

Ask HN: Help me figure out suitable work for my young stay-at-home wife? - a-saleh

My wife has just finished her master studies in molecular biology, and we are expecting our first child in few months.<p>While for now I have a decen&#x27;t salary, and she is quite looking forward to be a stay-at-home mom for a few years, we can&#x27;t help bu wonder about her future employment&#x2F;income posibilities.<p>It seems that in her area of expertise, there are no other career paths than PHD -&gt; PostDoc, and from what she has seen of the academia, it doesn&#x27;t look compatible with raising a child.<p>She is a decent language learner and reasonably skilled artisan&#x2F;painter.<p>What would you advise us?
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merrua
Write a book on molecular biology? Start learning programming after the baby
is old enough moving into scientific computing? or software designed for the
molecular biology field? Take the time out of the academia rat race and work
on one of the great problems? Again might result in a book or a position. Art
book of molecular biology references? Start a blog on reviews of papers for
biology? Start a blog on reviews for biology books? Develop a small startup
for open science for easy, accountable peer review?

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pmtarantino
Congratulations on the baby.

I like this approach. If you could help her with the "computing problems",
maybe she could 1) write a book, 2) while she learns more about scientific
computing and come with ideas about mixing molecular biology with sc. comp.

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a-saleh
This was my first suggestion as well, unfortunately, her encounter with
statistics in their undergrad course was so terrible, that she doesn't want to
touch anything that would require it with a ten foot pole. What is pity, we
even have a systems-biology research group in the town we live in.

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merrua
There is online courses that go through the maths with you. Which are usually
better teachers than most undergraduate courses.

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jeffmould
If she is interested in getting into academics, she may consider doing remote
teaching. For example, many of the professors who teach at University of
Maryland University College ([http://umuc.edu](http://umuc.edu)) are from
across the country and only teach part time while either holding a full-time
job or being retired. The majority of the classes offered are all done
entirely online so there is no travel commitments by the professor to go to a
classroom every day or week. I am sure that there are other similar
opportunities at other colleges. Just a thought.

Congrats on the baby!

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pskittle
Congrats on the baby , I would say look for positions that allow remote work .
Additionally , developing skills that could help her work as a freelancer (web
dev, big data etc) with applications in biotech of-course

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danieltillett
She could do something similar to what my wife did who also has a Life
sciences PhD - see here
[http://www.priceusa.com.au](http://www.priceusa.com.au)

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bavcyc
Can she (and you) find a way to do research/development at home in her field?
Or possibly figuring out how to combine her area of expertise with computing,
specifically simulations.

