Hey EmmaB, Sounds like you're doing amazingly well considering all you've got on! I am in a similar(ish) position as in I have to teach for my funding, work and have commitments like a mortgage to pay. Like others said, I wouldn't worry too much about getting involved with organising things. If you manage to publish and present during your PhD, those are the more important things. Also, teaching in itself is a massively valuable expereince which will help you if you want to get a job in adacdemia. Finally, although having to work in such a stressful job can be a drain (I know!) it can also be a bonus. It sounds like you're in a pretty similar type of work to me (I work with young people in the justice system), and I know that if I don't get the dream academic/research post after my PhD I can fall back on this experience to hopefully still get a job that I feel is worthwhile and that uses my skills. I guess tho that if the stress of the job is outweighing any potential benefits for you, that's not much help!

Hi all
Thanks for your responses! I appreciate people's sentiments about having children whilst doing a PhD, but we are getting to that age unfortunately where the clock is most definitely starting to tick! Strawberrygirl - it's good that your uni has such clear policies about these things! I've had a look at the research councils and they all seeme to be saying that it's best practice that universities follow their lead in regards to maternity pay, so maybe that's something I can take to the uni, especially as we're going to be a research council doctoral centre soon. Anyways I'm going to have a more in depth chat with head of grad school this week so we'll see what they say...

Hi all

I'm a first year PhD student and pretty new to this forum :-), tho have found posts here to be really helpful in the past. Basically I wondered if anyone has had the experience of being on a studentship and getting paid maternity leave? I'm on a teaching studentship funded through my department, and know that research council studentships get 6 months paid leave. My department has a policy of making teaching studentships commensurate to research council studentships (i.e. award amount), but when I asked them if I would be treated the same in regards to maternity leave, they said the uni as a whole has no set policy on it and I would basically be a 'test case'. My husband and I have been talking about starting a family for some time, but I don't really want to make the decision without knowing whether it will be affordable or not. I've had a look online but it seems to be a bit of a grey area, so I wondered if anyone would be able to give advice (bearing in mind that I'm guessing different unis will deal with this issue in different ways anyway!)
Thanks, Socpol