(no subject)
This might come across as an odd question, but something that crossed my mind today. I've read a lot of discussion about the problems for women pursing academic science in terms of how the timescale of graduate school, post-doc, and pursing tenure affects their ability to have a family, i.e. there is often no time when it is feasible to have children. There was a great article in the New York Times about it the other day, how basically the take how message is that men can have it all when it comes to having families and having a career, but it is much much harder for women. I've even seen the discussion of some graduate programs and post-docs being progressive enough to allow six week maternity leaves for women.
But one area I don't see a lot of discussion in is what sort of lab work is appropriate to do while you are pregnant? I mean, in a number of other professions that are in an office environment, women can take six weeks off and continue to work during their pregnancy. But I can't imagine that it is actually safe for someone to be doing, say, organic synthesis while pregnant. If drinking coffee, alcohol, and smoking cigarettes leads to birth defects and low birth weight, I'd hate to think what inhaling and absorbing through your totally ineffectual nitrile gloves organic solvents like chloroform would do (even with the hood), or how bad it would be to work with some alkylating agents. Organic chemistry strikes me as an exceptionally dangerous area in this regard because organic chemists work with some pretty frickin' nasty stuff. In a lot of molecular biology/biochem the worst thing you work with is ethidium bromide, and that is kept much more safely than a lot of the chemicals in organic labs...but I could see the argument that you don't want to work with a mutagen at all while carrying a fetus. So in this sense, wouldn't it be necessary for women in some fields of science--especially areas of chemistry--to spend their whole pregnancy out of the lab rather than just six weeks? I mean, six week maternity leave looks nice on paper, but it doesn't seem like it solves the problem of women who want to pursue experimental science being at a big disadvantage in the lab if they also want a family because I can't imagine any time in so-called "childbearing years" when it would be appropriate to spend a whole year away from the lab, at least with my understanding of how employment and training in science works, especially when working towards an academic career.
Anyway, I'm just interested what your thoughts are on the matter. Both graduate school and (especially) having children is far off in the future for me still as I am still an undergrad, but as a woman who enjoys experimental chemistry, especially organic synthesis, and someday in the far off future might want to have children, it struck me as something worth thinking about. I mean, I know I've had my fair share of experiences running a column and putting the fume hood up a little too high for it to actually do what it's supposed to do, and once I spilled a shit ton of chloroform all over my clothes, but as a reasonably healthy 20 year old, I'm not going to fret about it too much--I imagine I'd feel much differently about the situation if I were pregnant. I had thought about the academic time-scale issue, and the career-family balance issue before (there seems to be a lot of discussion on this generally in society even if there aren't necessarily solutions), but this is the first time it crossed my mind that the hazards of lab would be an issue.
But one area I don't see a lot of discussion in is what sort of lab work is appropriate to do while you are pregnant? I mean, in a number of other professions that are in an office environment, women can take six weeks off and continue to work during their pregnancy. But I can't imagine that it is actually safe for someone to be doing, say, organic synthesis while pregnant. If drinking coffee, alcohol, and smoking cigarettes leads to birth defects and low birth weight, I'd hate to think what inhaling and absorbing through your totally ineffectual nitrile gloves organic solvents like chloroform would do (even with the hood), or how bad it would be to work with some alkylating agents. Organic chemistry strikes me as an exceptionally dangerous area in this regard because organic chemists work with some pretty frickin' nasty stuff. In a lot of molecular biology/biochem the worst thing you work with is ethidium bromide, and that is kept much more safely than a lot of the chemicals in organic labs...but I could see the argument that you don't want to work with a mutagen at all while carrying a fetus. So in this sense, wouldn't it be necessary for women in some fields of science--especially areas of chemistry--to spend their whole pregnancy out of the lab rather than just six weeks? I mean, six week maternity leave looks nice on paper, but it doesn't seem like it solves the problem of women who want to pursue experimental science being at a big disadvantage in the lab if they also want a family because I can't imagine any time in so-called "childbearing years" when it would be appropriate to spend a whole year away from the lab, at least with my understanding of how employment and training in science works, especially when working towards an academic career.
Anyway, I'm just interested what your thoughts are on the matter. Both graduate school and (especially) having children is far off in the future for me still as I am still an undergrad, but as a woman who enjoys experimental chemistry, especially organic synthesis, and someday in the far off future might want to have children, it struck me as something worth thinking about. I mean, I know I've had my fair share of experiences running a column and putting the fume hood up a little too high for it to actually do what it's supposed to do, and once I spilled a shit ton of chloroform all over my clothes, but as a reasonably healthy 20 year old, I'm not going to fret about it too much--I imagine I'd feel much differently about the situation if I were pregnant. I had thought about the academic time-scale issue, and the career-family balance issue before (there seems to be a lot of discussion on this generally in society even if there aren't necessarily solutions), but this is the first time it crossed my mind that the hazards of lab would be an issue.