spouses & mobility

[Megan]

>Hmm, I'm posting via the www.bio.net server (as suggested by Susan 
>Forsburg) and it seems that there are messages here that I don't 
>see in my newsreader -- which is intriguing. 
>
>Bharathi Jagadeesh (bjag at nih.gov) writes
>> complexity this adds to planning one's life. A famous female scientist I
>> know advises young people that you should find your tenure-track position
>> first, and then find your life's mate. This advice is amusing, but not
>> very helpful.
>> 
>
>Vineeta Pal <vp25+ at andrew.cmu.edu> writes
>> why? maybe for someone who seriously wants to put her career before
>> anything else, this is not amusing and maybe helpful?
>
Well, fisrt, the realities of starting a family that late in life - birth
defects and infertility being very significant problems for some women, most
of whom of course cannot predict them.

Second, most people do not *intend* to find a partner - often you meet
someone special whether the timing is "convenient" or not.  Tough to tell
someone you have met and who is incredible to wait until you have a
tenure-track position - especially when it may be years away, and may never
even happen.  This advice may be good and logical, but matters of the heart
rarely involve logic.  

And, if a woman is 35 before she finds her life partner, and she wants to
have a family, and she is not infertile, the man may already have had kids
in a previous marriage (or otherwise) and may not be interested in having a
second family to raise...  

my $0.02,

Megan