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A Word Of Caution On My Poll “Parenting During The PhD”

A word of caution on my poll “Parenting during the PhD”

I recently ran a poll on Twitter to get an idea of how many PhD students are parents, and I wrote a blog post about it.

I received an email from a reader, which I find a very pertinent observation, so I wanted to include this comment here, for my reader to reflect on:

Hi Eva,

regarding your blogpost on the proportion of parents among PhDs:

I could imagine that there’s some self-selection bias in this rather small sample. For example, I had found your blog two years ago, _because_ you are PhD _and_ a parent. Probably via the FB group “PhD and Early Career Researcher Parents”.

Maybe 1 out of 5 PhDs that follow your Twitter/blog are parents, but I don’t think this is representative of all PhDs in general.

I’d agree with your personal observation though: Out of 100 PhDs that I know, 2 became parents at the end of their PhD, shortly before becoming PostDocs and a third is turning fourty, three kids, doing her PhD part-time …

Best regards and stay safe and healthy,
Reader X

So, a word of caution with regard to these statistics. I do need some data for the book about the PhD Defense that I am coauthoring – but I’ll need to chew on this a bit more.

If anybody has data from his/her/their university on this topic, please let me know!

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This Post Has 3 Comments
  1. I think that depend from country to country, I would say that is quite common to be a PhD and a PhD student or post-docs (around 20% is possible number); Unfortunately I know much more fathers than mothers…

  2. I ɗo agree wіth all the concepts you’ve offered foг your post.
    They are really convincіng and can definitely work.

    Still, the posts are very quick for newbies. Maү you please prolong them a little
    from subsequent time? Thank you foг the post.

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