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“You Can Have It All, Just Not at the Same Time”: Why Doctoral Students are Actively Choosing Singlehood

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Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 47 Ph.D. students, this study reveals how gendered beliefs and expectations about work and family differentially affect the family aspirations of never-married and childless men and women. The findings evidence that women disproportionately perceive family formation and the pursuit of an academic career to be fundamentally incompatible. While both men and women privilege career pursuits, women are more likely to report opting for singlehood, by intentionally delaying romantic relationships, marriage, and family formation until they have met career goals. The typologies “Actively Single” and “Partnered Delayers” describe the strategies students employ in their current lives in order to navigate career and family planning. This paper updates and extends work and family research by focusing on those in the life course stage preceding work and marriage/family and revealing that these spheres are perceived in gendered ways long before individuals have begun to engage in either institution.

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Notes

  1. Research 1 (R1): Research Universities (Highest research activity) in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

  2. In order to protect participant privacy, pseudonyms are used for the university sites and all research participants.

  3. One goal of the study was to understand participants’ aspirations and expectations of legal marriage; thus, individuals in cohabiting unions were also included.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Rice University, MS 28-6100 Main St., 590 Sewall Hall, Houston, TX, 77005, USA

    Marbella Eboni Hill

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Correspondence to Marbella Eboni Hill.

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Hill, M.E. “You Can Have It All, Just Not at the Same Time”: Why Doctoral Students are Actively Choosing Singlehood. Gend. Issues 37, 315–339 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-020-09249-0

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