Being a scientist and mom

  • Thread starter Thread starter CharityTraveler
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

CharityTraveler

Guest
I always grew up wanting to be a scientist.
I had fascination with nature for all that i could remember. Now that i am older i am seriously thinking about how will i be able to be a scientist/professor, a devout catholic wife and future mother. This is probably a long ways off, but i have been seriously thinking about this now that i am 24 years old and wanting to convert to catholicism. I know that if it came to it i would put my family first, but i am scared that i will regret that decision.

What is your advice?

Has anyone faced a similar situation?

How did you get through it?
 
I know many women in science, both in industry and in academics, and they find various ways to balance family and their careers. They do choose husbands who make a good team with them, and so they find a way as a couple. If your husband is of the “you can teach if you want” type that doesn’t want it to affect how he lives his life, it would be pretty rough. (Actually, that is true even of men in science who choose academics.) Those types don’t usually net women in science or medicine, though.

Many people in science do find their spouses and get married later in life, though. It is fairly rare to make it through graduate school after having a baby, and it isn’t unusual for those who do to decide to go into industry instead of academics. Some women do it, but they are particularly dedicated and very organized, in my experience.
 
I’m sure there are many devout Catholic women who have careers and who are also mothers. I believe that you should discuss your future plans with your fiancé BEFORE you get married.
 
KendraDZ1902 said:
I’m sure there are many devout Catholic women who have careers and who are also mothers. I believe that you should discuss your future plans with your fiancé BEFORE you get married.
Click to expand...
I think that is absolutely right because to do both you will need a LOT of support from your husband.
 
I was always a very smart kid in school. Straight As, valedictorian in high school. This always put pressure on me to excel in a career. I wanted to help people and really had a strong interest in health so I started out college premedicine!! However, I struggled with how could I possibly be a doctor and a mom too. I had been dating the same guy all through high school and we ended up getting engaged while I was in college. I ultimately decided to get my bachelors degree in dietetics. I married between my junior and senior year in college and then I did a 1 year postgraduate internship.

I worked for 2 years before getting pregnant with my son. Following his birth, I again struggled with the pull to be home with him. I was always stressed out trying to keep things together. We had 3 more babies before I decided to quit and stay home. That
was a tough decision, too. It still is, as I can’t decide if I should keep my credentials up. But i am immeasurably happier. Life is so much less stressful and i get to watch my babies grow up. We are expecting baby #7 in march and I really doubt I will ever go back to a career. By the time my littlest is off, I will have grand kids!!!

In retrospect, I truly believe that the discontent I always felt in college was God calling me to the vocation of motherhood. I never would have been satisfied splitting my time between career and family. Now that I am doing God’s will, there are still challenges, but I am much more at peace. So I guess my advice would be to pray for guidance in choosing your lifelong vocation and keep your ears open!! It is a big decision!! I know there are women who do both, but I don’t know how they do it:shrug:
 
Cathmomof6 said:
I was always a very smart kid in school. Straight As, valedictorian in high school. This always put pressure on me to excel in a career. I wanted to help people and really had a strong interest in health so I started out college premedicine!! However, I struggled with how could I possibly be a doctor and a mom too. I had been dating the same guy all through high school and we ended up getting engaged while I was in college. I ultimately decided to get my bachelors degree in dietetics. I married between my junior and senior year in college and then I did a 1 year postgraduate internship.

I worked for 2 years before getting pregnant with my son. Following his birth, I again struggled with the pull to be home with him. I was always stressed out trying to keep things together. We had 3 more babies before I decided to quit and stay home. That
was a tough decision, too. It still is, as I can’t decide if I should keep my credentials up. But i am immeasurably happier. Life is so much less stressful and i get to watch my babies grow up. We are expecting baby #7 in march and I really doubt I will ever go back to a career. By the time my littlest is off, I will have grand kids!!!

In retrospect, I truly believe that the discontent I always felt in college was God calling me to the vocation of motherhood. I never would have been satisfied splitting my time between career and family. Now that I am doing God’s will, there are still challenges, but I am much more at peace. So I guess my advice would be to pray for guidance in choosing your lifelong vocation and keep your ears open!! It is a big decision!! I know there are women who do both, but I don’t know how they do it:shrug:
Click to expand...
What a beautiful story!

While many women manage both motherhood and a job, we should always remember that motherhood is the highest vocation. Of course, part of this is supporting marriage and having men who are good husbands and fathers.
 
Perhaps pray a novena to St. Gianna Beretta Molla. She is a Saint because of her pro-life views and actions, but she was also a praticing physician and a mother.

There are many women who are comfortable working while married and raising children (even as a scientist), others, like Cathmom6, choose to stop working after having children. Both are valid decisions.

Some woman who worked while raising families (like St Teresa’s mother, and St Gianna) are held up as models for us. It is possible, but the family needs plenty of support. In times past, when extended families lived close by and having household help was more normal, it might possibly have been easier than now when a working mom is expected to be superwoman.

I have worked while my children were growing up - I also had the blessings of wonderful outside help, extended family close by, and the ability to be flexible in my work schedules by working part-time, working from home, spliting my day with morning hours (when the children were in school) and then evening hours (when my husband was home).

You don’t have to make a decision now, and you may make different decisions at different times in your life (stay home, go back to work, full-time, part-time, career changes, etc.)

You should finish your education in a field you enjoy and that you will be able to find work in (if you haven’t already).

You should not postpone coming into the Church over this. (Welcome home!)

And when you are talking about marriage with a wonderful Catholic man (:D), you should definately discuss his feeling on this issue. You two will also want to tink about where you will live and what type of career/job choices he will make based on what you view as ideal. However, remember that you can change your mind on most decisions!
 
When I was in grade six, the senior in elementary school,
I said I wanted to put a man on the moon! (Probably got
the idea from a movie about Jules Vern) Now that I’m older,
Science is good, only so far as it serves your faith!
 
PaulfromIowa said:
What a beautiful story!

While many women manage both motherhood and a job, we should always remember that motherhood is the highest vocation. Of course, part of this is supporting marriage and having men who are good husbands and fathers.
Click to expand...
Motherhood isn’t the highest vocation, celibacy is.
 
CharityTraveler said:
I always grew up wanting to be a scientist.
I had fascination with nature for all that i could remember. Now that i am older i am seriously thinking about how will i be able to be a scientist/professor, a devout catholic wife and future mother. This is probably a long ways off, but i have been seriously thinking about this now that i am 24 years old and wanting to convert to catholicism. I know that if it came to it i would put my family first, but i am scared that i will regret that decision.

What is your advice?

Has anyone faced a similar situation?

How did you get through it?
Click to expand...
My wife is a scientist. She works for a Big Six biotech company, She is published and recognized as a leader in her field. She is the mother of 4, She is 31 years old, She is a great wife and mom and even better Catholic. I stay at home and homeschool our children.

Oh, and in her “spare time” she is getting her MBA. 🤷
It can be done, and my wife does it with a smile on her face!

In our family we have theology degrees, science degrees, and soon to be business degrees. We talk logic, and theologic, and science ALL the time. It is our “pillow talk.”

What can I say, we are nerds!
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
Celibacy is greater than marriage according to the Catholic Church.
Click to expand...
Well I’ll be! I am looking it up and I think you are correct. huh. I will have to read more about this! Council of trent? That is what is coming up the most.
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
Well I’ll be! I am looking it up and I think you are correct. huh. I will have to read more about this! Council of trent? That is what is coming up the most.
Click to expand...
Athanasius, Vita Consecrata, Aquinas, Corinthians, Jerome, Sacra Virginitas, Augustine the CCC, the Council of Trent, those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

It’s one of the reasons I strongly resent Catholics tying womanhood to motherhood. It’s also why I resent people who try to push gay people into heterosexual marriages.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
Athanasius, Vita Consecrata, Aquinas, Corinthians, Jerome, Sacra Virginitas, Augustine the CCC, the Council of Trent, those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

It’s one of the reasons I strongly resent Catholics tying womanhood to motherhood. It’s also why I resent people who try to push gay people into heterosexual marriages.
Click to expand...
Well, on the other hand, if there were no mothers, there would be no celibates either–or anyone else!

But why resent linking womanhood to motherhood? It’s a rather natural connection, just as is the linkage between manhood and fatherhood! It’s a necessary connection. It doesn’t say that everyone must be a mother or a father.
 
JimG said:
Well, on the other hand, if there were no mothers, there would be no celibates either–or anyone else!

But why resent linking womanhood to motherhood? It’s a rather natural connection, just as is the linkage between manhood and fatherhood! It’s a necessary connection. It doesn’t say that everyone must be a mother or a father.
Click to expand...
It’s not linking them, it’s the binding them together that I don’t like. There are a lot of conservative Catholics who act as though if you neither join the clergy nor get married you are basically leftovers or there is something wrong with you which is a) wrong, b) incredibly degrading.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
It’s one of the reasons I strongly resent Catholics tying womanhood to motherhood. It’s also why I resent people who try to push gay people into heterosexual marriages.
Click to expand...
Which is a discussion for another thread.😉
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
Motherhood isn’t the highest vocation, celibacy is.
Click to expand...
a) The vocations that require the most radical gift of self to God require celibacy, but celibacy itself is not the highest calling. To merely abstain from getting married is not the highest gift, not at all. The choices one is more free to make because one abstains from getting married are the highest gifts. Therefore, person who lives the vocation of marriage and the sacrifices it asks is living a higher calling than the person that merely makes a durable commitment to abstain from marriage. A virgin who does not give his or her virginity to the Lord in order to radically give his or her *entire self *to the Lord has not chosen a calling higher than marriage.

b) The post you were responding to was really talking about the difference in importance between living one’s “state in life” vocation vs. achievement in one’s “career” vocation, not the difference between the married state and the religious state or the ministerial priesthood. A professed religious who became a scientist or physician would also have to put the demands of their religious calling ahead of the demands of their science or medical career. That is the subordination of the lesser to the greater that was being referred to.
 
EasterJoy said:
a) The vocations that require the most radical gift of self to God require celibacy, but celibacy itself is not the highest calling. To merely abstain from getting married is not the highest gift, not at all. The choices one is more free to make because one abstains from getting married are the highest gifts. Therefore, person who lives the vocation of marriage and the sacrifices it asks is living a higher calling than the person that merely makes a durable commitment to abstain from marriage. A virgin who does not give his or her virginity to the Lord in order to radically give his or her *entire self *to the Lord has not chosen a calling higher than marriage.

b) The post you were responding to was really talking about the difference in importance between living one’s “state in life” vocation vs. achievement in one’s “career” vocation, not the difference between the married state and the religious state or the ministerial priesthood. A professed religious who became a scientist or physician would also have to put the demands of their religious calling ahead of the demands of their science or medical career. That is the subordination of the lesser to the greater that was being referred to.
Click to expand...
Of course, and motherhood doesn’t require marriage either. When I said “motherhood” and “celibacy” I was referring to the Catholic thought attached to those terms.

PS, celibacy, even while part of the laity, is be better than marriage.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
Of course, and motherhood doesn’t require marriage either. When I said “motherhood” and “celibacy” I was referring to the Catholic thought attached to those terms.

PS, celibacy, even while part of the laity, is be better than marriage.
Click to expand...
But again, only so far as it allows a person to give more to others and to the church. A celibate person (whether single or married) who simply uses the time saved from sex :rolleyes: for their own purposes - shopping, working, watching TV, what have you isn’t living a higher calling, they are just being more selfish (especially if married).

A person who gives up the hope of sex by not getting married, and uses the time saved from not having a spouse of family to care for, to care for others (the poor, the elderly, the widow or orphan) or to contribute to the church, is giving up a natural good for a higher good - that’s why it is considered a higher calling.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top