Parenting & PhD – Struggle or symbiosis?
By Leonie Hartl (Vice-chair of the Association of Amsterdam UMC PhD Candidates, ASAP) & The UMC Doctoral School
PhD candidates in their 20s and 30s do not only stand at the beginning of their academic career but also, often find themselves planning a family with their partners. Two major projects you might say, both of which require 100% commitment for a considerable amount of time. At times, the thought of raising a toddler while your PhD actually already consumes more time that you would like, can be daunting. But the two can go hand in hand. You can pursue an academic career whilst building a family and you will not be the first one to do so. In fact, your time as a PhD candidate might be one of the most suited points in your career to have children. You will hardly ever be as flexible again with regards to your working hours and location as you are during your PhD. Naturally, not all babies are meticulously planned by their parents - but there are some steps you can take to prepare. Below, we have summarized the experience and some advice from PhD parents to help you make a decision on whether you want to start a family during your PhD and if so, what steps need to be considered from your employer’s perspective.
Maternity Leave
At the Amsterdam UMC, the pregnant parents are entitled to a total of 16 weeks of paid leave, receiving their regular salary. Of these, 4-6 weeks are the pregnancy leave which are to be taken before the birth date. The following maternity leave will then be 10-12 weeks, depending on the duration of the pregnancy leave. Should the pregnant parent give birth after the due date, the days between the due date and the date of delivery are added to the total of 16 weeks paid leave. If you want to extend this leave, your supervisor might suggest to gather your remaining holidays to stay home for another month. Not all PIs have enough funding to extend a paid leave beyond the granted 16 weeks. On the other hand, you might want to extend your PhD trajectory by a few weeks to make up for the time you lost from your project during pregnancy and maternity leave. Also here, it depends on your PI whether s/he can and wants to extend the duration of your PhD and whether s/he can pay you throughout this extension.
Pregnant in the Lab
While you are pregnant or breastfeeding, there are some things to be aware of, especially for lab-heavy PhD projects. Some compounds such as fixatives can be harmful both to the pregnant parent and the unborn baby. We advise you to contact the AMC Arbodienst (020 – 56 62083) or ‘Gezond werken VUmc’ (020 - 44 41977) with any questions you might have.
Tired?
First of all, you will notice that you will have to deal with an unforeseen sleep deprivation. However, we hear from many parents that they adapt to living and functioning with less sleep very quickly. Knowing that this won’t be forever, can also help you sustain these phases mentally. One clever advice given by a PhD couple is to assign baby-duty nights. This way, one parent is responsible for looking after the baby one night, while the other parent can catch up on lost sleep. Next night: switch!
Day-Care
During the day, you may want to (and at some point, probably have to) send your toddler to day-care. How many times a week you take advantage of day-care is a personal choice and depends on your and your partner’s work situation. Some parents bring their child(ren) to day-care 5 days a week, others only 3 days a week, while both parents having each a free day to take care of their child(ren) . Obviously, this requires that you can take a day off per week or redistribute your work accordingly. Importantly, one should apply for a spot in the day-care as soon as possible (early in the pregnancy).
Breastfeeding
Once you are back to work, you might still like to save the breast milk for your baby. For this, there is a ‘kolfkamer’ located on H4 (AMC), which has a breast pump that you can use. Other rooms for pumping are located at H0 (AMC), ZH-1 A 14 (VUmc, Kliniek) and PK 0 Y 115 (VUmc, Polikliniek). You are welcome to ask the nearby receptionist for the key and an introduction beforehand.
Looking back
First up, to ease your worries, we have learned from former PhD-parents that having children during their PhD has improved not only their private life but also positively affected their work. Parents noticed that they work more efficiently, not letting work take up as much time as it used to. Some also find it much easier to establish a healthy work-life balance because after dedicating themselves solely to their PhD, there finally is another thing in life that wants their attention.
Questions?
Should you have more questions or are in need of help, we recommend that you contact your HR department. The most important contact details can be found here below.
HR-AMR: hr-amr@amsterdamumc.nl
HR-AMC: hr-servicedesk@amc.nl
HR-VUmc: poservicedesk@vumc.nl