Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
The best time to become a parent: The relationship between tenure and fertility among academics
Originally published 2026-08-12 · PLOS One
PLOS · DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0353232 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Studies how tenure and its timing relate to parenthood, placing job security and gendered career clocks in the conversation about fair opportunity.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Respect
Do our promotion timelines make family formation harder for some employees?
Studies how tenure and its timing relate to parenthood, placing job security and gendered career clocks in the conversation about fair opportunity.
Study context
Primary data on women and men working in Italian academia.
Age / stage: Adult academics; transitions to first and second births.
Read with three questions
- How did tenure relate to first births, second births and short-term fertility intentions?
- Why did age at tenure matter differently for women and men?
- What would a fair policy review examine besides an employee’s individual choices?
Keep the limits in view
Observational career and fertility histories cannot establish that tenure causes childbirth; Italy’s academic employment structure and reproductive timing constrain transfer.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Olga Gorodetskaya; Agnese Vitali; Valentina Tocchioni; Alessandra Minello (2026). The best time to become a parent: The relationship between tenure and fertility among academics PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0353232
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.