“With moments like that, you’re like, ‘What are you doing?’” she said.

Joy is one of a small number of graduate students at MSU for whom balancing a career, education and a family is all in a day’s work.

A 2010 survey conducted by the Council of Graduate Students, or COGS, found 16 percent of 1,009 graduate students surveyed — or about 300 students — had at least one child, and 43 percent of those respondents required some child care assistance.

Joy, who has three children — Annabella, 7, Penelope, 4, and Atticus, 3 — said enrolling in graduate school last fall to pursue a health and risk communication master’s degree was a calculated risk to take while also home-schooling her children.

But balancing life with school is all that graduate student Amanda Lick has known, after having two children before the end of her undergraduate education.

Lick said she has received financial support from MSU’s child care grant and parental help from the Family Resource Center, as well as a strong system of support from her husband and friends.

Students with children are eligible to receive grants to help with child support through MSU’s Office of Financial Aid, with available awards of up to $1,000 per child each semester. COGS also awards additional child care grants through the Office of Financial Aid for the same amount, funded from an initial $20,000 endowment established in January 2011.

Lick also utilized free services through the Family Resource Center, an MSU service that provides seminars and networking for students with children.

For graduate student Samantha Nazione, whose daughter Linley was born in October 2011, the balance between work and family life has come naturally, although it has been difficult at times.

She said when she found out she was pregnant, she was not sure how her department would take the news.

But Nazione, who works as a research assistant in the Department of Communication, said her colleagues were supportive of her, and after adapting to schedule changes, she has learned how to be a mother and a student at the same time.

“I don’t even think of it as a burden because I wanted a kid,” she said. “I wanted her so bad.”

Joy said her attention is “splintered” between family life and school, but she had wanted to go to graduate school before having children.

“People looked at me like I was crazy, (and) I definitely understand it,” she said. “Either endeavor is significant enough that it could absorb all your energy.”

Nazione said her support group — husband, colleagues and family — has been helpful in allowing her to divide her time between the two important aspects of her life.

“Right now I feel like I have the best of both worlds,” she said.