Since my youngest child turned one in February this year (2022), I felt more ready to leave the house on a work trip and committed to attending my first in-person conference since 2019. I decided to submit a few a conference papers for the American Association of Engineering Education annual conference based on our work related to undergraduate research programming and a scholarship program for transfer students.
To prepare for the trip, I tried to find resources about conference travel for academic parents. This article from 2018 focused on how conference organizers could and should make conferences more accessible to scholars with children. None of the author’s practical tips have become commonplace, so I opted to leave my children at home with my spouse. I was able to schedule my travel for days when the kids would be in daycare (not Saturday or Sunday) and initially had a babysitter scheduled to come each night to help manage the nighttime routine since the we have a one- and two-year-old. Two adults makes the bedtime much more manageable as both kids are full of energy at that time.
However, after listening to the advice of Laura Vanderkam and Sarah Hart-Unger on their invaluable podcast “Best of Both Worlds”, I changed that plan. We knew that after school through their bedtime is a demanding sequence of play time, dinner, baths, reading, play time, and a negotiation process that finally results in them begrudgingly going to sleep. Sarah and Laura suggest that when both spouses are working there should be childcare redundancy. That is to include a backup if the primary childcare option is canceled. Since my spouse had some important work meetings that could not be missed, we needed someone to be on call incase daycare was canceled while I was on travel. So, we decided to fly in my mother-in-law so that if daycare had an unforeseen cancelation, she’d be there to take care of them and my spouse could still make it to the office. Selfishly, I also scheduled her flights so that I could visit with her when I returned from the conference too. I did not want to miss out of all the fun a home.
I’m of course enormously fortunate to have a mother-in-law who has the time and energy to provide childcare redundancy, whose company I enjoy so much and to have the money to fly her in to visit us. I also know I was a better scholar at the conference because I knew my spouse had that support and that my children were well-cared for.
Acknowledgements: This blog post was edited by Kate Epstein of EpsteinWords. She specializes in editing and coaching for academics, and she can be reached at epsteinwords at gmail.com.