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

Hi Socpol,

There are quite a few people on this forum who are mothers and will give you an insight on how difficult it is to have a baby and do a PhD. I would personally suggest, than unless you are ageing or have a medical reason, you should look at postponing the baby until you finish your PhD. It is incredibly difficult to juggle both roles (and I take my hat off to those who are doing it). You'd rather focus on your project and aim to finish early, then you can focus on motherhood. Just my two pence worth :)

That is not quite what she was asking chococake!

I am not sure Socopol, I am research council funded and get paid maternity and sick pay. My friend is funded by her Uni and she thinks she is not entitled to anything. I find that hard to believe though, surely they have to pay something as you would not get SMP.

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But surely a funded PhD student isn't an employee, so doesn't have the same rights? Won't it depend what is in the relevant contract, if there even is one? Funding councils tend to specify what they will do for their students, but if a university funding directly hasn't done this before I can easily see how it would be a test case, however unhelpful that might seem.

I am AHRC funded, and I got 9 months paid maternity leave when I had my child two years ago. Now I think that they pay only for 6 months. As the AHRC continues to pay your fees and you continue to be registered while on leave, your Uni will consider this period as full time working period (or at least this is what happened to me). So you should be aware of this. If you take a suspension of studies you will not receive any monies, and you will not be registered for that period. So, if your Uni mirrors what the research councils do, you probably have the same options. I suppose that it depends on whether you really need the monies or if think that you will need more time to complete (e.g. if you do not have any help for childcare etc).

As someone else has said previously, I would consider postponing having a child. It is doable, but it is very stressful. Now, I am very close to submission, and I have a great feeling of relief, but I didn't feel the same way this time last year. It took a while to re-start and being able to focus on what I was doing, but obviously these are very personal choices.

I think that I was lucky in a way, because I managed to do all the fieldwork and research before I had the baby, otherwise I would have had to leave, as I had to travel a lot to different places.

I hope that this is of some 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...