our Ph.D. programs, and we plan to take a job wherever one of us gets hired. If we get hired in different places, we'll choose the one job that puts us in a better position for raising our family and finding lifelong happiness. We're also highly qualified in the public sector due to our careers (I'm also a professional symphony musician and music teacher, while his degree also prepares him for jobs in museums or government positions)...so if one of us works part time as a sessional lecturer or in the public sector while the other goes tenure track, so be it!
ReplyDeleteAnd for those of you talking about competition, when you actually do get into a lifelong, loving relationship, it becomes very clear that your spouse's success is just as important as (or more important than) your own. You're in it together. Competition just isn't an issue when you find the right person.
@ Quincy:
ReplyDeleteI'm not critiquing the blogger's original post, which is sound. The two body problem is real and affects my life and career trajectory, as well as countless other academics.
My original post (Anon 12:19) was responding to the quote I cited, which, again, states, "This is the fundamental truth. And one which our media\culture hides from smart young people -- particularly young WOMEN (emphasis added)-- with disastrous (personally and societally) results." See how he singles out "particularly young women"? Along with other posters, I am responding to Jim, and his implicit assumptions: that young women are cultural dupes, that those of us who can't or don't procreate are damaging ourselves and society, creating, "disastrous (personally and societally) results," that children are inherently more important than other facets of life, etc. Yes, women know we have a shorter "reproductive window" than men. We know about mommy tracking and how a lack of state-sponsored child care can sink our careers. And, when we have reproductive control of our bodies, we make rational decisions about when and whether to have kids, despite these constraints. That is not to say that these constraints, as well as the less gendered ones mentioned in the blogger's original post don't warrant systematic change: clearly they do. What I'm objecting to here is the presumption of what my degree or family members might/should mean to me, the assumption that I am "supremely fortunate" because I have alluded to having caregiving activities (in the context of a hostile department no less), and most of all that kids are inherently more rewarding than work.
Jim: “Nothing -- *nothing* -- is more important, more complicated, more satisfying than raising the next generation of human beings to carry on our civilization. Nothing.”
ReplyDeleteI’m with you, Jim.
I never cured cancer—then again, neither has anyone else—but I did teach some 1,300 college students, and came up with some intellectual insights that no one previously had, and I’m presently busy raising one human being. I think I was an excellent teacher most of the time, and I hope that some of those old students of mine will, at some point, remember something I said or did. And yet, my present work of raising one human being is infinitely more important.
Anon: “As far as more complicated... not really, it seems almost everyone is able to do it to some degree, unlike something like rocket science or brain surgery where very few people have the technical knowledge and skill.”
What sort of mushy thinking is that? “To some degree”? I cook a mean grilled cheese sandwich. According to your logic, of lack thereof, that means that “to some degree,” I’m a chef.
So many academics’ hostility towards family life is one of academia’s dirty little secrets. Another one is how having a family is a perk for the tenured elites, but something the drones can hardly even dream about.
Whom do academics expect to “raise the next generation of human beings to carry on our civilization”? The tenured elites expect their illegal alien nannies to do it. The other hostiles, like some of the commenters on this thread, haven’t given it a minute’s thought. And not because they are too busy thinking about “rocket science”—it’s Jim and his wife, who are the scientists on this thread. If anything, it’s because they don’t think very deeply about anything. That’s another of academia’s dirty little secrets: The shallowness about life is too often matched by intellectual shallowness.
Nicholas Stix
Stay-at-home dad
What I have not seen, in any of the reasons posted so far, is mention of the damage that graduate study can do to existing marriages. In the four years that my husband spent in his doctoral program in the 1980s (yes, things move a little more quickly in performing-arts programs), we saw more marriages fail, and more ill-advised affairs, than in any four-year period in the 25 years since then. It was such a common phenomenon that even a physician whom I had occasion to consult at the time confidently predicted that my husband would leave me as soon as he had finished his degree. We're still married, but we've turned out to be in a minority, for sure.
ReplyDeleteEvery time the subject of academic life and parenting comes up (not just here but in the blogosphere generally), people get all hostile and defensive. Personally, I don't think it really helps the conversation much to be telling everyone else that your choices were just sooooo great that we should all be making the same ones -- especially when the conversation is primarily about the two-body problem rather than the joys of parenting per se.
ReplyDeleteWhat I hear when people say that parenting for them is the be-all and end-all of a fulfilling existence is cognitive dissonance, which (as a lot of you smart readers probably already know)is "a psychological defense we create to justify our choices and beliefs. In the case of parenthood, it can explain why parents continue to glorify parenthood, and think it is 'the' path to fulfillment in life, because otherwise they would have a hard time justifying their choice to have kids and would have to admit their not so positive feelings about this huge decision from which there is no turning back."
(read more at http://technorati.com/lifestyle/family/article/mind-games-that-make-for-happy/)
So, yeah, per my comment upthread, whether you want to be a parent or not (in conjunction with the two-body problem) is definitely something you should think about before embarking on that awesome journey towards a humanities Ph.D., but let's not confuse the advice "You should think about X" with "You should do X."
As Anon 11:39 implies, a lot of grad students and PhDs solve the two body problem easily--you just get rid of the second body. I know only two people whose relationships haven't imploded during grad school (yes, literally every other grad school friend has gotten divorced or otherwise ended their relationship). My friend who dropped out salvaged her relationship, and my partner and I were together for over a decade before I began and have somehow managed to stay married, though grad school has by far been the darkest chapter in our relationship.
ReplyDeleteAnd I became engaged during graduate school and am still with my husband today, but don't seem to have shone as brightly in my PhD as I could have done. I was too focused on him and I supported his career at the expense of mine, woke up, produced some good articles and it was too late. Maybe academics should be monks.
DeleteThis is Anon 11:39 again, and I'm sorry to hear that things are still as bad in the relationship department as they were in our day. Maybe if I'd been a grad student, too, our marriage couldn't have survived—-but he was the one with the ambitions, and I was willing to go along for the ride. His subsequent career has actually been far more stressful for both of us than his graduate-school years ever were, and I'm sure that won't make any current grad students who are reading this blog feel any better.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear it, Anon 11:39. Granted, my loathing for academia is at an all-time high right now, but I'm convinced that a lot of the relationship problems tha both grad students and profs suffer have more to do with the toxicity of academic culture than with the pressure itself. My husband had his own TV show for four years, and yes we fought on occasion, but mostly he just worked hard and long hours and then was tired. We figured it out, and he actually worked 14-16 hour days and weekends every week for more than three of those four years, but I don't remember him ever being nasty to me like I've been to him since I've been immersed in this toxic freak show. Those four years weren't super for our relationship, but they weren't damaging the way my grad school years have been.
ReplyDeleteOh, Jim. Jim! Women aren't media-dupes! Men who internalize media sexism sure are though, as illustrated by your oh-so-enlightening comment.
ReplyDeleteJim, your comment hit a bit too close to home for so many of the women reading this blog.
ReplyDeleteTheir growing conviction of the unfairness of life, their increasing anxiety about their career choices, their fading looks, their ability to snag a high-earning male, and their massive academic debt load, are all combined and focused by the rotten economy. They suppress their emotions (in typical female fashion) only to have them erupt when someone (you) says out loud what they know in their hearts is true.
I do feel sorry for them. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
As a high-earner with a great job, a gorgeous girlfriend, little debt, and all the children I desire, I have to say it's really not hard to understand why many women would get their hackles up at Jim's (heartwarming) story.
DeleteAfter all, most women have been hearing some form of "why bother with all this effort/work/study when as soon as you have children all you'll want to do is stay home and raise them" all their lives.
Heck, my grandfather tried to convince my family to pull me out of college because it was a waste of money to educate a woman. Fortunately for me, I was actually on scholarship and the university was less persuaded by his claim that educating me was a waste of money.
Anon 8:39, with the phrase "the toxicity of academic culture," you've hit the nail on the head. In academia, people's value systems are or become all topsy-turvy, they're encouraged to continue their misguided ways by professors with equally messed-up value systems, and it's hard for any graduate student to escape completely unscathed.
ReplyDeleteThe most soul-crushing, humiliating, negating experiences I have had in my adult life were all perpetrated by my fellow graduate students, my professors, or the officials at my (Ivy League) graduate school (which I still attend). And I shudder when I realize that I probably dealt blows here and there as well.
It's a difficult thing to capture, but there needs to be a post about this.
Being an academic in my chosen field and having a family and being married are all important to me. The two body problem has been devastating in terms of its negative impact on my life and happiness. The fact that my husband gets to be a professor and I don't when I am pretty darn good too academically has been the hardest thing to accept.
ReplyDeleteI've seen people who are willing to neglect their spouses and children get ahead at the expense of people who are not willing to live apart from their families. I see the two-body problem count against women a lot. The majority of adjuncts with PhDs are women and most of them have two-body problems or they would not be adjuncting.
ReplyDeleteDivorce is a Rampant Epidemic especially when the government & military (NATO) is behind it!
I went to a father’s group in Texas (just north of Fort Hood) where some ex-military west pointer gave some real eye-opening comments. He basically said that the current Divorce process, legislation, court system and military is all one scheme that was put into play around the early 1960‘s. It was put in place for the Vietnam War, that’s when the divorces started to sky-rocket across the country (Google statistics). That in addition, it was also designed to be one huge cash-cow to lure greedy lawyers to facilitate and destroy more families on the civilian side to get enough statistics to make it comparable to the military statistics. However the military numbers are still much higher. That is why they then modified the scheme to use on police nationwide to raise the civilian stats as most are ex-military and won’t suspect anything wrong.
It is designed to send “single” male soldiers without family responsibilities to war and deny ex-wives any long-term financial support that was initially and may still be coming from the military/ pentagon’s money pockets. This is why laws traditionally have been favoring women. Women are lured to divorce partners with both positive and negatives reinforcements. The positive is they get the kids, the house, money in many forms-child support etc thus they benefit in the short term. To the military, the soldiers wives are expendable as are the soldiers and even their children! Simply the less money the military spends on wives, kids, ex-soldiers, the medical bills etc, the more they have for their drones, guns, or bullets. The scheme is very very complicated but based on very slow very subtle psy-ops brainwashing tactics followed by Machiavellian divide and conquer restraining orders. He said that any Freedom of Information request will gradually reveal key pieces of data that when analyzed together with confirm all this. Talking about this among other soldiers would also reveal stuff, so they came up with “leave your family problems at home” and the “zero tolerance” to divorce and get the spouses or soldiers out of the service quickly before they talk and expose the scheme. Many times this leads to actual suicides or apparent “suicides” to silence those that know too much. This is also the reason why the Pentagon does not want to release documents related to divorce. Part of the even bigger Military-Industrial complex. Similar schemes used throughout the world pushed through United Nations facades.
Basically makes wives and soldier fight and hate each other. The scheme basically exploits women’s emotional traits to spread itself to other victims. The media contributes to the fear mongering and makes things worst. Fear (PTSD etc) makes women fear for their safety or some play the helpless damsel in distress thus they then go pleading to the oh-so-willing authorities who provide them with military issued cookie cutter divorce packets to take to a civilian lawyer. They do this to hide where the process initially starts.