You'd think by now I'd be a pro at this whole work-from-home-with-kids-thing. Well, here's a secret: as a parent, I never feel prepared for anything, especially these days. My kids' school is working on reduced staff & hours this week, which means reduced hours at work and school for me. And more time keeping precious stuffed animals away from the dog while children are screaming in the background.
Parents with small kids are tired, we're worn down from the whiplash of the last 2 years of pandemic times, whether from lack of sleep, anxiety about how the pandemic will affect our kids short- and long-term, or sheer mental exhaustion. I'm tired of daily having to navigate the ever-updating onslaught of data about new variants, vaccinations, and school testing/exposure requirements. I'm anxious that I will have to cancel important meetings (or even worse: online meetings with kids in the room, yikes!), skip classes, or abandon an important experiment because my kids could be sent home at the drop of a hat because they had an exposure or have a runny nose. You may be thinking, "Well I'm sure your University has contingency plans for childcare and will be lenient with missing classes, etc." WRONG!! There are no official accommodations for parent students. And I'm afraid that missing out on these things will negatively affect my professional output. And re-doing that experiment will cost more time and more money. There are studies showing that womens' careers especially have taken a hit due to the pandemic: women are authoring and publishing fewer articles and taking on fewer research projects compared to their male colleagues (Viglione 2020, Squazzoni et al 2021). This could have long-standing implications for academic success and career advancement. For MY academic success and career advancement.
My University doesn't provide regular or emergency child care (like they do for employees), nor does it allow me to add my children to my health care plan. There is also no mention in the student handbook for exceptions or accommodations for parents who may have to miss class time due to child care emergencies. I'm incredibly lucky my supervisor is a mom of young kids and completely understands my situation. However, I know that plenty of other graduate student parents may not have that kind of support. Regardless of support and understanding from supervisors and professors though, my career is still taking a hit.
Knowing this motivates me to put in work whenever I can: in-between watching my 4-year-old's handstands as she catapults dangerously across my bed, listening to seminars while driving the kids to school, while the kids are watching egregious amounts of tv, while I'm making the 10,000th snack of the day, after bedtime until the wee hours of the morning, and don't forget the weekends. Does this sound sustainable? Haha. (Remember when I said parents are tired?)
And of course there's the guilt over not spending enough time with my kids, because they're the best. There is always a fine balance (imbalance, really) between the amount I work and the amount of attention and care I give them. They told us when we started grad school that 40hrs a week of work wasn't gonna cut it. Last semester I worked on average 60hrs a week, and even that wasn't enough time. Working on scheduling and streamlining tasks has helped me become more efficient when I work, but it can only go so far.
What could my University do to support me? Honestly, I don't have nearly enough time to brainstorm that. But I'm going to, because the next generation of parent scientists deserve to be officially supported by the administration, and to know that it is possible to be both a parent and a graduate student. Someone's got to do it, and maybe if we work together we can effect some kind of positive change.
References
Viglione G. (2020). Are women publishing less during the pandemic? Here's what the data say. Nature, 581(7809), 365–366. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01294-9
Squazzoni, F., Bravo, G., Grimaldo, F., García-Costa, D., Farjam, M., & Mehmani, B. (2021). Gender gap in journal submissions and peer review during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A study on 2329 Elsevier journals. PloS one, 16(10), e0257919. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257919
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