After finishing my dissertation, I asked my supervisor if he would support my application for a post-doctoral position that had just been advertised. He waved me off, saying that I might have a third child. I was 39. Three years later, after I had made no effort to leave the university, he approached me to ask if I would like to work on a post-doc project as part of a larger project of his. In his opinion, however, a habilitation was out of the question. I was too old for that.