In 1949 Midgley went to Reading University, teaching in the philosophy department there for four terms. In 1950 she married Geoffrey Midgley (died 1997), also a philosopher. They moved to Newcastle, where he got a job in the philosophy department of Newcastle University. Midgley gave up teaching for several years while she had three sons (Tom, David and Martin), before also getting a job in the philosophy department at Newcastle, where she and her husband were both "much loved". Midgley taught there between 1962 and 1980. During her time at Newcastle, she began studying ethology and this led to her first book, "Beast and Man" (1978), published when she was 59. "I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I'm jolly glad because I didn't know what I thought before then."