Young Hydrologic Society

A contribution by Diana Spieler, Lina Stein and Rodolfo Bezerra Nobrega

Academia and family are often described as ‘greedy institutions’—a term coined by Coser in 1974. Both demand extensive and open-ended time commitments, which can easily send parents into a spiral of guilt for their perceived inability to fully meet the demands of both their professional and parental roles. This perpetual balancing act is seemingly impossible to perfect. To understand how academic parents navigate these challenges, we asked them how they organize family life around their research demands, how they handle conferences, relocating for the job or their day-to-day routines. This is what they said:

Daily Routines

Most parents in our survey reduced their weekly working time to better balance family and career demands. Some choose to work four days a week, while others opt for fewer hours per day. This approach provides flexibility for managing a schedule with kids, particularly when both parents adopt it. By adjusting their work schedules, parents could effectively compensate for each other, stepping in as needed. This however often requires a strong commitment between partners (if not a single carer) in planning daily routines, prioritizing work responsibilities and establishing clear communication channels. It also generally comes with less income.

“Organization” is a big part of our family life. […] This insight did not come naturally to me as I am typically terribly unorganized.”

While a clear weekly structure and distribution of responsibilities seems essential to most, one respondent reminded us that it is also important to stay flexible in your mind for potential sudden changes. Having plans A, B ,C and possibly even G for important meetings or deadlines can be helpful because there is a definite increase in sick days (of parents and children) or the “occasional calls from the principal for less appealing reasons”.

“The most useful strategy for me is to use the early mornings well and to stay flexible in the mind in regards to sudden changes.”

Many parents also shared that they sleep less, wake up early or stay up late to handle their workload or catch up on tasks interrupted by family commitments. To compensate for care hours during the week, they sometimes dedicate time on weekends for work. This practice of overworking is common in science (Kucirkova, 2023) and underscores a systemic failure that is especially hard on parents or anyone not following a direct career path (Staniscuaski, 2024). Effective time management and prioritization of tasks seem crucial for maintaining academic productivity without resorting to 60-hour work weeks. This requires working with high focus and efficiency, particularly if time for additional tasks like reading papers or learning new programming skills is necessary.

“The most useful strategy for balancing work with family life is to have a pretty clear cutoff when leaving work – I’m unavailable from 4 PM onwards – and having a clear plan for how I will use the limited hours that I am in the office.” 

While some male respondents acknowledged continuing to work full-time while their wives managed childcare, the majority made deliberate efforts to share childcare responsibilities, aiming for a 50-50 or 60-40 split between partners. Achieving a completely even split was often challenging, especially during the child’s first year, but generally became more feasible starting at the age of 1.5 to 3 years old. Shared childcare duties also helped distribute the care of a sick child, arranging schedules around meetings, deadlines and fieldwork and promoting a more equitable distribution of the mental load, which is often disproportionately borne by mothers. One male respondent who worked full-time found it difficult to take parental leave when his child was born, despite being legally allowed. He deliberately advertised to claim your rights and speak up for yourself when it comes to parental leave and reduced working hours as he regretted that it took him at least 8 years before he felt like it was okay to take time off for family.

“We need role models! Especially for men that often only know their own fathers as sole providers and mothers as sole caregiver.”