Elizabeth Guenthner, a resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, might have thought twice about agreeing to go out with her internal medicine intern Gary Nabel, had she known their first date would turn out like a scene from Pulp Fiction. While deciding what to order, a masked man appeared in the restaurant, pointing a gun at the chef and shouting for everyone’s money. The gunman fled the scene with a fistful of wallets. The owners of the restaurant came out and offered all of the patrons a free dinner. Most just went home, but Nabel and Guenthner were poor and tired med students, so they stayed and ate the free meal. “I was amazed that she was so graceful under pressure,” Nabel recalls.

Just a little over a year later they were married.

From keeping their cool during a stickup to dealing with new career opportunities, their ability to make the most of life’s curveballs has come to define their relationship.

Early in their careers, the Nabels were able to collaborate on the first gene therapy studies in cardiovascular disease and cancer, each in their respective labs at the University of Michigan. But in 1999, when Gary was recruited to become the director of the Vaccine Research Center, a new branch at NIH focused on developing an HIV vaccine, Elizabeth had to decide her next move. She loved life in Ann Arbor, Mich., raising her three children, and directing the cardiology department at the university, but realized the benefits of moving. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for my husband,” she says. “I knew it would be a wonderful opportunity for my children to live in DC and be exposed to all the economic, social and political diversity.”

Elizabeth soon made a name for herself as the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH, launching new scientific programs focused on the genomics of complex diseases and global health. Just this year, it was Elizabeth’s turn to make a big career move, when she was offered a job as the president and CEO of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For the first time in their marriage, the couple will make their relationship long distance. “What every married couple comes to recognize is that life is not static,” says Gary. “You just have to come to expect and negotiate change together.”

Pay for childcare, if possible

“We decided early on that we would always keep family as our first priority,” says Elizabeth, so money always went to education and nannies before other expenses. They hired a nanny to take care of their first son while they were completing residency and postdoc fellowship training, and continued employing nannies for all three children. “There were some years in Ann Arbor when we had three nannies who rotated schedules so we had coverage on evenings and weekends as well as after school,” says Elizabeth.

If he won’t go, I won’t go

Often potential new employers would not provide adequate terms for both Nabels, skimping on lab space, start-up money, or desired salary. When one of them wasn’t happy with the employment terms, neither would sign on. They turned down offers “if there wasn’t a position for us both or if the location wasn’t a place we wanted to raise our children,” Gary says. The position at the NIH was the notable exception.

Incorporate work into family time

Even with busy work schedules, the family would spend time together around the dinner table and in the study in the evenings. “We have a fairly large study at home with three computer stations,” says Elizabeth. “Basically, at night everyone in the family would come to the study and we’d work there together as family time.”

Federica Sallusto and Antonio Lanzavecchia were colleagues for several years before they became romantically involved. They met in 1993 when Sallusto joined Lanzavecchia’s lab at the Basel Institute for Immunology in Switzerland as a research technician. “In a matter of a few months, Federica made a spectacular discovery, which led to a couple of papers that are some of the most quoted papers in our field,” says Lanzavecchia. In one of these papers, published in Journal of Experimental Medicine and cited over 3,000 times (179:1109-18, 1994), she discovered a simple method to generate large numbers of immature dendritic cells by culturing human monocytes with two cytokines.

Despite their successes together, Sallusto moved back to Italy to focus on her T-cell research in the immunology department at the University of Roma La Sapienza in Rome. The two reunited a year later at a meeting and “we realized we liked being together, not just for work,” says Sallusto. They began to date.

In 2000, the two made a move together. Lanzavecchia was asked to direct the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), a new immunology center in Bellinzona, an Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Sallusto took a position leading an immunology lab there. At IRB, the two were able to establish the kind of working dynamic they always wanted. “We each have our own focus—I enjoy exploring antibodies, B cells, and plasma cells, while Federica focuses more on T cells—but we work completely as a team,” says Lanzavecchia.

“When I work with Federica, it is fun,” he says. “We are absolutely on the same level.”

Maintain your independence

“People would often ask Federica whether she was independent from me,” says Lanzavecchia. These comments irked the couple, and motivated them to differentiate their research contributions from each other. After leaving Rome, Sallusto returned to Lanzavecchia’s lab at Basel, but decided to focus on T-cell work, distinguishing herself from Lanzavecchia’s area of expertise. “If both researchers in a couple feel independently successful, it makes them feel like they’re on equal footing,” says Lanzavecchia.

Ignore personal criticism

Despite efforts to carve out her own research niche, Sallusto still gets asked if she is independent from Lanzavecchia. Eliminating prejudices from outsiders may be a lost cause, so they did the next best thing: They decided not to let the opinions affect their work. “Scientists are never completely independent anyway,” Sallusto points out. “A lot of our accomplishments come from working together so well.”

Collaborate and compete

Lanzavecchia wanted to examine the immune response of human B cells and plasma cells more closely using cloning techniques, but his method proved to be somewhat laborious. Sallusto wagered that she could create a more effective way to interrogate immune cells. Fueled by a little competitive spirit, she generated a library of T-cell variants, which allowed her to select and test how specific T cells respond to different antigens more efficiently than Lanzavecchia’s. “When we talk and feed off each other conceptually, we can create something innovative,” says Lanzavecchia. “A little friendly competition is good.”

When Maiken Nedergaard came to Cornell Medical Hospital in 1987 as a visiting neurology fellow from Denmark, she happened to work in the lab next door to Steve Goldman’s. “One afternoon, she wanted advice on how to culture cells,” says Goldman. “How’s that for romantic?”

The couple was married 2 years later, and by 1999, they had five young children. Between kids two and three, they moved out of New York City to Westchester to have more space to raise their children. But the New York commute proved too draining, so Nedergaard took a job at New York Medical College in Westchester, heading a neurology lab and teaching. Goldman continued to commute up to 4 hours a day until they “finally decided to find a place where we could both integrate our family and work life,” says Goldman.

In 2003, the couple took positions at the University of Rochester Medical Center in upstate New York. “Most of our researchers moved with us, so by the time we had consolidated, both labs together were bigger than most of the basic science departments at the university,” says Goldman. With the backing of the university, they started a new department—the Center for Translational Neuromedicine.

Recently Nedergaard and Goldman developed a strategy to use stem cells to replenish the type of brain cells that are lost in Parkinson’s and Huntington’s in animal models of the diseases, and hope to use this strategy in humans.

Keep weekends sacred

Goldman and Nedergaard did not plan on having such busy work and family lives, but the move to Rochester made a tremendous difference, says Nedergaard. “I almost never work on the weekends anymore so I can spend time with the kids,” says Goldman. If they were to do it all over again, they might have tried to find a joint appointment sooner.

Find couple time

With such a large family, it is tough for Goldman and Nedergaard to set aside time to be alone, especially if that takes away from being with their children. The couple does try to steal away moments together, for instance, when the kids sleep late on weekends. “We can enjoy an early breakfast together discussing our children or news from the latest conference,” says Nedergaard. Since alone time is so short lived, the couple never gets bored in each other’s company, she says.

Take turns sacrificing

During the couple’s days at Cornell, Goldman’s duties in the clinic often called him away from the lab. Luckily, Nedergaard was there to oversee his lab in his absence. In turn, Goldman made sure Nedergaard wasn’t left taking care of baby duties alone, even when he spent long hours on the road. “I was already used to getting 2 hours of sleep a night from my days covering the intensive care unit,” says Goldman. That skill came in handy when he took the overnight feeding and burping sessions to let his wife sleep through the night. “The ability to be fluid and cover each other’s duties has been crucial for us,” says Goldman.

"poor and tired med students" yeah right! Med students are only poor when they actually become MD and have to pay their debts. They where in fact so poor that they could actually hire nannies has postdocs, so they could cover every days of the week.

Biological parents: checks
Parenting: not really

"and we?d work there together as family time" Indeed nice family time. At least the kids will be drilled down for a demanding work life.

This article is laughable at best!

Most of what I am seeing here is Monday morning quarterbacking and until the single people commenting have walked a mile in the couples shoes perhaps it would be best not to be so judgemental. Ok, being a scientists requires some level of judgement and expressing opinion so perhaps it is not completely out of bounds. But those who have not had to balance career, children and marriage have no clue as to the stress imposed. One spends a nearly half a life acquiring the skills necessary to be a scientist, one third doing it and if lucky the rest enjoying the accomplishments of a lifetime or regretting the choice entirely. For most of us, the decision to be a profession was the only choice and anything else was too bitter to contemplate. Science is not a profession, it is an addiction worse than any drug. Once securely bitten there is no rehab. And what would society and science be like if this were not the case. Science is the magnificent obsession and if you are not prepared for it and the price it exacts, then it is best to get out now. For most part the rewards are few and if you cannot be satisfied with with those there are, do something else for a living. Young people and most of the comments are from young unmarried people considered your options and opinions carefully. The cases here are probably not all that different from a random sample of US society in general and certain a random sample of the scientist I have known over the past 30 years. How many times do we see the politician, business (wo) man, banker etc fail at the very parenting skills you condemn. You do not know how these children turned out so judging the parents for their efforts is premature. Their choices may not have been the ones you would have made, but how sure are you that you are right? You cannot know as that page has not been written.

With all the respect to the researchers cited in the article, that's not balance but an highly optimized full-time work schedule.

As a PhD student I have already realized that it is impossible to have a real family life and hundreds of publications with thousands of cites and a leadership position without a LOT of work and study. (That is clearly obvious and only false if you are a brilliant genius).

The competition that drives science is strong and one needs to choose sides. It is sad, yes, I am not saying that this is the way it need to be, but is very unlikely that it will change in the near future.

The interesting point is that this crazy pattern emerged recently, as we no longer have boundaries to work (or because publication metrics became God On Earth).

But it is fair? We do really need to abdicate the right to have a family because we also want to be good scientists? Of course, there is a choice, and it is not to quit science, but to accept that you probably will be a low profile scientist. However, this is really hard to acknowledge.

After all, we are humans, we need to sleep, we need to rest (besides sleeping), we need some time for personal care and of course, some fun outside the lab, even if we really have a lot of fun doing research. Add to this a family, children and all the responsibilities (and joy) that they bring and you got a lot of time that would otherwise being employed to write papers.

In the end, I think that it does not change much if you are in the industry, academy, services...If you aspire to a high position, you need to choose your trade-offs.

I do agree whith everybody that although these people found ways to cope with having both a scientific career and a family, their life are far from well-balanced.

Another point that is important to me is that the younger person in the entire article is 48. Starting an academic career NOW seems rather different than 20 years ago. Competition is utterly crazy and your are considered a very lazy person if you work only the amount of hours on your contract.

I was often told that I am talented and should try my chance in academia. I am a 34-years-old female and a fairly senior post-doc. The idea of going through tenure-track and motherhood simultaneously is enough to make me panic. I love my job, but not enough to put myself and my fiance, and our future children through this. Hopefully the industry will have time to recover enough before comes the time for me to look for a job in there...

One of my PhD advisors was president of a major national university, discovered a key metabolic pathway, was highly published/highly cited, and had two of his children commit suicide as teenagers. Balance?
My wife is a physician with a joint appointment in a federal clinic and a teaching faculty position at a premier state university. I moved from senior scientist to executive in a public biomedical company, left that when the bureaucracy became intolerable and am now working in a startup environment in biotech and consulting to be able to afford private schools for our three now-teenage children. We have dinner together as a family every night and weekends are largely spent on children's activities and sports. I don't sleep much during the week, but due to my mentor's counter-example we are determined to keep the kids as priority in our lives. When they were younger my wife either worked part-time or stayed home and I spent a couple of years after leaving big company working at home and as a part-time CSO at another biotech when she went back to medicine full-time.
It can work but it requires quite a bit of sacrifice from both partners and a keen focus on priorities. Sadly I don't think an academic career for me would have allowed us to achieve this balance.

It is really worrisome to see that my worse fears are true, indeed you cannot be a well known scientist and have a life. And the system is unstable, let's say we reset the system to a 40hs/week job, how long would it take until one starts working 9hs/day, then 10, the on weekend, and that somebody will be more productive so others will follow to try to keep up and soon enough we'll where we are now. What the first couple describe it is just a description of the distorted reality we live in, they confused balancing work and personal life with finding a way to deal with the kids so they do not interfere with the work and I am sure honestly believe that they found a balance cause they can put all the hours they need to work while the kids are taken care of, just not by them... poor kids, my and my wife, both faculty, usually take turns during the week to stay late in the office so one of us is with the kids and we do spend the weekend with them, not working with them sharing with them, still we see that kids act up when one of us go out of town or is less available than usual trying to meet a deadline or something, I can only imagine how those kids feel that have three nannies and parent working while with them.

Thanks to these couples, clearly amazing scientists, for sharing their strategies for succeeding, not just coping. However there are some very important points that suggest that science culture (and The Scientist) needs a revolution and soon.
- For the author/editor to align number of children (and hilarously, number of nannies) and marital status with number of papers and citations is ill judged. Is having children an achievement? Or is it abnormal or a mere inconvenience? Shall we design a procreation index so we can judge levels of scientific productivity and personal sacrifice at the alter of almighty science?
- How can dual career appointments possibly, with pools of hundreds of applicants, objectively select the best candidate for each position? Are hiring committees really submitting to blackmail from couples offering a 'package' deal. Could an ambitious scientist team up with any willing colleague in or out of wedlock and tout a similar package!
- What is the state of science management if it is preferable to hire more than one nanny for the home instead of more lab or admin staff at work. How powerful are these lab directors really?
- Why should kids be expected to be available for their parents at weekends, if their parents aren't around in the schoolweek. Roald Dahl wrote "When you grow up and have children of your own do please remember something important - a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY." (from Danny Champion of the World)

This article is a great example of the ridiculous expectations put on scientists and professors. You can do it all and if you can't you are a failure. Notice how all the women in these "power couples" publish less? Were the sacrifices really equal? I would love to hear their children's side of the story.

These lives are as balanced as a drunk sailor with vertigo. 3 nannies? Huh?

I am so glad that so many people here have shared they own experiences. I'm sad in the other hand that everyday I find it more real that being a scientist can be the worst career I could have chosen. I feel doomed to have little time with family if I wanted to be successful, and ashamed if take some time in the weekends to be with my husband. People will talk about you if u are not working 24-7, that is the reality of being in science. Is all a competition, people don't respect that there is a real life beyond the walls of the lab. I'm just a graduate student now, and it stresses me to see where I could be heading.
I love science, and since I remember I always wanted to sacrifice myself for the good of society, I had no idea what that really meant until I started living it myself. Now I find that pathetic, because I also want to live, not be a slave.

This article should have been saved for April first! Balance? Are you kidding me. Do these people sound like their professional life is really balanced with their family life? Not once did the article mention how the parents (at least in the first example) spend any time actually having a relationship with their children. I'd really like to hear from the children, if they think their parents live a balanced life. I'd really like to see how this equation is balanced on paper. If this is what society think a balanced life looks like, than society will not last for long.

In this day and age I don't actually expect such "power couples" to be able to lead a balanced life, I think it's literally impossible. But seriously now Mr. "Author" don't piss my foot and tell me it's raining.

I am not married yet. I find it quite hard to balance my life at home and in lab too.
I need to get up early in the morning and hit the road to work around 7am. It took me about an hour to reach my workplace (traffic is bad every morning).
After working, me and my boyfriend will eat at his sis place and reach home about 8.30pm. By the time I reach home. I am too exhausted/ lazy to do anything. Too tired to even put my dirty laundry into washing machine. Rest for 2-3 hours, or watching TV, then go to sleep.
I can't imagine what my life would be after got married, or when I have kids. I don't even have my OWN time now!!!

- Evelyn

I think the main problem is with the first couple the others seems to have work out some time for their family, in this scientific society is seems to be shameful to take weekends off, yet one of the couples indicate weekends are sacred, let's not generalized.

What is sad is that, at least from where I am, somebody trying to grow, it looks like the only way to get to the top is to either neglect your kids, have no kids, or being single. The other alternative is to have a stay-home spouse in which case the scientist will be an absent parent but at least the kids have one parent.

The time for tenure is somewhat different is temporary but indeed it makes it impossible to balance family and work.

Without reading the addresses it is obvious these unfortunate power couples work in USA labs, this would rarely happen in European research labs that children would be sacrificed to power and career. How sick your Society has become! How sad for the children in their golden years, a precious time for parents and children never to be recovered. I and my wife head Research Centres and we would never inflict such damage as described in this article on our children. Shame on you power couples!

Like others, I was hoping to read some real work-life balance stories. Instead this was quite horrific, and seemed to congratulate the couple who chose science over family and that full-time nanny care is acceptable!
I'm the head scientist of a research lab, married to a senior research leader in the same institute and we have two young children. I manage by having 3 days from 8.30 - 3.30 in the lab, one day working at home. This keeps my research going and children having the benefit of sometime at a good preschool. Weekends are sacred and work is not the topic of conversation when we are at home. Husband travels a lot during the week and sometimes overseas so when he isn't he is always at home 5pm the latest.
Science shouldn't have to rule your life 24/7, institutes need to enable balance (ie job-sharing) and flexibility to work from home. The technology is there to use.
Why have children if you aren't going to spend time with them??

My goal is to find a BALANCE between my career and my family. A balance (to me) does not mean finding nannies to care for my child 24/7 so I can work all the time. A balance is finding a way to be happy at work, happy at home, and do an adquate job at both!

I do not know the three couples used as examples, but I would have liked to hear more about how they (not their nanies) raised their children, and what memories the chldren have of childhood.

Years ago, I was at a fete for a retiring "superstar" (the speakers included a Nobel Laueate). There were a host of professional tributes and stories, and then one of the man's daughters (a physician herself) got up to speak. I'll never forget her words: "Well, Daddy, it's sure great that you were there for all these people, 'cause you sure weren't there for us!" It was a deafening silence.

My wife and I are both reasonably successul biomedical academics, but I can tell you that we both have sacrificed some of our careers for our children. The proud look on my son's face when I entertained his elementary class with a chemistry show was worth the manuscript I might have finished with that time. Of course, if I hadn't been there, my son would not have missed it....but I would have known.

BTW.. now that my brother and I are both in our 40s, neither of us would even cross the street to spit on either of our parents. We don't know those people, and we don't want to.

Many of our friends in our generation were raised this way with the same or very similar outcomes.

Come on!!! how can this be a balance : having three nannies to take care of kids; working on computers in study as family time; and discussing Science on dinner table?
Not sure how much time the kids really got in all this from their parents. The author really need to redefine the meaning of "Balance life and work". Balance of Work and life is where you are there for your kids when they want you and you respect the obligations of your spouse as yours and still make time for your family.

This article is poorly conceptualized.

I'm not sure what balanced means in these cases. The balance is not having three rotating nannies, of which most people cannot even afford. It feels like fantasy to read that spending what must be thousands of dollars a month for someone to watch your children is the way to achieve balance, especially with the current state of the economy and the world. While I admire the two esteemed scientists for their amazing careers, I don't think that their life is balanced.

We all have the right to make a choice of what to do with our lives, but we cannot have it all and we should call things by their names. Both me and my wife are faculty and we have two kids so we understand the struggle. We know other couples in the same situation that have made different decisions. What I am struggling with is the claim in the first article that "family comes first" to proceed to say that kids spend ALL their times with nannies or alternatively work sessions, that to me says work is first, they just found something to do with the kids. Now, I do not have any objection with the lifestyle they chose, I just would like thing to be called by their names so the rest of us trying to decide how we are going to design our lives know exactly what is the choice we are making. Not working on weekends to spend time with the kids is probably putting family together, (something that probably a couple of un-tenured faculty cannot do) finding somebody else to take care of the kids while we can work is probably putting the work first. You may agree with one lifestyle or the other, but call things by their name

Real balance for any American family would be that they would be able to live on one income, not TWO!!! It sickens me that for the past 30 years we have slipped away from "traditional family values" that Reagan PROMISED OUR COUNTRY, and ALL OUR FAMILIES HAVE SUFFERED!!! This article sells something NO AMERICAN SHOULD BUY!!!

As a child raised by a "power couple" who cared more about chasing the "all-mighty" dollar than spending quality time with their children, I can attest to the destruction. My brother is a 43 year old alcoholic with 17% function of his heart, who cries like a baby everyday, because all he ever wanted was his mother's love. I am a life-long neuropathic pain patient... likely post tramatic stress from being a latch-key kid.

Children need parents who want to be parents, and our country needs to value families enough to make it possible to afford to raise them properly!!!

Maybe things worked out for these couples and I congratulate them but for many other scientist couples who did not make it (probably the rule rather than the exception) being successful meant parting ways. Young post docs get appointments in opposite ends of a country such as the USA and the likelihood of staying together (even before children are factored in) is low. Scientist/non-scientist couples are also at risk as non-scientist loses spouse to scientist due to excessive time spent in the lab in the name of career advancement. For most people the stars did not line up and maybe there should be an article about successful scientists who achieved success by being single.

Been there, done that! What makes/made it work in our case is to 1)completely consider the other spouse's obligations as important as your own; 2) Family first, always, no exceptions; 3)communicate. These points are not any particular order.

My wife and I went through the similar path as scientists, but we were not high profile figures. We worked in the same lab as postdocs in University. With one child, having a reliable nanny was not an easy one let alone the cost. A big chunk of one income goes to nanny. The income of the university postdoc was merely over the graduate TAs in early 90's. When my wife got the industry job, I followed her with no job because her income was larger than two postdoc incomes. We were financially much better because I babysit for a while. By then, we had two children. The older one went to kindergarten.
I miss those time so much. With two teen agers, we still have very intimate relationships like the past. Brother and sister play along and watch the video I took when they were young.
Now, my wife still works in the same company and became a good status and I work in the undergraduate teaching institution. I would not trade anything with my time with kids. Life is short!

I must say that the articles were disappointing. I do not believe that you can only be a well established scientist with a happy marriage and family life if you have another scientist as your mate. I also do not believe that the average young scientist out there can afford to pay for 1 nanny much less 3. I personally think it is not balanced to discuss science around the dinner table, for me that is obsessive behavior. We are humans and it is best to have a break, a breather, and what better way than with your family to talk about what the kids have been up to all day, science can wait for later. The two most valuable possessions you can give a child is your time and undivided attention. I was hoping to hear about real balance, where work and home do not have to overlap for you to be a successful scientist, and one who has not been cited 30,000 times.

I just couldnt do the full time nanny thing. I really wanted to raise my own kids as much as I possibly could. Thus, we did the full time day care thing (when they were small), and full time aftercare at school. However, this totally restricts my time in the lab to a strict 8 hour day. It?s very hard to get ahead in science if you only work on science for 8 hours a day. Weekends are set aside for family, since my husband works so much during the week and we want to spend time together. So I have discovered that you BOTH really can?t have your cake and eat it too, only one can reasonably have the cake. We started out pretty equal out of graduate school, but as soon as the kids came along, my husband?s career has skyrocketed, while mine has become somewhat mediocre. We will never be a ?power couple?. I will most likely never get tenure, but will continue to publish decent papers in midlevel journals, while he pumps out the Nature and Cell papers. But at least my kids have at least one parent with them as often as I can fit it in without giving up my career entirely.

As someone who got married to a non-scientist in grad school and had my first child my last year of grad school and my second as a post-doc, I can attest that it can work. What I like about being married to a non-scientist is that my life is NOT science 24/7. That does not mean that I am not devoted to my research and teaching, but just that my life is more than that. Yes it was hard when my husband was on the road and I was primary caregiver for two young children--but the time flies and pretty soon they are in college. We were poor and tired but happy a lot, now we are empty nesters and devote more time to work and love it. The secret is to prioritize--what is most important? Playing with the kids when home from work or cleaning the house? Find good daycare and a support system of others in your situation. When you are at work, be at work. When at home, be at home. My kids are both happy and healthy young adults with good relationships with their parents. My husband and I are still married and learning new ways to spend our expanded free time. Those days of sleep deprivation and no time to think are a fond memory!

When I saw this article I thought of sending it to my husband to read, until I read about the having nannies practically 24-7 (that would be so easy right?). I am a scientist, my husband is not, and sometimes he struggles in understanding that I don't have much time to do other things. Well, this is not very encouraging. It looks like in science is quite impossible to truly have a BALANCE between family and the lab. Having nannies raising your children so that I can make a successful career is not balanced. The kids are the one who will suffer this, because they won't have their parents to take care of them.
I will never sacrifice my kids for my career, but I can not blame others for doing so, this people have made huge contributions to science, and they are invaluable.

It is refreshing to read a story that gives a positive spin on couples who manage to achieve personal and professional success. In order to inspire more women to go into science careers, I strongly believe that we need to share more of these stories.

There are other models of dual-career science couples who have successfully balanced careers in academe -- albeit it at predominantly undergraduate institutions. They inspire the next generation of scientists and science educators, conduct high quality research (often in conjunction with students), sometimes both chair academic departments, and still manage to have children and fulfilling personal lives.

From the couples that I know, this success does seem to involve sharing common work-interests and passions and sometimes having work-related discussions during meals. In my own family, our kids love these conversations as they learn about what we do. They find science fascinating and have been actively involved (by their choice) in local citizen science projects.

Besides the work-related chat, we do also talk about their homework and school issues, sports, music lessons, politics, the new puppy. In other words, we have quality time simply talking and listening to each other.

Our jobs have also provided flexibility to accomodate our children when they have been sick or need to attend special events, and because of our work, they have had many unique travel opportunities.

Are we busy? Yes. Do we have rich and fulfilling lives? Definitely!

I agree with the post titled "Family Time". Three nannies is not realistic for most families and "regular" daycare has strict time limits ans still costs thousands of dollars a year per child). I'd love to have "study" time but my children are still very young and I have to bounce between helping a child learn to read and another learn long division while keeping a three year old entertained--no time for me to read or write. My husband is not a scientist but he still works 70+ hours a week. We are strict about dinner time as family time, but fitting in basketball games etc is a must too---just being with your kids and playing games is important to their development but makes it hard to earn tenure. I envy my colleagues with stay at home wives--but know I would never want to be one. I feel like there is no answer, maybe there is balance when the kids are older but not when they and your career are young.

All three of the power couples described have closely similar interests and passions (in these cases, it's biomedical science). Is that the key? Is it that these marriages allow the two people to continually indulge in their shared passion and keep their brains honed?

In my own case, I simply cannot imagine being married to someone who didn't share my passion for science and the way science shapes my whole weltanschauung. And, I fervently believe that one of the reasons my husband asked me to marry him was because of our shared scientific (and other) background, interests and way of looking at the world. Who else but a fellow scientist could possibly understand or tolerate a scientist on a full-time basis? Of course, there has to be mutual respect for each other as scientists -- and no competition, thank you! -- or else it won't work out (I'm speaking from experience here -- this is my second marriage).

Sorry, but I don't consider "family time" to be time at the dinner table and "working" in the study together (on computers?!). I struggle to see the balance they all talk about. Having nannies evenings, weekends and after school is all the time, isn't it?
I would really like to see a story about couples who plan for the inevitable stresses, and provides strategies for young families to successfully BALANCE work and family from the start, rather than having to struggle though that first few years then "finally deciding to find a place that better integrates work and family life".
I suspect, however, that it is too much to ask for. A lifestyle like that is rare.... or possibly non-existent?!