PhD and Pregnancy

Hello. I'm looking for a bit of advice - I've been working for a few years since I graduated, but have applied and been accepted for a funded (UK Research Council) PhD at my dream University. It's a really interesting topic, and would be a great opportunity. However I would be 27 at the start, so between 30 - 31 by the time I'd completed it. My main concern, is that I really would like to start a family soon and obviously accepting this would affect these plans:
- Has anyone got any experience of taking maternity leave during a PhD?
- Is it likely I could get financial funding / stipend maternity pay, or would I have no income if I became pregnant?
- Is this a bad time to take a break from my career, given I also would likely want to work part time after having a baby? Would I struggle to find a job after my PhD under this situation.

Any advice / experience you could share would be very much appreciated! Thank you!

Pregnancy discrimination is illegal so the uni will have to make sure you have time off to do your maternity. As maternity leave is not illness it doesn’t count towards attendance and cannot be used as a basis of disciplinary. If your uni suggest this just ask for this in writing. The tribunal will kick their ass.

Interesting, but can’t the finding be stopped for the maternity and resumed when the student is back? I still think it’s discrimination as this situation wouldn’t take place of the student was male.
I totally trust you when you say that PHD students are not employees but I’m not sure that protection from discrimination applies only to employment. Pregnancy is a protected characteristic just like race or age so Id hope for the protection to extend to all areas of life, not just employment. It’s very interesting from the legal POV, but I’m not a lawyer so I cannot comment. Whatever the answer is I hope that the OP will be able to get a break and hopefully the answer she wants/needs.

If a male student takes more than 12 weeks medical break on an EPSRC DTA award for example, the support money simply runs out. In that sense its perfectly “fair” to both men and women equally, though of course individually it will feel anything but if you get hit by a serious illness. Yes, funding can generally be interrupted and re-started later on if you put a student on IOS – but the student then gets no financial support (other than the 12 weeks max – that will likely be funder dependent) and won’t be insured for lab access etc so they are “on their own” during the break.

Real talk: In my case I got 6 months maternity leave paid at the rate of my bursary. I took an additional 3 months off then went back part time for another few months. I paid for that with savings I had. That 6 months seems to be quite a standard minimum, but check with your desired University when applying - they will be really helpful. The research councils certainly all have maternity funds and leave built into their terms and conditions. You won't qualify for maternity allowance (unless you paid tax in the run up to your baby being born - which you likely didn't as a funded PhD student). As you return from mat leave, and this impacts PhDing women *but also men* who's non-phding partners give birth...because your bursary is not a salary this also means you won't qualify for any of the other childcare benefits stuff that most UK parents enjoy - no tax free childcare, no free hours at 2, and no additional 15 hours at 3. So you'll be paying full whack for childcare even though you earn under the minimum wage. You do get child benefit of £86 ish / month.This is probably the biggest sting for me - my partner works but we aren't particularly well off and the childcare costs are brutal. I would pay around £900/month if I had 8.30 - 3.30 childcare 5 days / week, term time only (many pay more). Within the mix of a couple's finances your bursary starts to feel like it just goes on childcare. Of course you may have another adult in the mix, and shouldn't (if you are a woman like me) think that your income is the 'womanly childcare part' - but it gets hard not to think that way if you consider if you had *literally any other job* you would get that childcare for free from age 3 aka your PhD is now *costing you* £900/month (more if you live in London). We deal with this by only having 2 days a week of childcare, juggling work and barely scraping by. I don't think I work less on the PhD rather I don't do anything I don't *have to do - i.e. no phd coffee hangouts, no non-essential meetings, no participating in PhD away days, or giving presentations, no conferences yadda yadda and I get occasional **** for it. I am hyper efficient with my time. If I sit down to work, I work. Procrastination is over. I think that the unconscious work of the PhD really suffers as there is very little headspace and eons of guilt. I will add I also am cognitively overloaded - so there is some psychological cost to all of this too.If we hadn't had some savings, it wouldn't have worked at all for us. I've spent a lot of time hustling for grants and looking for work which hasn't for the most part been forthcoming. The rational is that if I can get a part time job earning minimum wage equivalent, I can get the free childcare, then go down to part time for the PhD basically adding £900/month to whatever *****y salary I can find - that makes the lamest jobs way more appealing but then you have to think about how your CV looks. That hustling takes lots of time away from study and generally makes everything even more strenuous. You can get a postgraduate loan these days to add to the mix - if you aren't a funded student I'm not sure how you would manage. In my case I really don't want to get a loan on top of my bursary but might have to eventually. It makes me feel really cross to think that I might need to get into more debt because my blimmin stipend isn't counted towards government childcare.The good bits... in my case since COVID I work almost exclusively from home - that is really handy when you have a kid - perhaps your desired phd will allow you similar flexibility. I am grateful to be doing something to keep a finger in career development wise whilst also raising my little one. I carry the hope that the PhD will lead me to a better quality of life- also for my child. That may be an unrealistic valuing of the PhD - but that merely adds me to the many number who seem still to think a PhD is a good idea. I would have to report back on that at a later date! Aside from the financial nightmare I absolutely love researching and undertaking my PhD (again ask me how I feel when I am writing up) - the experience of doing the research is such a pleasure. I don't think you get to have that sort of intellectual freedom very often in life - so I think if you want to do the PhD to make some sort of new direction in your life - you just need to have your blinkers off. Its a shame that the UK is missing out on some brilliant minds because of this issue.