CNN/Dual careers

[Una Smith]

notmyaddress at hotmail.com (SLF) writes:

> Over the years, I have  seen a number of my male colleagues divorce  their scientist-wives ;  upon their remarriage to a less career-oriented women, children usually follow.  I surmise that the desire for children and its inevitable conflict with wives' careers may have contributed to the divorce.  This has happened enough
>times that I wonder if it's a pattern?  I also wonder what happened to the divorced scientist-wives.
>

Among my acquaintances, I know of *no* cases of this pattern.  I do know
a female scientist whose marriage with a businessman went bust...he got
tired of waiting for her to "grow up" and leave science.  The pattern I
see *a lot* is a senior male scientist with an employed or child-rearing
wife and almost-grown kids who divorces the wife in order to marry one
of his female graduate students.  Often (but not always) the new wife
promptly has babies *and* gets an adjunct faculty job in the same dept.
as her advisor/husband.

Relative to the background divorce rate, I'd say that female scientists
with academic spouses are *more* likely than most women to stay married.

-- 
	Una Smith		una.smith at yale.edu

	Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
	Yale University