Please, stop talking about it. You are making it worse.

In the last month, I have had a graduate student and an undergraduate student randomly show up in my office asking me about  my career choices. They look at me like I am some all-knowing guru, a holy-woman who is doing what they have been repeatedly told was near the impossible. Or maybe some new exotic species that defies the imagination. 

I am a 33 year-old chemistry professor at a major research university and I am seven months pregnant. 

The undergrad had been recently told by her (female) academic advisor that it is really difficult to be a professor and have a family. If she wants a family she should consider aiming for teaching at a small college or a pursuing a different career altogether.

This kind of advice really bothers me and it is supported by frequent newspaper articles about the challenges women in academia face and also by what seems obvious to the students; most of their professors are male. 

It's true, women in academic positions in STEM (Science Technology Enginnering and Math) fields are vastly outnumbered by men. Statistics show longer times to tenure for women, especially those with children. There are a host of other statistics that make it look like the glass ceiling is very thick. 

I'm on the graduate school admissions committee for my department and far fewer women apply than men. There is no question, women are scared away and discouraged from pursuing STEM academic a careers even as early as right after an undergraduate degree. They seem to think that they must choose one or the other: academia or family. There will be no balance. I am writing this to tell you, this is simply not true. 

Our young female scientists at my school apparently think this despite the evidence in the pictures in their professors offices. Although there are few STEM women professors around, most have children. My approximately twelve female colleagues in Physics, Chemistry and Engineering range in in rank form associate dean to lowly assistant professor (me). All of these women have children but four. And of those four, I'm pregnant and another has recently "pulled the goalie" so-to-speak. 

What is perhaps different from my generation- those who are pre-tenure now- and a generation of academic women who are a perhaps 10 or 15 years older is when we have children. Anecdotally, many previously have chosen wait until after obtaining tenure, putting them in their late thirties. This limits the number of children they have and putting them at higher risk for infertility, complicated pregnancies and birth defects. Discouraging prospects indeed. 

My generation, from what I've seen, aren't waiting. We are having children before tenure, in our early thirties, be dammed what everyone says about the way academia is.  We are in the thick of pre-tenure and we are going for it anyway. 

My school is giving me a whopping four months off (when standard maternity leave in the US is a piddly 6 weeks) and an extra year to apply for tenure. I can always "go up early" should my career forward itself at a non-child-rearing pace.  

Not one of my colleagues, grey haired or not, has made a disparaging remark about my reproductive timing or decisions. They generally seem very excited for me, and view my pregnancy and upcoming leave was just part and parcel of young professors and are picking up the teaching load while I am away. Many of my young male colleagues have been taking advantage of the same paternity benefits as they start their families. (In fact some of the grey-hairs seem a little jealous as they did not have the option of paternity leave when they were starting out.)

I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but holding down any career and being a mom is difficult. 

What I want to tell our young female scientists is that the most difficult part about becoming a professor is the cut throat path that is there whether you are male or female all the same. You must be a star at graduate school amongst a sea of other talented students; get and excel in a high level postdoctoral position; work like a dog and publish, publish, publish; write exciting, revolutionary and fundable research proposals and nail the interview, convincing your potential colleagues your are going to do excellent science at their institution, be a great mentor for students, be an inspiring teacher and be a colleague they will get along with. 

After running that gauntlet through your 20's, having a family and running a research lab is no worse. 

The system is not perfect. It is clearly broken. I only have to look around faculty meeting to realize how few women there really are. But careers are very long in academia with many not retiring but transitioning to emeritus and still are kicking around the department well into their 70s and even 80s. It will take a very long time, longer than most professions, for the environment to be gender balanced. The statistics are skewed by this long lag time and it is not being helped by the fact that women are simply not applying for the jobs.

From my side, I can see the universities and my colleagues making a concerted effort to make it possible for women to succeed in STEM academic positions. The truth is: never has it been easier for women in STEM fields to have it all. 

I stand on the shoulders of my predecessors who have fought for all of these changes in policy. But I think now we need to change our tactics. We have been talking up the challenges and statistics way too much recently.  Young women are dropping out of the academic track before they barely begin and I fear it is from perception rather than reality about how their career and family life can progress.

How exactly are we to make it normal for there to be female professors with families if we are scaring our young female scientists away? 

I too thought like these students. As I battled my way though the ranks in my 20s, I imagined that at some point continuing with academia would become impossible and I would be forced into a teaching-only or industrial career. I knew this could have happened because I simply was not up to snuff, or because of the family and societal pressures that are unique to women. 

But it never did become impossible. And here I am with a bustling lab, a rewarding career and a baby kicking me from the inside. 

Like all academics, I have sacrificed many things to pursue my career, but having a family is not going to be one of them.  

Stop telling our our female scientists that there is a glass ceiling in academia and that they would have to give up a family! Its not true anymore and all the whining is making it worse.