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.”

Conferences and Travel

Many parents described to be more selective in the events, conferences and work tasks they participate in as it is a challenge for any parent alone to cover all childcare responsibilities. Many try to minimize travel times to reduce the time not spent at home or have grandparents coming in to support childcare. Making sure there is support during those times requires planning far in advance while considering school calendars, partner’s schedule and needs, and potential unforeseeable events.

“Visiting conferences is a bit challenging; it feels like quite a big thing to ask to leave my partner with the children at home for a few days or a whole week.”

Generally, there seems to be a preference for not taking children on fieldwork or conferences to be able to “really focus”. Also, “childcare at conferences is often only during the official conference day, but everyone knows that the socializing and meetings in the evening hours are almost as essential as the conference visit itself”. You may also experience guilt for getting back to your family quickly if they join you for the conference or might face a bad night with your child, which can make it more difficult to focus on the next day. Having other caretakers willing to help or watch the child for a longer time period (and grandparents seem essential here) is however a privilege and childcare support through the conference or employer is thus essential.

“For me, the challenges are most acute when I need to travel for conferences or field work as it disrupts our carefully choregraphed childcare routine!”

Moving

Relocating for the next academic position can be a significant challenge for parents, especially when kids get older and established friendships are disrupted. But also partners have their own careers and social lives and might not be willing to relocate at all. The previous sections demonstrated how essential a support network is for childcare during conferences or unexpected sick days. Moving residence means potential family support will be lost and the task of settling in, creating new friendships and learning how to navigate the new society and surroundings takes extra effort and time. Sometimes only to redo it two or three years later.

“We moved together as a whole family […] [and] I still can’t believe we pulled that off. Now my postdoc is ending and I’m looking for the next place, and the thought of moving again simply stresses us out.”

Those that were brave enough to relocate as a family (or even single parent) said that it helped to try to connect with other parents, organize play dates, sign up for after school activities and explore the new environment together. The process can however be very challenging. Some respondents deliberately chose the country of relocation based on the available childcare options but most respondents just did not move after the children were born or reached a specific age, as it was perceived as too big a strain on family life.

“The system is made for single people. Even a partner makes things complicated. Not being able to be flexible means you miss out on opportunities for jobs or conferences or networking.“

What we learned

Reading all the responses highlights that being a parent in academia is not an easy feat! Parents continually revise how they manage their workload to adapt to the changing needs of their family and job, they find ways to function in a system that does not make it easy for them. Academia is still seen as a purely merit-based career. Yet, instead of rewarding good science, the focus of grants or promotions is on the number of papers published, the years spent working abroad, or the number of hours worked. All things that become more challenging for parents. It is therefore important to be kind to yourself and accept that “[…] you just have to let go of competing for a while when you decide to have a child. You simply cannot get done as much as a single, fully self-determined individual, and from my perspective you also shouldn’t.“

“Best strategy – realizing that academic success is mostly an illusion, and that other things are far more important.”

It was described as helpful to “keep the perspective that [you] won’t be awesome at everything all the time. […] So long as, on average, everything comes out at least ‘good’, if not ‘very good’, [be] satisfied.” Having kids was also seen as a balance to the stressful academic job and one respondent said: “My kids are the best way to stop thinking about science. Bad reviews, rejected proposals, or a missed punch line at a talk – they surely do not care about it, and after 15 minutes in the park or at the playground, I can start laughing about the nonsense we tend to worry about in the science world.”

Generally, a large majority of senior scientists are parents. Even around 30% of early career researchers (in a German Study of 2014; Schmermund, 2020) are parents. We often hide our families from our jobs as parenting is regarded as a private matter or even lifestyle choice. However, parenting is a fundamental aspect of life that most individuals will experience at some point. Just because someone has a child, does not make them a worse scientist (many found their children actually helped them become better scientists). We therefore advocate for academic institutions to acknowledge this reality and support the talents of academic parents. Ideas proposed by our respondents will be discussed in the next blog post.

“Having to make decisions that influence others, especially small children, is anything but easy. I would encourage others to be bold and brave, because this is how we move things forward.”

References

Coser, L. A. Greedy Institutions. Patterns of Undivided Commitment. The Free Press, New York 1974. Cited after R. Burchielli, T. Bartram: Work–Family Balance or Greedy Organizations?, érudit, 2008, Vol. 63, No. 1, p. 108–133, doi:10.7202/018124ar

Kucirkova, N. I. Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it. Nature 614, 9–9 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00241-8

Schmermund, K. Zwischen Bauklötzen und Research Paper. Forschung und Lehre (2020) https://www.forschung-und-lehre.de/karriere/zwischen-baukloetzen-und-research-paper-2676

Staniscuaski, F. Academia needs radical change — mothers are ready to pave the way. Nature 626, 9–9 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00239-w