Category: Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

Dr. Gina Scutlnicu identifies three challenges: lack of funding for childcare, lack of family support, and lack of/limited access to networking/visibility opportunities (something we will all have to grapple with). Dr. Seth Meyer underlines that while there is no one universal family (adoption, for example, comes with its own unique stressors), there are some universal experiences and needs. Similarly, Sombo Muzata Chunda and Layla Alanazi highlight the (lack of) uniform policies and the undesirable choices parents have to make between caregiving on a personal level and being left behind professionally. These issues are only going to be magnified as caregivers balance increasing caregiving with decreasing resources, in the face of continued professional pressures.

Multiple contributors called for funding (either conference scholarships or university funds) that can be used for dependent care expenses. In addition, several contributors (Dr. Kendra Stewart, Dr. Elizabeth Berkowitz, Dr. Tony Carrizales, Dr. Viswanath, Hannah Lebovits) highlighted the need for visible signals and infrastructure: welcoming language, drop-in rooms, nursing stations, etc. This symbolic and active representation can help shift cultures. Dr. Heath Brown highlighted the need for planning and logistics that allow for minimal travel/time spent away. While we are not traveling these days, this advance notice is still critical to enable caregivers to participate in virtual networking opportunities.

In the introduction to this symposium, we noted that “Academic conferences, an essential component of academic life, contribute a whole new element to the parenting and caregiving challenge.” We published those words approximately three months ago. Fast-forward to today. I sit here now, in the shadow of stay-at-home orders due to Covid-19, wondering how to close this symposium. My partner and I arranged schedules so I could get in some writing – he has the morning shift with our five-year old, while I have the afternoon shift (including cooking dinner). Tomorrow, based on various meetings, we will switch. I will have the morning caregiving shift, and he will have the afternoon (including getting ready for Shabbat). Our world has narrowed to these half-day juggling acts.

Just as our day-to-day lives have changed, so too has conferencing, and the crux of academic work. We will most likely not be meeting in large gatherings anytime soon. Spring 2020 saw a slew of cancellations, summer conferences are following suit, and fall conferences seem to be increasingly inching toward virtual opportunities even as they voice aspirations of face-to-face meetings. Even as conferences move online, the caregiving challenges do not disappear. Research points out that there are over 65 million unpaid family caregivers in the United States supporting ill, disabled, or aged family members. Additionally, research undertaken by the Lancet Commission on Women and Health reveals that over 70% of global caregiving hours are provided by women and girls. A report from the World Economic Forum points out that – “When it becomes difficult to balance caregiving with work, or if the demands of work come into conflict with one’s caregiving responsibilities, carers may be forced to cut back on their working hours or take a leave of absence. This impacts their ability to equally participate in the workplace.” Most of us will not be able to meaningfully participate in multiple days of back-to-back sessions of online conference sessions. With college campuses shut and social distancing measures enforced in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus, faculty members with caregiving responsibilities are experiencing an amalgamation of their personal and professional lives making it harder to draw boundaries and dictate their work-life balance. This will remain an area to confront and adapt to in academic conferencing.

Even as we ponder ways to make virtual conferencing in the post-COVID-19 era equitable, we thank our contributors for sharing deeply personal narratives and recommendations to improve conventional academic conferencing for caregivers. The issues they raised and the solutions they provided are important for us to consider when conferencing virtually and when we return to face-to-face meetings. Beyond conferencing, these considerations magnify the challenges many of us are facing in our own personal and professional lives now. Thank you, to the John Jay’s Women in the Public Sector blog for giving us the space to explore these issues.

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I was taken aback. I had chosen this conference specifically because it was a weekend and afforded me the opportunity to actually go and present. Why? I have two school-aged children and my spouse works full-time. I get the kids ready in the morning, I feed them, and I get them to school. My spouse’s schedule is a bit unpredictable, so I need to be available to pick them up from afterschool care as well. At the time of this conference I was actually taking a friend’s child to school as well because their family had similar childcare challenges. For busy parents, being able to attend any conference is a major logistical challenge. My “behavior” was not arrogance, it was me making it work.

My family’s scheduling challenges are not unique. People in and outside of academia deal with similar challenges all the time. But for some reason we seem to lag behind in making our profession accommodating for those with young children. Conference presentations are essential to an academic career. It is hard enough with tight travel budgets for many of us to make it work. The last thing we need are senior scholars thinking that having family responsibilities somehow means we are not dedicated to our career.

As the president of the Midwest Public Affairs Conference (MPAC) I am committed to making our conference as accommodating as possible. The obvious first step is working to provide on-site child care. This can be difficult to arrange, and of course comes with a significant monetary cost. Funding childcare also means less money for stuff (bags, giveaways, fancy meals, etc). A second step is selecting locations that are easily drivable or accessible by train from Midwestern universities.  That means our locations may be less accessible to those outside of the Midwest, and perhaps not as exciting (at least on the surface) as popular national conference destinations. But even with childcare at the conference I am not buying three plane tickets for me to present one paper! A third step is creating family friendly receptions that are not too late at night, and not centered around alcohol. 

But perhaps the biggest thing I can do for MPAC (and we can do as a profession) is to normalize the idea of kids and families being part of the conference experience. Specific gestures matter, but a culture that embraces the reality that academics have family responsibilities, is something that will have a lasting impact. To change the culture all of us must be mindful of our own behavior and expectations regarding conferences. I know everyone will not be happy. If I have learned one thing running a conference, it is that at least some people will be critical of every decision you make. I get it. Some people want the flashy location, want the stuff, want the fancy meals, and do not want kids around. That is fine. But I am committed to carving out a space for those of us who need something different.

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We were awake for most of the night worrying. We just moved to Omaha and did not yet have a babysitter, much less a network of friends to help us care for the children when we were unavailable. Yet, she had an important meeting with several elected officials and I was scheduled to be at a national conference. Which of our careers would take the hit? Both of us felt guilt, hurt, and distrust. It is no wonder, I thought, that so many my fellow tenure-tracked colleagues were leaving the profession.

Feminist organizational scholar, Joan Acker argues that most workplaces are designed for an abstract worker who has few to no private life or health concerns, and is generally imagined as a white heterosexual man. 

What, then, is the abstract academic? 

You probably imagine someone who looks a lot like me. I am a white heterosexual man with a wife, two children, two advanced degrees, and a tenure-track appointment at a state university.

If we look any further, this ideal starts to break down. Women now hold more than half of all jobs in the American workforce, and a recent survey showed that 53 percent of assistant professors are women. Unlike the abstract academic, my wife is a lawyer and lobbyist for wageworkers, which is why I spent four years as a stay-at-home dad. We work consciously to share the childcare, and that means that when I leave for a conference, her life is significantly disrupted.

Conferences conflict with my values in two ways. Conferences disrupt my family’s lives. If I bring my children to a conference, they cannot be at their school, but research shows that absences profoundly impact their education. If I leave them home, my wife must negotiate her responsibilities to underserved clients to spend time doing logistics I normally manage. It is clear that conferences are designed for the abstract heterosexual academic man with a stay-at-home wife.

In the long term, conferences are even more irresponsible. Parents are keenly aware of the global climate crisis we face, and every time we get on an airplane, a part of us is thinking about the consequences for our children. In my case, flying to conferences accounted for more than half of my family’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. When I get on an airplane to fly to a conference, I force my children to clean up the mess that I know I’m creating.

It’s time we do better.

Conferences must enter the 21^st century. Membership organizations, like ASPA, ARNOVA, APSA, PATNet, and APPAM should work on establishing regional conferences with opportunities to attend sessions electronically. Shorter regional conferences can accommodate working parents by establishing timelines that mostly overlap with weekends, and by enabling more participants to drive or take busses/trains with substantially lower carbon footprint. Connections between regions can be maintained using stable online technology. Used well, these systems can encourage working relationships across wide geographies. This process not only reduces the burden on parents, but also opens up conferences to participation from underrepresented areas in the global south.

Regional conferences like SeCOPA, NeCOPA, and MPSA already provide terrific opportunities. Adding a means of accessing panels and colloquia over the internet would enhance these conferences. Additionally, working on ways to facilitate topical conversations related to conference or panel themes would enable borderless collaboration. As these systems develop, it is crucial to include paywalls so that this technology does not unintentionally hollow out these important organizations.

Pursued carefully, these solutions can support a new image of the abstract public administration academic. A parent who prioritizes their family and their children’s future. This academic lives the values that the field of public administration advocates both in their public and their private lives. They live in a world that is more sustainable and cleaner, and they enjoy conferences even when they have young children. This abstract public administration academic is ready for the middle of the 21^st century.

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Parenting with a partner or, parenting by oneself is challenging work. Added to this mix is the fact that as a first generation American immigrant, the possibility of having family or an extended family to help is nonexistent. When any access to informal childcare support is unavailable, one is wholly reliable on formal sources of childcare support. In the context of academia, these formal sources include childcare provided on-site at the university/college campus or off-site by private providers. But, what happens when part of your work occurs in a third exclusive space without access to either of these childcare infrastructures?

When I attended my very first academic conference in 2014, I remember looking around, trying to gauge the feasibility of bringing my two year old daughter to the conference; only to realize that, student parents and caregivers were not ‘formally’ or ‘visibly’ represented at the conference, leaving me wondering if bringing along a child or talking about childcare at public administration conferences was not an openly acceptable practice? As the semesters went by and I attended more conferences, I was always on the look out for other student parents like myself and often found a few engaged in private discussions around their encounters of making costly child care and travel arrangements for the conference duration. It got me thinking about why senior scholars in the field, faculty members and conference organizers were not openly embracing their roles as parents and caregivers? Why were conference attendees expected to keep their personal caregiving responsibilities isolated from conference spaces? Was being a caregiver detrimental to one’s academic image?

Being a parent and caregiver is a valid identity. Public administration conferences have recently created professional spaces in the form of conference sections, workshops, networking events, professional development opportunities for participant’s to explore their identities of race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, immigration status and educational attainment. In a similar vein, it is time for conference organizers to create spaces for attendees to explore identities as parents and caregivers. By creating these spaces, conference organizers are recognizing the important intersection between academic identities and care giving responsibilities. Encouraging formal visibility and representation of caregivers in academic conferences is the first step in creating a professional space for supporting the unique set of needs and challenges faced by caregivers in academia. 

Public Administration conferences should plan for and create bold visibility for care giver attendees, allowing them to bring their children on-site and, discuss their caregiving challenges in public forums (including conference panels/roundtables), network with other caregivers and constantly brainstorm at conference workshops. Acknowledging the caregiving identity of conference goers is a first step in creating both symbolic and active representation of student/faculty/practitioner caregivers at academic conferences. This representation is necessary to give voice to previously unspoken challenges of an underrepresented academic demographic.  

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Given my husband’s temporarily limited mobility, he is pretty much stuck in our room.  Given my child’s recently improved mobility, all they want is to get out of the room. The next two days become a blur of sessions, presentations, and childcare. One hour I am talking about the relationship between nonprofit mission and earned revenue.  The next hour I am pushing a stroller in Millennium Park, hoping my child will take the nap they so desperately need.

Friday morning, I am able to meet with a fellow assistant professor with whom I had been hoping to collaborate.  We find a couch on the mezzanine level and start to chat. Or, at least, we try to chat, but I have to constantly chase after the toddler who wants nothing more than to pull down the holiday decorations tucked into all of the alcoves.  Suddenly, one of my more senior colleagues swoops in, picks up my child, puts them in the stroller, grabs the diaper bag, and says, “We’ll be back in half an hour.”

That break gave me the time I needed to focus on the business at hand. The person with whom I was meeting was Dr. Rachel Fyall. That meeting led to the first of the three articles Rachel and I have now co-authored. The senior colleague was Dr. Suzann Lupton, whose spontaneous generosity created much-needed space for intellectual exchange. 

Childcare has been a hot topic lately, coming up at and among leadership for ARNOVA, Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA), and many other associations.  Many of these conversations center around formal mechanisms for easing burdens: drop in rooms, dependent care scholarships, amenities for nursing parents. These amenities would help address some barriers that childcare presents, but take time, effort, and money to implement and institutionalize. 

One thing we tried at ARNOVA 2019 was an informal network of people willing to help with last-minute childcare.  We put a call out on Twitter to ask for volunteers, compiled a list of availability, and put out announcements letting people know that volunteers were on hand should they need emergency/last-minute coverage.  The idea was inspired by my own experiences, when help I did not know I needed came unasked. The effort was low-key: social media and a Google form.

These types of efforts could be even more low-key, done on an individual level. If you know of someone bringing a child, and you are comfortable offering help, reach out before they even ask. If you are a session chair, reach out to the presenters and let them know if children are welcome in your panel.  Even if no one takes you up on your offers, sending these types of signals can help shift the culture of an association and lead to more systematic, formal changes at the scale needed to take on these challenges.

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There was a time when I first began conferencing (I choose not to say how long ago that was) when childcare was periodically offered at conferences.  Particularly academic conferences. I never used this option because I was fortunate to have a partner who usually was able and willing to travel with me so our children could come and I could do the things I needed to do (like nurse and kiss my children goodnight) while working.  This practice seems to have gone by the wayside and mostly, from what I can tell, it is because of underutilization. However, I am certain that organizations like ASPA would be willing to bring this back if they thought it would be used.  

With record numbers of women in the workforce, there is no doubt that we need to rethink what we are doing in terms of allowing more work/life balance into our professional meetings – for both women AND men. Conferencing with your children can be a wonderful experience, but it can also be stressful if there is not good support. I recall one conference with my then 5-year-old son when I had to bring him to a panel I was on because there was no other option.  He was fairly well behaved, coloring in his books on a chair, until I began my presentation. At that point he stood up and announced that I was his mother and began waving. No one in the room was amused, except for one of my co-panelists. I was mortified.  We need to be sure that our working parents with young children have the opportunity to participate in and enjoy our conference experiences while still tending to their families if they choose to bring them.  

So, I pose the question to you all – our next generation of scholars and practitioners – what can we do to offer you the support you need if you choose to bring your children to a conference?  Is the traditional childcare model of interest? Or do you have another idea that could prove more successful? How do we send a message that we are family-friendly and that you don’t have to choose between tending to your career OR tending to your children?  All ideas are welcome and I am listening!

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For me as a mother, planning to attend a conference while having young children is a challenge in many ways. First, there is no space or childcare accommodation in any of the conferences that I have been to except a few that provide nursing or breastfeeding rooms for mothers. Second, the financial difficulties that we undergo to go as a family to attend a conference is always a serious issue. Examples of these costs include purchasing air tickets, providing appropriate accommodations for a family, and childcare Third, I have to lose many conference opportunities or try other ways like coauthoring as a way to opt-out from presenting at conferences to meet my motherhood responsibilities. 

Attending and participating in conferences for a mother like me with young children sometimes feels like a burden. Not a burden in terms of money, but always in terms of time and the expectations for research, work, and the various school duties. While I do not believe it is a healthy thing for our family or others with the same situations to exceed those expectations, the culture of academia needs to change towards mothers with children. At the school level, there must some kind of policies granting incentives for women scholars with children to participate in conferences, most notably graduate students. Examples of those incentives can include reimbursing the student to cover for travel or childcare incurred costs. At the conference level, logistics should not impede the full participation of parents with children. These logistics can include arrangements, such as providing an affordable childcare zone, planning family-friendly activities, allocating nursing rooms for mothers, and organizing special receptions for families traveling with children. 

At the macro level, School policies need to be set fairly to save families in terms of providing an appropriate maternal leave, financial support, and accommodations, so that no student-regardless of his or her gender-is left behind. While no study shows how many women opt out of graduate school to meet their motherhood responsibilities, the current structure of academia has unfairly empowered men and childless women, and participate in systematically marginalizing women and their dependents. To better provide a healthy, non-toxic, and non-stressful School environment for mothers with young children, policymakers need to answer urgent questions: what policies have been made to address this challenge, and what steps have been taken to help remove the barriers to conference participation for this group? 

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The stress permeates everything- from the application process until the return flight. Appropriate plans must be somewhat secure before applying, no one wants to be “that person” who dropped out of a conference, after the proposal was accepted. Once accepted though, the heavy lifting really begins. It’s time to deal with payments- registration costs, travel, additional childcare, etc. Schools might cover basic travel costs, but child related expenses are expenses and not often covered in full. Detailed arrangements must be made, deposits often have to be put down- and on-site childcare might be needed if children lack the permanent attachment system that allows them to be left without parents for a significant amount of time (i.e. nursing babies, young children, newly adopted children, etc.)

Still, even when everything is perfectly aligned- drama always seems to arise. Kids get sick the day before you’re about to leave, plans fall through, on-site childcare gets cancelled. Travel can be anxiety ridden, with parents running through a never-ending mental list of every possible scenario, attempting to ensure that no matter what- their children remain safe, well-cared for, and (at least mostly) on schedule. 

What can our universities, conference organizers, professional associations and fellow academics do to assist parents? 

Here are four simple ideas:

1. For conference organizers: Offer reduced one-day admissions so that academic parents can come in for just a single day of the conference. This isn’t our ideal either- but it allows us to at least attend and present, even when we can’t stay to network and support others.
2. Also, for conference organizers: Include child-related information in the call for proposals/original conference information. Make information related to nursing rooms, childcare, and other accommodations clearly outlined at the proposal stage by providing a directory and conference center maps to ensure that parents are aware of the resources available. Include a tab on the conference website that clearly supplies this information.   
3. For conference go-ers: If you know an academic parent that might be considering going to a conference, reach out WHEN THE CALL COMES OUT and offer to help/support them in any way. The week before or day of is too late, we’ve already decided the conference isn’t a possibility or we’ve already booked childcare arrangements.
4. For universities: Make conference spending flexible enough to cover child related costs, in addition to booking airfare, hotels, and other travel costs. If the university cannot pay directly for the childcare costs, they should at least immediately reimburse the conferencing parent so that that money can be spent on child-related costs. We might be a long way from seeing the whole academic and all of the costs associated with conference travel as a singular entity, but a mom can dream.

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Initially, I traveled to conferences that were relatively close to home, requiring no more than an overnight stay. For a new stepdad, that seemed manageable. However, once the trips required plane travel, figuring out flights that worked around my husband’s work schedule and that fit our budget (because support from school was in the form of a reimbursement), things became more challenging. Because we were essentially a single income household, my husband’s job performance was critical to ensure raises, promotions, and bonuses. Leaving him behind with a small child for me to travel to an academic conference for three to four days was very stressful for him. What if our child was sick and needed to be picked up from school or needed to stay home? What if he couldn’t work late because there was no one else to pick up our child from the afterschool program? My husband did not want to be “that guy” who was not available to an employer’s beck and call because of a childcare issue while I was off gallivanting at academic conferences. I needed both of them to understand that these academic conferences were an important part of my job as a doctoral student, but also for my future in academia. It took them attending part of an academic conference with me to fully appreciate what I was doing.

Once they experienced the intense schedule of a conference, they realized it was “work” and wanted to be more proactive in supporting me. My husband was able to work out a telework schedule when I was traveling. As he earned promotions, he was also able to have more control over his own work travel schedule so that it wouldn’t conflict with mine. As our child grew older and was engaged in more activities, we relied on my high school and college friends who had moved to the area to help in case of emergencies. While these things sound simple, not everyone has a partner with job flexibility or has the benefit of friends and family living nearby to help. This means families or single parents without these support systems might spend more money on childcare or even forego attending a conference.

This phase in our marriage and family life gives me pause. The conflict revealed so many issues that working mothers, and especially single parents, still face today. I was only able to expand my career opportunities once I re-married and had another trustworthy adult committed to raising a child with me. Yet, somehow single parents are doing what seemed impossible to me when I was a single mother. I have met a few at academic conferences! Here are some suggestions for supporting single parents and single income families attending academic conferences:

• Consider holding conferences around federal holidays during the school year. While it’s impossible to work around every jurisdiction’s school calendar, nearly all close for the same federal holidays.
• Consider holding conferences during summer break and offer programs for school-aged children in addition to other childcare options. This could be a great opportunity to partner with education leaders, nonprofit organizations, college prep, and/or technical training programs at free or reduced costs.
• Offer travel and childcare scholarships for single parents and one income families.

Although my family is very supportive and proud that I completed my doctoral degree, it took them a while to fully get it. Figuring out our roles, experiencing stress over work and finances, and managing life as a single parent when one of us must travel for work took us some time. My hope is that conference planners will take into consideration that even those of us who are married with children face childcare issues because the spouse left at home is on “single parent” duty. Single parents face these types of challenges on a regular basis and more support should be offered to them as well.

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About the author:

The author is an anonymous admirer of single, working mothers who manage to rise above the challenges and gender discrimination they encounter. She also acknowledges the spouses and partners who take on “single parent” duties to support their student/scholar’s careers.

In the conference setting, there are three specific issues which a caregiver may face: 1) The social anxiety of not knowing when they will have a child, 2) The need to leave a conference abruptly or cancel due to having a child, and 3) Being questioned about being the child’s parent. Understanding this perspective is a way we can make conferences welcoming to all families. First, when a person is waiting to adopt, they can get a call at any minute informing them that their child is born. This is a stressful time in a person’s life. Often, they get questions regarding their adoption, such as “have you heard anything” and “how are you preparing”. When a person has been matched with a child, they may not tell many people. This is because, even after matching and placement of the child, the birth parents still have the opportunity to change their minds after the baby is born. This can be a heartbreaking process for an adoptive family. Therefore, questions can be awkward for waiting parents. To help alleviate stress, phrase things such as “Let me know if you want to talk about the process” or let your colleague know that you are free to talk if they want.

When a parent is waiting for a child, all plans are tentative. During the adoption process, the potential parent may get informed that a birth mother is pregnant and will give birth in three months, or that a woman who has just given birth would like to put her child up for adoption. Going through the adoption process means being ready to make quick decisions that will change one’s life. Therefore, if your colleague is in the adoption process, it is possible they may need to leave a conference early or not come at the last minute.  Once a child is adopted, there are sometimes certain complexities that families face which are unique to their situation. This is only amplified when the adoptive parents are in a same-sex relationship. To start, the child may be of a different race than the parent. This can lead to people asking about the child’s parents and suspicion of the parents by outsiders.  When creating caregiver spaces, allow for the child to say things such as “My parents adopted me” and help answer other children’s questions regarding the child looking different from the parents. One of an adoptive parent’s worst nightmares is being constantly questioned or having to constantly justify that their child is, indeed, their child. 

The most supportive thing academics can do when their colleague is adopting is to understand that they are in a stressful position, and the stress is different from when one is pregnant. Be understanding of the flexibility that an adoptive parent may need while they wait for their kid to be born and be understanding that their child may be of a different race. Most importantly, be happy for your colleague as they grow their family.

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