Mobility in research: how to build a family?

To get a permanent position someday, it is mostly important to be mobile and to reach the best institutions in the world. This process usually takes several years, and several steps among Europe, maybe more.

Then comes the question of coupling. If you had your couple with someone who can follow you in this crazy but passionate track, it is most likely possible that you will get a family on the way. However, researchers can be rather interested in finding someone as motivated and as willing to work in science as them. Then comes the notion of sacrifice. Following someone can be very difficult if you want to perform your own research career. Is one of the couple members forced to make a sacrifice to keep the couple stable ?

Then arises the questions of kids. If you got your children quite early, maybe your partner will be able to follow your track, realizing that it would be the best for having a stable family for both. Then, everybody can boost up his/her career after making the babies, and then restart to be mobile, even maybe located in different places, and in the worst case crossing at conferences and meetings.

So far, I have tried with ambitious girls. It came to the point that it was impossible to build up a family and distance killed the whole thing with time. Then I decided to find someone local and get stuck to the same place for quite long time. This has recently failed due to too high stress level resulting from ambitious achievable research plans.

It got to break up as soon as I left for a short stay in a very prestigious institute, despite that I will be back in the previous place.

Hence I'm wondering. Who will be able to help me making a decent family before getting a maybe-never-coming permanent position?

This ticket will evolve with continuation of my personal experience. You can have a look to anot more encouraging reference.

More references:
- http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/07/balancing-career-and-family
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2017/jun/22/why-i-left-physics-for-economics?CMP=share_btn_fb