Woman as Scientist

I was browsing a science blog and came across a title which captured my attention '先做妈妈还是先做论文——女博士生的两难选择'. Literal translation would be 'to produce a baby or thesis first - a difficult choice for women PhDs'. The article is quite interesting but is written in Chinese, if you are interested you can read it up -->http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=290492
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm thinking of getting pregnant (I'm not even married ok?) but it somehow points out a typical difficulty that women have to face in choosing science as their career pursuit. PhD is a long process. If one decides to finish up the work and thesis, by the time one finish, one maybe 30++. Biologically, we become less fertile and it's more difficult to get pregnant and at the same time also more risky to deliver baby at such age. If one decides to have baby during the course of PhD, one may have to risk her baby being unhealthy, or miscarriage due to long term exposure to computer and different chemicals or radioactive rays. If one chooses to stop the study temporarily for the sake of baby, one may end up spending more time to finish PhD because science progresses and the progress can be very fast in some competitive fields. One or two years of maternity leave can mean obsolete research findings by the time one return to bench.
This is actually only a tip of the iceberg. To postdoc or to have family first? To spend more time at home with kids or in lab for research? How will the society judge a woman who chooses research over family and kids? How will her own family sees her?