And I certainly think that this is worth emphasizing, and perhaps I shouldn’t have been so cavalier about characterizing faculty with young children. However, what IS your business is to figure out whether a faculty member can provide for you as an advisee and student. Part of this *IS* influenced by their personal lives.

For example, it is a systematic effect that faculty with families spend more time at home. I’m not saying that this is true for EVERY such faculty member nor that this is a dominant effect, but it is an effect that is there. Certainly one shouldn’t generalize, but the lesson I wanted to impart was that one should be aware that there are personal circumstances (perhaps temporary ones) that would affect a professor’s professional availability.

But, as Lauren says, it’s not necessarily your business to ask why a professor does or does not come in on the weekends or stays late in the evenings; but it IS your business to figure out when your professor will be available. Usually professors are very open about this type of information. This doesn’t mean it’s polite to ask them in a socially irresponsible manner, but you should be clear about your needs as a potential student and determine whether a protential adviser fits them.

But let me be absolutely clear: I am not saying that one should say that a researcher is better or worse or more/less deserving of promotion due to their personal circumstances. As Lauren notes, taking such a stance on a tenure committee runs up against some serious ethical and legal issues.

HOWEVER, you’re not judging a professor’s worth or recommending them for tenure. You are simply finding a situation where you can find the unique kind of support that fits you best.

As an extreme example, you could imagine the ideal adviser. This person is successful, personable, and has a great track record with developing students that match your profile. Now suppose that professor is taking maternity/paternity leave for a semester or two and will no longer be able to stay in the lab late at night to work with graduate students. This doesn’t make the professor any less qualified as a scientist or a lecturer or as an overall great person. BUT it COULD factor into whether or not s/he is still the kind of faculty mentor you need. This is not illegally discriminatory or immoral; this is simply saying that during the next year or so this professor would have to adjust to developments in his/her personal life, which COULD influence his/her professional life, especially as related to grad students.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t pick that adviser? No! You of course have to take everything into account. Maybe you do all of your lab work during the usual 9-5 hours anyway. Maybe the professor is still able to play a very active role in his/her students’ development. In these cases, then by all means this is the right adviser for you. But in other cases, some people might decide that given the circumstances another faculty member would be a better fit.

Sometimes that’s just the way things happen. If your dream adviser was going on sabbatical for a year to write a popular book in the middle of your PhD, then you would have to take that into account to determine whether that would be a problem for you. These are factors that are beyond the students control, but at the end of the day students can choose an adviser that best fits them.

Mike — Jorge Cham’s policy on using his comics is in the FAQ for his site (http://www.phdcomics.com/about.htm). Just to be safe I added a “(c) Jorge Cham” to the image text.

Lauren — you make two very good points, I’d like to address them both.

First, I absolutely agree that mental health is a very important part of any job, and especially something like graduate school where there can often be a lot of pressure to perform in a situation where there is no clear direction. The point that I was trying to make was instead that I often hear people (often jokingly) say that it would be impossible for them to go to school in the Northeast because they grew up in Southern California and lived on the beach their entire lives.

Many people would rightfully opt not to live permanently in a town that doesn’t fit their lifestyle (broadly defined) given the option to live somewhere that does fit their lifestyle. My point is only that grad school is a finite amount of time that one can afford to be adventurous for part of one’s life since the primary focus isn’t a permanent job at that place, but rather 4-6ish years of research.

Fun and happiness are VERY important, but there are MANY more factors that come into mental health than location.

For the set of people who would *certainly* have serious inability to cope with a location, then of course they have to account for that. However, I would venture to guess that this set of people is much smaller than the set of people who simply would be inconvenienced by living somewhere different.

Put in another way: no matter where one goes for graduate school, one will be surrounded by a university setting with other students going through the same difficulties and usually a framework of support from the university health center for personal mental health should one need it. These are universities where generations of undergrads and grad students have passed through successfully (though certainly not without their own struggles), and so I claim that University of Chilly-Small-Town has an excellent Esoteric-Field PhD program, the one should not automatically discount just because of its location.

Also, the statement “faculty with young children have less time” is a generalization that is dubious at best. It is inappropriate to ask about faculty member’s personal life and that statement would get you a lawsuit where you on a hiring or tenure committee.