Inside Higher Ed has a new group blog, Mama PhD. Wahoo! Most of the bloggers are fairly experienced and are starting off well. Many of the topics would well outside of academia, and I’ll link to those broader interest posts whenever I have the chance.
Libby had a post last week that discussed the difficulty of identifying remedies to work-family balance problems as the kids get older. Kids and parents still have needs after kindergarten, but those needs may be less easily remedied by specific policies.
I appreciated that the survey had an option that read something like “I
don’t need this, but we should have it,” and I checked it over and over
again for the lactation room, the onsite daycare, the flexible
scheduling, the help with caring for aged parents. But when it came to
asking for what I really needed, I was stymied. Sure, after-school
programs on campus would be nice for my younger child, as would summer
programs (he’s doing two weeks of summer camp on campus already).
There was some help available for the college application process with
my daughter, though we ended up going it mostly alone. Could we have
used more? Maybe. But the real demands of this period of parenting, as
of this period in a career, seem to me more amorphous, less easily
solved with one-size-fits-all programs and policies. Mostly right now I
just feel as if I have to be paying very close attention, at all times,
to everything — which means, no doubt, that something will inevitably
give. Is just recognizing that enough?
My needs — After school care that accepts kids with special needs and has smart people to help with homework. Libby has on-campus summer camp? Oooh, I want that, too. I still need flexible scheduling. Full time care when the public schools close for week long breaks.
Apt. 11d 
thanks for the link, Laura. I wish we had more/better on-campus summer camp. So far there’s a “class” offered through continuing studies that N likes–computer game design. We’re lucky he likes it, because there’s nothing else on campus that he could really do, nor was there ever anything like it for M (now 18–what she needs is a job on campus!). Yes, yes, to after-school care of high quality (couldn’t any school with an education dept offer this, really?), flex time, full time care during school breaks…
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There’s one after school daycare here in town that accepts special needs kids but, well, we don’t accept them. (Youngest didn’t warm up to the location and routines at all, so that was a bust.) We do get March break and two weeks in summer taken care of through the Respite Care Services people but, other than that, it’s a struggle that never ends.
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Thanks for the link! While most of the bloggers are trying to combine parenting and academic life, some of them do work outside the formal structure of the academy, and I think all of them will speak to people trying to figure out what combination of parenting & working outside the home– no matter what kind of work– is best for their families. I hope you’ll keep reading, and keep an eye out for the book (coming in July), too!
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