Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Get married!

This article describes a study that found that scientific productivity decreases with age, but less severely in never-married men.

“The productivity of male scientists tends to drop right after marriage,” says Kanazawa in an e-mail interview from his current office at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom. “Scientists tend to ‘desist’ from scientific research upon marriage, just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage.”

Kanazawa’s perhaps controversial perspective is that of an evolutionary psychologist. “Men conduct scientific research (or do anything else) in order to attract women and get married (albeit unconsciously),” he says. “What’s the point of doing science (or anything else) if one is already married? Marriage (or, more accurately reproductive success, which men can usually attain only through marriage) is the goal; science or anything else men do is but a means.”

Huh. Interesting. So being a scientist is like buying that red hot Ferrari? It’s all in the name of nabbing a mate? And here I had always thought that being a nerd wasn’t exactly the way to get women. But then again, maybe being a nerd is the way to a brainy woman’s heart, because of course, if you’re nerdy, you really have no need or desire for a hot not-so-brainy wife…

So what about women? Yep, we’re not immune to this decline either. And we actually have it even worse since there is never a good time to take time off to have and raise children without significantly setting back our careers. I myself have noticed that I’ve become more mediocre/sand-people-like in my academics ever since getting married—not so much numbers-wise since I still have that 4.0, but in that I don’t devote as much time to my professional development (attending seminars, studying, lab) as I did when I was single/in a not-so-good-would-rather-avoid-it-by-staying-at-lab relationship. All of a sudden, I’ve decided that pursuing my career and being the best aren’t nearly as important as being married and spending time with my husband. But I still have that drive inside of me that surfaces from time to time (more often now that I’ve been so rudely knocked out of that whole blissful newlywed thing by my in-laws) that reminds me that I will never be able to live with myself if I just half-ass my way through my career. It’s my ego telling me that I can’t possibly be okay with not being the best at what I do. Two years ago, I was willing to stay forever single and childless to achieve my career goals. Now I’m married and willing to give the whole having kids thing a chance (if only so that I pass on my highly-evolved-super-smart-yet-still-good-looking genes). I just don’t know when. And I still don’t really know if I ever will even have kids because of the blow it would deal to my career—not only due to the fact that I’ll have to take time off but also because my priorities just might change and I won’t be so intent on being the best anymore. Which I suppose isn’t so bad, but try telling that to someone who’s spent her whole entire life being (or at least trying to be) the best. I don’t know if I can make that sacrifice for little rugrats who just might ultimately hate me anyway. So all I can do is find some sort of balance for now and eventually decide (sometime before my biological clock stops ticking) whether or not I want to torture myself some more by procreating.

But of course, some say that marriage just might be good for a scientific career. In my case, marriage sure helps with financial stability. Not in that I needed someone else to pay my bills or to eat well since my stipends cover them quite well (one of the few perks of being in an MD/PhD program) but for my frivolous purchases—like this blog and my binge-shopping adventures among other things.

However, I have to disagree with this argument for how marriage is good for a career:

He was sitting against his pillow in bed with his laptop in hand. His busy, multitasking wife (a management consultant and mother of twin toddlers) was also working on a laptop, seated right beside him. The two were tending electronically to their demanding jobs, but they were also instant messaging each other, obviously on the same emotional “bandwidth” in their devotion to both career and marriage.

Uh. You’re sitting next to each other and you’re instant messaging each other?! How is that any different from sitting in your respective offices and instant messaging each other? Why can’t you just speak? Is speaking really that much more distracting than instant messaging?! So do you do instant messaging foreplay too? And those laptops must really get in the way during sex—not to mention dirty… Okay, I’ll stop there.

Then there are the marriages that don’t survive a scientific career. No big surprise there. Can I add medical career too? Lawyer? Any highly specialized field that requires long hours and lots of work? The big issue here is having a spouse who is not in the same field as you. I always thought that I would end up with another doctor or at least someone in the sciences (Oh who am I kidding? A dentist is not a doctor…and neither is an optometrist or pharmacist—it was physician or bust.) because of the difficulties in talking meaningfully with someone not in the same field about my experiences. And I’ve been in a (obviously failed) relationship with a fellow med student and found that it was really much easier to talk to him since we were going through and learning the same things. But it still didn’t work out. Enter my future husband whose career has absolutely nothing to do with medicine or research. I never thought that it would work because he knew absolutely nothing about my life or my career. But I was wrong. All that really matters is that he is intelligent enough to follow my crazy INTP rants—understanding the substance of the rants down to the atomic level is not necessary as long as he gets the general idea. But I can see how this difference in careers can backfire on other couples. It is frustrating sometimes to explain things that we take for granted as obvious, which in fact are not. And I guess that the patience (on both sides) eventually wears thin when steps are not taken to better the situation.

And finally, there’s the issue of not being able to meet someone to marry in the first place. Being in lab all day and studying all night isn’t really conducive to meeting potential mates. And besides, there’s the bigger issue of whether someone is willing to commit to someone who may move across the country in a few months/years and who may very well spend a large part of their life moving as they are recruited to different positions. Who will actually put up with having to uproot their family every so many years? Or with delaying (or never) starting a family to wait for you to establish your career? These are issues that any potential mate needs to be made well aware of before things get serious. And even so, it will still be hard for your mate to come to terms with moving to Middle of Nowhere, USA when the time comes.

Ah…the life of a scientist—a complex-not-so-fun-at-times balancing act. So I guess we are human after all.