The years when Steve and I wrote our dissertations were lean and hungry. I would periodically go looking around for grant money to help ease the pain, but I always came up empty.

Many of the grants were targeted towards very specific populations or research topics. I don’t begrudge those groups that benefited from those awards, but I am noting that there were few grants for white Jersey girls with a great sense of style. Go figure.

The few that I was eligible for required that the money go to very specific purposes, which also fell outside the bounds of my research. Most of them expected that the money would go to expenses incurred while conducting huge survey research and crunching large numbers. I’m perfectly capable of doing quantitative research, but the questions that my dissertation explored required interviews and archival research. (I would love to know if there is a gender gap between quantitative and qualitative research. I bet there is.) There was no funding for qualitative research. My expenses here were admittedly not huge, some travel expenses to Pennsylvania and Ohio, and my department helped covered some of that.

My biggest expense while doing the dissertation was the lack of any real income. If you’re working all day for free on your dissertation, there’s no money coming in pay for rent and food. Few grants provide enough help to pay for your rent. My folks and the student loan people helped out here.

Another huge expense for us was daycare. We had a one year old at the time. Though we made excellent use of nap time, we still needed some daycare. Another expense that no grant covered. At the time, I made a big stink about this at the playground.

Why women drop out of grad school.

That is that why I cheered when I read this article about a former Nobel Prize winner who is championing the cause to have academic grants that are specifically targeted towards paying the babysitter. Fine idea.