Parental Leave Wiki on AstroBetter

This week's guest blogger is Nick Murphy. Nick Murphy is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research is on solar physics, including the role of magnetic reconnection in solar eruptions. He is active in several community groups in the Boston area that are working for gender equity and racial justice. 

Last year, our colleagues at AstroBetter provided wiki space to catalog parental leave policies at astronomical institutions: 

http://www.astrobetter.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Leave+Policies

The goals of this wiki are: (1) to allow astronomers at different career stages to easily compare parental leave policies, and (2) to encourage institutions to enact better parental leave policies by showing how they compare with peer institutions.  

At this point there are postings for 23 institutions and fellowships in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. We encourage you to post information about your own institution if it is not included.  If your institution lacks a comprehensive parental leave policy or only has unpaid leave, it is important to post anyway so that prospective graduate students and employees know this and the administation can be encouraged to implement something better.  If your institution has a parental leave policy worth being proud of, post so that more people want to go there!  

We especially encourage institutions outside of the US to be included, in part to show how the US measures up internationally.  With your help, we can make this an even better resource for the members of our community who are applying to graduate school, postdocs, and permanent positions.

To read more about parental leave, see previous blog posts on the upcoming winter AAS CSWA Special Session on paid parental leave policies for grad students and postdocs in the U.S., a petition for improved parental leave policies, the CSWA response to the NSF Career-Life Initiative, and how US parental leave policies compare internationally.

Posted by L. Trouille

Paid Parental Leave for Graduate Students

For my first post to the Women in Astronomy Blog, I would like to describe some activities that the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is undertaking with regard to parental leave policies for graduate students.

When I joined the CSWA last year, I jumped at the chance to move this issue forward. Of course the entire topic of paid parental leave for employees in the US is enormous and perhaps baffling to our colleagues in any of the 178 other countries that have national laws guaranteeing some form of paid leave for new mothers (50 of these also guarantee paid leave for new fathers). While the US Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 does mandate up to 12 weeks of (potentially unpaid) leave for workers, many students are not considered employees and hence it isn't even clear if the FMLA applies. And besides, one might ask, aren't leave policies at a University the purview of the upper administration (in discussion with the various funding agencies), and thus the desires of the relatively small pool of astronomers students a modest consideration?

Well, I would like to make the case that there is good reason to think that we are going to see some rather interesting developments on this question over the next few years.  At the start of 2012, I mailed a letter to the chair of each of the 28 departments of astronomy and/or astrophysics that offer the degree of PhD, asking for the details of their parental leave and childcare policies for graduate student parents.  And, I was delighted when fully 100% of these recipients sent me a reply! My first pass at the data indicates that we are in a time of rapid change and the current policies vary tremendously between institutions: A number of universities have recently adopted a paid leave policy for all graduate student parents, while others offer no paid leave but do allow students to retain benefits such as health care and students housing; some do not even have an official policy. I also learned that solutions needn't be University wide: The Department of Astronomy at the University Wisconsin Madison has recently implemented a paid family and medical leave policy that is entirely home grown. Way to go Badgers!

My own university could surely do much better, and I point you to the excellent article by two former Harvard graduate students of astronomy, Sarah Ballard (now a Sagan fellow at the University of Washington) and Gurtina Besla (now a Hubble fellow at Columbia University), which was definitely an inspiration to me on this topic both here at Harvard and nationwide.

I do think we need to shift this discussion from one in which the students and postdocs advocate for their own needs to one in which senior faculty, department chairs, and deans advocate on their behalf. With that in mind, Laura Trouille (CIERA fellow at Northwestern University) and I will host a Special Session on Family Leave Policies and Childcare for Graduate Students and Postdocs at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach (this blog post addresses only graduate student leave, but the special session will include leave for postdocs).  The speakers will include AAS President David Helfand, Ed Ajhar (Program Director for the the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral fellowships, as well as the Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology Research Grants), Chas Beichman (Executive Director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, and director of the Sagan fellowships program), as well as Natalie Gosnell (graduate student) and Bob Mathieu (Department chair) from the University Wisconsin (who will tell us how they put their plan into action). I will also present the results from my national survey. The session will be Monday, January 7th from 2:00-3:30pm.

While I hope that many graduate students and postdocs will attend, it is essential that the more senior individuals who are in a position to change policy at their respective institutions participate as well.  So, if you are such a person, please consider attending. If you are a student or postdoc, might I suggest you ask your department chair to identify the faculty member who will represent your department? The goal will be both to inform about current practices, and to discuss specific means by which departments and funding agencies can adopt more supportive policies.

I hope to see you in Long Beach!

Staying competitive after family leave

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The following is a condensed version of a piece written by Andrew Hopkins (Head of AAT Science, Australian Astronomical Observatory) related to ways of staying competitive after taking family leave.  It was in response to a CSWA Newsletter article:

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2012/07/aaswomen-for-friday-july-27-2012.html#more

"Proposal Writing After Family Leave : Request for Advice"

I have mentored women who have dealt successfully with the issue of winning proposals after taking family leave.  My basic advice boils down to:

1. Count how much of your time has been "research active" (i.e., equivalent full time research), and

2. Present your productivity relative to the time you've *actually* had for doing research. This will always make your case substantially stronger: E.g., if you've been employed in a research-only position for 3 years, then had 12 months to have a baby, then returned to a position where you were doing an 80% admin/teaching load for 2 years, then had a 50/50 research/support position for 2 years, you've been "doing research" for 8 years, but you've actually only had 4.4 years of research time.

You can make a strong case for your research productivity and impact by looking at your citation metrics, such as the "h-index", but also importantly the "m-index" (Hirsch, 2005, PNAS, 102, 16569). Hirsch defined the m-index as the h-index divided by the number of years since the first publication. This makes the implicit assumption that the researcher is publishing continuously over that period. Redefining the m-index to be h divided by the number of "research-active" years gives a much more representative metric for people who have not been in full-time research positions. Be sure to explain that this is what you've done, and why you've done it so that the readers don't mistakenly assume you're just misstating or erroneously inflating your statistics.

I would strongly recommend that this approach be taken by all researchers, regardless of what official requirement is requested in the application materials. If the official requirements in the application specify performance over the most recent 5 year period, and this has not been your most productive time, feel free to add extra information detailing your most productive 5 years, and qualify why this has been added by stating explicitly that the recent period is not representative because of the interruptions to research time.

On top of that, many people who move into more senior research positions find that they spend time mentoring students and junior researchers, who end up as first author of the resulting publications, even though a lot of the initiative and direction for the research has been done by the supervisor.  One approach here is to ensure you are named as second or third author systematically on publications for which you are the driving force. You can then state explicitly in fellowship applications that papers where you are named as second/third author are those on which you have led or directed more junior colleagues or students. This allows you to retain the recognition for projects you have initiated and directed, while the students/postdocs still get appropriate credit for leading the work. Moreover, this can be sold as evidence for research leadership/management, which is an important aspect you need to cultivate to keep moving up in the research hierarchy.

These are only a selection of strategies that you might consider implementing. I'm sure others will have alternative, or additional, suggestions that will be equally well worth considering. In the end, if you have a career that includes time spent doing things other than research, you need to be comfortable in presenting that in an honest way that gives a sufficient minimum of detail to allow the assessors to rank your productivity given the time you've had available to do research.

Family Sandwich

We've been having some great conversations on the blog lately about some of the challenges in raising young children while pursuing a career in astronomy.  This time I want to talk about the reverse problem: taking care of aging parents.
I'm not having to deal with it yet, but the specter is looming.  My father is pretty ill, and wheelchair-bound.  My mother has been taking care of him, but it's a big job.  Fortunately, she's a registered nurse, so she's fully qualified for it.  However, we've been having some tough conversations about how sustainable their situation is.  Taking care of my father is only going to get harder, both physically and emotionally.  My mother isn't getting any younger.  And my father is deteriorating mentally as well as physically, so it's harder and harder to keep him happy.
It is likely that I will eventually become my mother's caregiver one day.  It's possible that I might become a member of the "sandwich generation," taking care of two generations of family members at once: my children and my parents.  It raises the juggling of career and family to a whole new level of difficulty.
Elder care is full of pitfalls, too.  There's a whole range from in-home care to retirement communities to assisted living facilities.  If you think you're subject to judgmental opinions if you put your kids in day care, try talking about nursing homes.  And it's not like you're simply caring for a large child.  You're taking care of someone who is losing their independence and not necessarily taking it well.
Just as with child care, women seem to shoulder the burden of elder care more often than men.  Again, this dates back to times when in women didn't work outside the home.  
It's important to remember that "family-friendly" should be interpreted pretty broadly.  It's not just about kids and not just about their female caregivers.  It's about all of us and our commitments to the loved ones in our lives.

Family Leave - International Comparison

A friend (thanks Diego Fazi!) recently posted on facebook the image to the left, showing various national policies for the number of weeks provided for maternity leave. Click here for the raw data.

 Yes, men and women in other countries face other obstacles in achieving work-life balance. This figure is simply pointing out the reality that the Family Medical Leave Act falls short and didn't have to.

The most progressive and useful of the policies provide both maternity and paternity paid leave. Gender neutral policies reflect the reality within our community in which most early-career couples are dual career couples and child rearing is shared by both parents. Gender neutral policies reinforce the message that shared parenting is valued and respected within our community.

Here are a few of these 'best-practice' policies:

• Canada: 55% up to $413/week for 50 weeks (15 weeks maternity + 35 weeks parental leave shared with father) 
• Iceland: 90 days 80% up to a ceiling of 480,000 (€5,300, $6,700) monthly (minimum monthly payment 91,200 (€1000, $1,275) + 90 days to be shared between the parents 
• Norway: 54 weeks (12.5 months) (80%) or 44 weeks (10 months) (100%) - mother must take at least 3 weeks immediately before birth and 6 weeks immediately after birth, father must take at least 6 weeks - the rest can be shared between mother and father. 
• Sweden: 480 days (16 months) (80% up to a ceiling the first 390 days, 90 days at flat rate) - shared with father (minimum 60 days) 

Let's narrow the focus now to our small astronomy community. For a list of current family leave policies for astronomy graduate students and postdocs in astronomy departments in the U.S. (and to add your department's policy if it's not yet listed), please click here.

In terms of bringing change: Already, ~1100 astronomers have signed our petition, voicing their support for improving family leave policies for graduate students and postdocs. I encourage you to sign, and more importantly, find out what the policy is in your department.

Dave Charbonneau (CSWA member) is currently compiling responses to his survey of astronomy department chairs of current policies and practices with regards to family leave, adoption, and childcare for astronomy graduate students and postdocs. Once we have those results, we will share them with the community.

-Laura Trouille (CIERA Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University)

Gender Politics

I would, ideally, like to keep politics out of this blog. However, given that this is an election year, politics seems to be butting its way into everything, so here goes.
The CSWA works hard to advocate for women in science. One issue that comes up over and over again is the problem of balancing career and family -- an issue for any working mother, really. A key to that balance is the ability to plan when and how many children to have -- something that many of us, like myself, take for granted.
So when a Republican-controlled House Committee convenes an all-male panel to discuss coverage for birth control, it's hard not to take it a little personally. It's bad enough that dependent care coverage is a real issue for many young astronomers, particularly grad students and postdocs, but to not even have coverage for birth control?
More recently was the whole kerfuffle between Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen about whether or not Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life." Given that Rosen was speaking specifically about women in the paid workforce, Romney's response that raising children was "work" sounded to me a lot like "gravity is only a theory."
Yes, raising children is a lot of work. So is being a scientist. Force times distance is also work. At any rate, why is it that stay-at-home mom are lavished with praise and put on pedestals, while working moms are frowned at? And, by the way, where is dad in all this?
It's great to be talking about getting more girls interested in science and math, since they are certainly smart enough. But girls are also smart enough to see the barriers ahead. If they can see that they won't be able to raise families on their own terms, no wonder they drop out.

Pumping at 23, The extended mission through the Milky Way

I couldn’t resist choosing the blog title “pumping at 23”. Since this is a blog about maintaining an astrophysics career and nursing a child, one might logically think it refers to a 23-year-old mother pumping milk. In my case, since it will be ten years next month since I defended my PhD thesis, I must admit the 23 refers to my daughter’s age in months. Since I work at NASA, I can’t help but refer to the pending 24 month transition as the extended mission; soon I will have met my personal goals for the prime mission!

A prospective postdoc stopped by on Friday to chat and the first half of the conversation ended up being about pumping milk when traveling. Here is an anonymous thank you for the inspiration for a pumping-and-astrophysics blog.
So, first let’s have a reminder. Breastmilk is wonderful for babies and toddlers, and the connection between the nursing mom and her child is also beneficial to employers. Breastfed babies have fewer ear infections and illnesses, and illness tends to be less severe. More difficult to quantify is the wonderful re-connection that a working astrophysicist feels with her child after a long day at work. I like to think of it as concentrated mothering. Now, not everyone wants to breastfeed, and sometimes it honestly doesn’t work out (but please see previous blogs, I have never said this was the easy path!). If a mother wants to continue to give her baby breast milk, it is a good idea to support that.

And then we come to the “dreaded pump.” Although I personally have had an overall positive pumping experience, many astrophysicist-mothers I have spoken with talk about the pumping in a rather negative way. Practically speaking, pumping serves two purposes: (1) maintaining your milk supply when you spend time away from the child and (2) preventing discomfort and more serious problems that may arise when failing to empty a full breast. If you aren’t going to be around the kid and you want your milk supply to be maintained, you have to pump. Travel is when this becomes essential. For a fun illustration of what this looks like in practice, here is a short list of some places/situations where I have pumped:
• the lactation room at NASA GSFC (shared hospital-grade pump, AWESOME)
• the restroom on an 11-hour international flight en route to an X-ray binaries/supermassive black hole conference (battery pack is the only option!)
• the restroom on a long-delayed Amtrak train back from Boston from the summer AAS meeting (ewww! Battery pack and wipes needed, bathroom was disgusting!)
• the office of the public policy fellow at the American Astronomical Society headquarters (electricity and access to a refrigerator, yes!)
• the Potbelly Sandwich shop near the White House Office of Management and Budget (electric plug and sink in the same room)
• my office (convenient but people still open the door)

At some point though, all mothers face a moment when it is time to stop pumping. Your child is old enough (and that is a decision for each mother to make based on her situation, although I will mention here that the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding until two years of age, the American Pediatric Association recommends breastfeeding until at least a year of age). So for many people, somewhere around a year or later (for me it was about 16-17 months), the daily pumping routine will no longer seem necessary. At this point, I haven’t pumped since early January when I attended the AAS meeting in Austin. I will also say that, at 23 months, I am very grateful that I did all that pumping.

While at home, I nurse my daughter approximately 3 times every work day, once in the morning, once before bed, and once in the middle of the night. She now asks and politely says “all done”. And at 23 months, I will say that I treasure this wonderful connection with my daughter as much as ever. I just started a demanding new position at NASA and I frankly think that these cuddling/nursing sessions with my daughter are one part of what is helping me deal with all the pressures of motherhood and career right now.

I’m also glad to have made it through the peak of the snarky comments period. According to Baumgartner’s “Mothering Your Nursing Toddler” the peak period for rude comments (which prompted some of this blog) is from 12-24 months. The young woman who visited me certainly had some snarky comments to share.

So, this is just a reminder that those who pump milk and do astrophysics are not alone.

Report from Special Session on Diversity at Austin AAS

The CSWA helped sponsor a Special Session entitled "Increasing Diversity in Your Department" at the 219th AAS Meeting in Austin last week. We had four terrific speakers for this session, and the CSWA will post their slides on our website soon. For now, I'll highlight some key points from their talks.

• Caroline Simpson chaired the session, and spoke about "Best Practices in Hiring: Addressing Unconscious Bias." Her talk was a recap of Abby Stewart's talk from the 2011 winter AAS Meeting on unconscious bias, but it's a message well worth repeating. The main points of Dr. Simpson's talk were that
  
  • increased diversity leads to increased excellence,
  • we all think about the world in terms of schemas that lead to unconscious biases,
  • we can fight our unconscious biases by becoming aware of them
  • and we should be sure to use objective criteria to evaluate job candidates.
  The University of Michigan ADVANCE program has a handy toolkit available for use.
• Andrew West spoke about "Tools for Recruiting a Diverse Applicant Pool," and his talk focused on recruitment of under-represented minorities (URMs). Key points from Dr. West's talk were
  
  • unfortunately, there's no magic bullet
  • fortunately, most techniques for recruiting URMs help everyone
  • the numbers of URMs earning PhDs in astronomy is really small, like <10 data-blogger-escaped-li="" data-blogger-escaped-per="" data-blogger-escaped-year="">the biggest drop off in URMs in physics and astronomy is after the first year in college
  • historically black small colleges produce 55% of the BS and BA physics degrees, so establishing relationships with those colleges is a good way to keep URMs in the pipeline
  • directly ask people to apply for jobs, and post ads broadly
  
  
• Van Dixon spoke about "Recruitment and Retenion of LGBTIQ Astronomers." In case you are wondering, LGBTIQ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Questioning. The main points for making workplaces more friendly to LGBTIQ astronomers were
  
  • make an explicit commitment to inclusion in policies
  • be aware that benefits such as health insurance for same-sex partners are taxable, which you can offset by "grossing up" wages
  • remove discriminatory health insurance exclusions for transgendered people
  • make policies friendly to non-traditional families, like including adoption and domestic partnerships in leave benefits
  • advertise your inclusive policies
  Finally, Dr. Dixon announced and announced that a Working group on GLBTIQ Equity (WGLE) has just been formally approved by the AAS Council. Huzzah!
  
• Caty Pilachowski spoke about "Getting to Family-Friendly in Your Department." The main point of her talk was that it's one thing to have a written policy of family-friendliness, but another to have a family-friendly department culture that is supportive of work-life balance. Ways to create a culture of family-friendliness include
  
  • make families visible by recognizing family milestones, including families in department events, and setting up a department family bulletin board
  • recognize that families include kids, parents, pets, etc.
  • bring your kids and pets to work
  • offer help to others in need
  • leave visible copies of Status and Spectrum around
  Dr. Pilachowski acknowledged that cultural change is hard, and must be done incrementally, but in the end it benefits everyone.
  

All in all in was a good session. We had about 60 people in attendance, many of whom were early-career. I would have liked to see a room full of department chairs, since they are the ones who are in the best positions to make changes. I wish these sessions didn't feel so much like preaching to the choir, and the CSWA is constantly trying to come up with better ideas for bringing in a wider audience. Ideas, anyone? -Hannah

A metric for workplace environment culture: How long do mothers nurse?

If you think you have a positive culture at work for families, how would you measure it? One might be to determine how long, on average, the mothers of young children nurse their children. The workplace environment has a significant impact on the nursing relationship (availability of lactation rooms, flexibility in scheduling, maternity leave policies, etc).

There is a lot of literature showing that women tend to persist in nursing when they have peers who are doing the same. So, a lactation room, beyond just providing the legally required space for pumping milk, provides a networking location for your employees.

Approximately 17 months ago I began pumping milk at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the lactation room there. At that time, my daughter was about two months old and there were several other women with older babies pumping milk. Over the last 19 months, women have had babies and joined the room. I see them logging in day after day. Now something interesting is happening. People are continuing to pump milk up to the year mark and beyond. This means women are not rotating out of the room as new ones come in. Within the next week, a second lactation room will be opened in our building to prepare for two more women to come off maternity leave.

We have three women pumping milk for children over a year old right now! Knowing how rare that is in the U.S. right now I would take it as a very positive indicator of the success of our lactation program and therefore of how good our workplace environment is for mothers of young children.

It is smart for institutions to be supportive in this way. Babies who receive breastmilk get sick less often and less severely and there is thus less absenteeism. Nursing is a source of comfort that provides a very fast means of emotional reconnection between mother and child at the end of a work day. Happier employees make happier bosses, right?

So, if you’re wondering how to make your workplace environment family-friendly, invest time, energy and resources into having a great lactation room, like my institution did.

Coasting during the time of a child’s life that she may not remember

I have a full-time job as an astrophysicist. Currently I am working on a draft of a paper to submit to the Astrophysical Journal, hopefully within the next couple months. Life is challenging as I am also the mother of an 18-month-old. Last night I was up nursing her three times. She will not remember me nursing her three times, but after an evening out at a meeting of a professional organization to which I belong, I was very happy for the snuggling and reconnection.

Recently I have recognized that while my career is still going along just fine, it is not shooting upwards like it seemed to be right before my daughter was born. This is described sometimes as a coasting period. It is not a break. You are still working. However, you are not able to jump at every opportunity. It isn’t possible. You might sleep, preserve your marriage, do research, serve on committees, be active in your worship community if you have one, travel occasionally to visit family or for work, and make room for quality time for your children, but at some point you hit that 24 hours per day limit and some choices have to be made.

A biggie is choosing between work and parenthood. A very senior person in the field commented recently that children do not remember anything before they are five years old or so, so that is a great time to work very hard. A colleague of mine close to my age said that isn’t really the case. She traveled internationally with her child when she was tiny, but the stories, which the child remembered through the mother in all likelihood, stuck with the child. On future trips the child “recalled” them proudly.

Another big choice concerns how much work travel you will do. I have blogged on this recently, as has my fellow blogger, Hannah. Before I had the kid, and for quite a while thereafter, my approach was to take her with me wherever I went. In our field, giving talks at conferences and collaboration meetings, even in-person coffee break discussions, are really important. So I lugged her with me and spent the money and energy to do so. It is not an easy choice and now I am occasionally traveling without her.

Recently, two colleagues of mine, one male and one female, told me that their decision not to travel, a decision made because they each had two children (two different families and cities, FYI), had a serious impact on their career. Both expressed to me that it was difficult for them professionally. They had seen moments pass them by when meeting in-person would have made a big difference. However, they both commented about how they get to know their children and the chance will come later to travel again.

My own mother, who is an elected judge, did not work full time for several years when my brother and I were young. She also "coasted", teaching in the evening and doing legal aid work, keeping her credentials current and her resume’ honed. She, like the senior person who made the comment mentioned earlier, has had a pretty amazing career and you don’t see anything negative about the coasting now. Neither one would give up that coasting period if they had to go back.

This morning I took my daughter out on the deck and we looked at birds. She was smiling and delighted. This moment slowed me down getting to work, and she won’t remember it, but I will and I will tell her about it. It was also the right thing to do, so I think I will just enjoy this coasting while I can. It won't last forever.

To travel with the kid or without, this is always a big question.

Every mother has her own unique path through navigating career and parenting. I am sure that many women maintaining a career while caring for children struggle with the issue of professional travel. Up until now, my nursing relationship with my child dictated (for me) that I take her with me, but now I am finding I can get away with a few days away and frankly, she is now running and napping slightly less. At 17 months, she isn’t the portable person she used to be.

So, I have just decided recently that I am not bringing my daughter with me at all to the AAS High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) meeting. I had thought that I would spend the first three and a half days of the meeting running around like mad (I am an elected officer), attending sessions and meeting with people on all my breaks. On day four I was going to meet my husband at the airport to bring the family to the meeting. I’ve been traveling a lot recently, and bringing my daughter with me (as I type, the kid is in my office taking paper out of my recycling bin, we’re headed out to the Metro station soon to head to Chicago). I am that person on the DC Metro with the toddler in the backpack, two bags over her shoulders and one larger roller bag headed for National airport.

Ironically, I am part of the executive committee that brought childcare grants to HEAD to help people travel with their children. I realize that a $400 grant is just a step in the right direction as the full cost is much greater and is not measured purely in financial terms. One of my colleagues told me “no one should expect raising kids to be free.” I certainly didn’t expect that, but I think before I had kids I didn’t realize the impact of traveling with (or without!) a kid. You still have to pay the daycare back home in either case. If you leave the kid behind, chances are you return to an exhausted spouse after having exhausted yourself at a conference/review/etc. If you take the kid with you, just try going out to dinner.

Okay, it is possible to go out to dinner. One option is of course that you bring a family member with you (my mother-in-law and my parents have both been wonderful about traveling with me) but generally if you are spending all day in the meeting/review/etc. you may not want to ditch your family member and your child in the evenings every evening as well. You might have one negotiated evening out, and to be clear, the negotiation is as much with your conscience as with any family member.

Those dinners out are of course very important. We all know this, but I think when you suddenly can’t go out as freely at night you really realize the impact. Let’s include happy hours too. Oh heck, let’s throw in coffee breaks. When I travel with the kid, I generally am spending all those breaks checking back in with the kid and the caretaker. Many of the most important discussions at a conference occur during those casual interaction times. There is a cost associated with missing this informal interaction time that is difficult to quantify.

Granted, there is a cost in missing your kid too. I do like my daughter. She giggles when I do silly things like chase her around the house or hold up a scarf in front of my face. She is now attempting to put her own shoes on and says the word “shoe”. At 17 months she still nurses a few times a day, which is a peaceful connection between us (that also transfers protein, antibodies and hydrating liquid!) that both of us enjoy. When I travel, I often end up dumping a bit of that liquid gold down the sink after pumping, a true waste (but it isn’t practical to carry back more than 48 hours worth of milk currently).

However, for the first time in those 17 months (17.5 by the time I make the trip), I find I “need” to have 4 days to just be an astronomer and do my job. I will check in via Skype. I will miss her. I’ll return before the last session ends.

A journey through the Milky Way: sometimes you just wing it

So, I had a day where managing my work and managing the milk seemed to almost collide. There has been a lot going on, I’ve been concerned about funding my research group (we’re okay right now, but anyone who isn’t at least mildly concerned about funding their research group right now probably has their head in the sand!). It is easy to get distracted and say, forget completely that you are still producing milk for a child!

I started out Monday morning getting dressed and being fortunate enough to have a few more choices of tops thanks to a fun shopping trip with my mother who had been visiting for a week while my daycare was closed. One top in particular was a bit more frilly/girly than I normally wear. I had thought to reserve it for weekends rather than my work at NASA, but at the last moment decided, “what the heck”. I remember having thought that the shirt might also work as one with a built-in nursing cover.

I arrived at daycare that day to nurse Anya and couldn’t find the nursing cover anywhere in the car. That frilly blouse came in handy after all! But, that’s not all I forgot!

I forgot my cooler pack at home. I managed to go beg a bag of ice from the café in my building. I have actually managed to now do this twice this week (its only Tuesday!) and the second time the café had already closed. This time I just slipped the milk into a baggie, and then into my purse, and hoped it would be okay during the 10 minute trip from my office to the daycare (it was fine). I actually have a new bigger purse and found it a bit liberating to not carry around that cooler pack. It was actually nice to walk to the room without the obvious pack (just my purse!). Mental note: in the future when the weather is slightly cooler maybe this can just be the default!

And, when I reached the pumping room I realized I didn’t bring any of my pumping supplies to work. I forgot my pumping supplies (bottles and breast shields). I had back-up supplies and back-up to my back-up (2 sets of shields! Thank goodness!). I’ve made a habit of bringing extras in and it saved me.

It was kinda nice to know that I basically forgot to bring any of the nursing/pumping stuff to work today and I still managed to nurse my daughter today and pump milk.

Sometimes this is chaotic, but it can still work.

A Journey though the “Milky Way”: Nursing past a year and astrophysics

This is a continuation in a series about breastfeeding and being an astrophysicist. Note that all of us have a role in being supportive of mothers who wish to nurse their babies. Just as a reminder, breastmilk is best for babies and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends nursing until 2 years of age. Thus far, I have been very proud of astronomy as a discipline for being a leader among the hard sciences in sensible workplace practices and attention to diversity issues. Breastfeeding awareness is part of this!

My April 2011 blog was entitled “taking my own advice” in that I always encourage new mothers to not try to figure out nursing on their own. Nearly everyone has difficulties at the beginning and it does not mean that you are faulty and need to move to formula. I have been encouraging mothers to reach out to other nursing mothers to compare notes and support each other. After all, it used to be that everyone did this well past a year... it was not expected that you would figure this out on your own!

So, realizing that at nearly 15 months I could use some advice, I asked for mothers to share their stories of being astrophysicists and nursing past a year. I got several wonderful (long!) replies. I heard from tenured faculty, postdocs, instrument builders, etc.

Note that according to Baumgartner’s “Mothering Your Nursing Toddler”, the most intensive period for nursing is the time period from 12 months to about 18 months. It turns out that if you do offer, toddlers want to nurse. It continues to be very beneficial to both mother and nursling.

Interestingly, the women who wrote in were encouraging of me to keep it up. They were all astronomers. One mentioned that she was determined to make it to a year and after that, just took it a few months at a time. That is where I am right now. The women who replied nursed 20 months – 3 years and noted that weaning was something that happened fairly gradually, with nursing dipping to once per day or less often near the end.

I loved this quote from a woman who nursed her child to 2 years during grad school: “It is wonderful to cuddle them, and know you have a secret weapon that helps chill them out as their brains grow and grow.”

Folks definitely mentioned that the unwelcome comments increase during the second year. There was more unsolicited advice about weaning. According to Baumgartner, these comments actually peak during the second year. If you make it past the second birthday, I guess people have figured out you aren’t going to be swayed by their weaning advice.

Covering up becomes more challenging (one person noted that the child was doing “flips” during nursing). I recall being concerned about this just yesterday on a plane back from Boston. I had two male colleagues on the plane and made a point to sit next to strangers (Southwest! Choose your seat!) so if my daughter decided to put on a show at least it wasn’t seen by my colleagues.

From another astronomer came this, about the role we ALL play in supporting nursing:

"Supportive words from other women astronomers were also greatly appreciated -- in this respect, I was very fortunate that my advisor was a woman with a toddler, but even casual comments by senior women at conferences along the lines of "well, you just need to nurse during take-off and landing" were helpful. My husband accompanied me to a couple of conferences with my son in tow (in order to bring my son to me to be nursed during breaks), and I know that he was very pleased when MALE astronomers occasionally approached him and said things like "It's great that you and your wife have come to this conference with your baby... when we had our kids, everyone told us it was too hard".

There was quite a bit about the cuddling and re-connecting after a work day. One female astronomer mentioned that their son would crawl into bed to nurse and they would lounge around as a family, drinking tea together. This mirrors some mornings I have with my husband, our dog and my daughter. I don't have to get up to get some early-morning breakfast for our daughter, she can nurse and hang out for a while.

Several women expressed that after a year it was less stressful to nurse as their child wasn’t completely dependent upon them for nourishment. It was mentioned that when trauma in one’s life came up, that having this connection really helped them to nurture their child when in other ways it was or would have been difficult.

Several people mentioned seeking out support. This is still important after a year. Several people mentioned to me that I could do it. Yes, it really is possible to maintain an astrophysics career and nurse!

Speaking of seeking out support, at this point I would like to give a shout-out to the Chandra X-ray Center for amazing accommodation of my 15-month-old nursling this past week. I made it through 2.5 intensive days in Boston without having to pump as my mother-in-law was there and I was able to nurse my daughter at all the breaks. Several people on the CXC staff made sure we were well taken care of (my mother-in-law was able to eat meals with us, we had a refrigerator and crib, etc.). I think their policy is pretty smart: if they ask me to do something for them again, you know I'm going to be inclined to do it!

Obstacles to the Progress of Women in Science and Engineering

In her Keynote Address to the MIT150 Symposium Leaders in Science and Engineering: The Women of MIT, Professor Nancy Hopkins presented a wonderful summary of the reasons why there are so few women faculty in science and engineering, especially at the top ranks. She summarized not only her own experience but that of most women faculty members. Had male faculty members experienced the same systematically inequitable treatment, research universities would be under investigation by Congress for discrimination. Unfortunately, as Professor Hopkins points out, the percentage of female Senators is less than the percentage of female faculty members in science and engineering at MIT. That we face broader societal issues is no excuse for ignoring these problems in academia. Universities and other employers that pay attention to equity will outperform ones that do not. Indeed, as a department head I am delighted to see the benefits of gender equity accrue to my institution.

I strongly urge readers to watch Professor Hopkins’ speech at the above link. Here I summarize her analysis of the obstacles overcome and those remaining before women face a level playing field in academia.

Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the implementation of affirmative action regulations in 1971, universities regularly barred women from the faculty. Such remarkable scientists as Mildred Dresselhaus, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, and Barbara McClintock all faced this now-illegal discrimination. But the legal system and the women’s movement of the 1970s did not eliminate all forms of discrimination.

Sexual harassment was, and remains, a serious problem. Professor Hopkins told her own stunning story. Unfortunately, I know from service on the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy that sexual harassment is not fully eliminated even today. Astonishingly it is present in some highly ranked programs. Today it is possible to gain remedy in the courts; however the effort required is onerous. Universities and other organizations should not wait for lawsuits and should not merely proclaim policy, but should investigate and discipline harassers. The American Astronomical Society has an anti-harassment policy that is laudably clear on this point.

A second obstacle has been the lack of mentoring. Faculty members are not born; they are made. Professional athletes have trainers; corporate executives have coaches; faculty members also benefit from guidance beyond the research apprenticeship of graduate school and postdoctoral studies. This is especially important for faculty in underrepresented groups who have few role models. I’m proud to be at a university whose women took the lead in faculty mentoring 20 years ago with the MIT Mentoring Booklet. Mentoring performance is now evaluated as part of our faculty promotion and tenure review. In my department it is a component of the annual salary review for all faculty members. Still, mentoring is not universally valued and remains low-hanging fruit for institutional advantage. Universities and other employers that mentor their employees will outperform ones that do not.

A third barrier is the work-family dilemma: how to be a parent (or otherwise have a personal life) and a faculty member at a research-intensive university. It is still falsely presented as “a women’s choice” by some: whether to have children or to become a faculty member. Universities must do more to lower that barrier because we need to train and advance the best available young people, most of whom want to have children. Simply arranging for a campus daycare center is far from adequate, as the years-long waiting lines and lack of affordable child care for graduate students and postdocs makes clear. This is a big issue requiring far more attention.

After all the efforts made to overcome the first three barriers, there remain two obstinate challenges: unconscious bias and marginalization. Unconscious bias arises when both men and women undervalue the contributions of women. Every year I read reference letters – even in tenure cases – where a woman is described as “nice and personable” (or compared solely with women!) instead of being judged on her scientific contributions. Every year women are overlooked for awards because nominators tend to think of people like themselves and they undervalue the contributions of those unlike themselves. Even women tend to undervalue other women. These biases are measurable and can be corrected (see, e.g., Project Implicit), but only if we are made aware of them.

The problem of marginalization is, sadly, an illustration that even conscious bias has not been entirely eliminated. Women at all levels continue to receive comments from men that “you’re here because of affirmative action.” Recently I heard this from senior faculty at a highly-ranked physics department. I hear it all too often from female graduate students and even undergraduates. I have been in department leadership for a decade and never once during this time have I seen anyone admitted or hired because of affirmative action. Such claims are false – as Professor Hopkins showed, a higher percentage of female than male full professors of science at MIT are members of the National Academies. Marginalization of any group must stop; to the extent that it creates a hostile work environment, it may even be illegal.

Professor Hopkins then described the efforts MIT made to correct these problems and the remarkable progress resulting from the changes. This is very good news. The improvements in the university for everyone – and especially for women – have made her (and me) optimistic that full equity in research universities may come in our lifetimes.

The importance of lactation rooms at work

Recently, we have been going through a round of milestones in the lactation room in my building at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. It is hard to believe that three first birthdays will have been reached by the end of May. These three women are myself, an associate division chief in science and an engineer. Just as a reminder, it really is the case that the World Health Organization recommends nursing to two years.

I read the register each day (we sign in so the center knows how much the room is being used). We write down our “code numbers” (what science or engineering division we are in) so I can see who is in planetary science, who is in astrophysics, who is in project management/engineering. We also have three women with young babies using the room right now too. The message board is filling up (the old style of message board that involves a marker!). I find myself rooting for the newcomers. It is also added positive peer pressure for me; if I can keep this up, it will show them they can do it too.

Remember, 100 years ago, before formula was widely used, it was the case that all babies were nursed, and generally they did this for at least a year (Baumgartner’s book Mothering Your Nursing Toddler points to historical data indicating that the natural age for weaning is after the second birthday). In those days, you would have had ample opportunity to discuss breastfeeding and would have had encouragement from people around you to make sure your child was nursed. Having that kind of support among your peers is of course important.

I know these women are facing similar workplace challenges to me. Mission schedules can be crazy. Travel periods can be intense. They keep coming back to the room to ensure their babies get the milk and so do I.

NASA GSFC management made the decision to install a lactation room in every new building a few years ago. We are up to 12 rooms at the center. These rooms exist because employers are to provide a place (other than a bathroom stall) where we can pump milk and thankfully NASA GSFC took that responsibility very seriously. This is fantastic recognition for the value of nursing babies.

I am grateful that this room is available. There is a hospital-grade pump which is much better than my pump. I have easy access to a sink to wash my hands and a refrigerator where I can store the milk. There is a microwave for sterilizing bottles (there is a nice kind of microwave bag on the market for this). You can even store pumping supplies in the room so you don’t need to remember to bring everything with you. I can use the time to check my email and have even donated an iPhone charger to the room to make sure my down time is minimized.

Our room (in the planetary science and astrophysics building) is extra comfortable since we have a champion, Anne Kinney (director of the planetary science division). She put in a nice chair and some decorations and takes visitors on a tour of the room (when not in use of course!) to encourge others to install similar rooms.

I’ve had a lot of support in my choice to nurse my daughter, and I would say that the availability of this room and the day-in-day-out examples I see in other women using it has been near the top of the list of "essential" support.

By the way, this is a good time to remind scientists to send me their stories about nursing well past a year (Ann.Hornschemeier AT nasa.gov, as soon as possible!). Next month’s post will be a synthesis/compilation of those.

Taking my own advice: Calling scientists who nursed past a year, please share!

So, all of a sudden it seems like there are a million babies showing up in 2011 and I find myself encouraging the expectant parents to have their baby be breast-fed. I generally mention that they should not feel like they should try to figure it out on their own, resources like La Leche League (a support group for nursing mothers) or working mothers’ nursing support groups arranged through local hospitals are available. There are studies showing that this kind of support is critical to maintaining a nursing relationship with a child.

So it is time for me to take my own advice. My daughter just passed her first birthday. I realized recently that I don’t know what this “looks like.” Personally, I nurse 4-5 times per day (a couple of these are overnight) and I still pump twice per day on a work day. I love the connection with my daughter, but hey, life is demanding and I wonder about making it to the WHO-recommended two year mark. Being a scientist, I loved the data I have read on the biological (and other!) benefits of nursing to two years, but being a scientist and mother, I have a full work load and a now very active little toddler. Right now (at one year ) I feel like nursing to two years may be like running a marathon. However, I know that the second year is very different from the first, so it isn’t like I am just repeating everything I already went through.

So, now I am asking for feedback from working scientist mothers who nursed well past a year. Although I'm obviously reaching out to astrophysicists, feel free to forward this request to your scientist buddies in other fields! I want to know “what does this look like?” (what did it look like for you?) How did you make it work? How did you handle the challenges of travel? How did you handle the peer pressure to stop? What resources helped you? (I have heard about the book “Mother Your Nursing Toddler”, for instance, is that helpful or dated in 2011?). How did you feel about continuing the relationship that long?

You can post a fairly anonymous reply to this blog OR you can email me directly Ann.Hornschemeier AT nasa.gov (preferably before end of May 2011). Please let me know if I should keep your comments anonymous as I hope to compile them for my blog in June.

A first anniversary: motherhood and astrophysics

One year ago today I was in the hospital awaiting the arrival of my daughter. At this point I was realizing the induction might not go as quickly as we hoped. It lasted 40 hours and failed so I had a C-section. Then I struggled to feed my daughter initially. She became dehydrated, losing 11% of her body weight, dipping to below 5 pounds, in the first 2 days. Without any milk yet, I was forced to feed her a tiny amount of formula, for which I have no regrets as she really needed it. Feeding my daughter those few spoonfuls of formula was the first on a long list of things I thought I would never do as a parent.

My research area is the study of X-ray binary populations in galaxies. I'm a tenured astrophysicist at NASA and have been involved with a variety of NASA missions. As you might imagine, I was not thinking about X-ray binaries, X-ray instruments on NASA missions or anything like that during the time described above. Maternity leave really isn’t like any other leave I have ever taken. One of my senior female colleagues told me to be gentle with myself and now I can see what she meant. It took some months for me to return to any semblance of the productivity I had before and to enjoy my work again like I did before.

My daughter has now grown to 18 pounds and still nurses regularly. She is starting to walk, she waves at us, says “uh oh” and “bye bye” and does many amazing things. A decent fraction of the time I still can’t believe she exists.

I have been in a bit of a groove as of late in that I work on research all morning, dash over to nurse her (what a nice break to hang out with her now!) and then return to work in the afternoon. I also have a nice new motivational tool: I ask myself if the work I am doing is worth not being around my daughter (of course when I ask myself that I am thinking of her in her cheerful state!). I find that this helps me get back to data analysis and writing more quickly.

I also have started asking for help more. Thankfully I knew to ask for help with nursing. Many people told me to join La Leche League and I am very glad that I started going before my daughter was born. I knew many people struggled at the beginning with nursing.

With the rest of the "baby stuff" (besides nursing) and with my research I made the mistake of not asking for help. My husband and I were alone for most of the first 3 weeks of our daughter’s life, when I was recovering from the surgery and she needed to nurse around the clock. We needed help then and we had friends who would have helped us but we waited before we told them. Then the casseroles arrived en masse, people had been trying not to bother us, waiting for something to do.

Months later I was wondering how I was going to get my research back on track when I felt so exhausted. I had this epiphany: I would ask the postdocs for help! It is not easy when you’re supposedly a tenured scientist “at my level” to ask for help. One of my male colleagues reminded me that what I was describing was what many people just refer to as collaboration. I felt strange asking younger scientists for help, but it was just fine when I did. Information was shared and the project moved along much faster. I felt better about it too.


So I guess that is one major thing I learned (or remembered?) this year. ASK FOR HELP. Plenty of us are going to chip in and help you.

A Carefree Sabbatical? Astrophysics and Nursing in a Blizzard

I’ve been determined to make it to my daughter’s first birthday without taking a major trip without her so that I could sustain our nursing relationship (major is in my mind 2+ nights away) and thus far we are on track at nearly 10.5 months. One interesting challenge presented itself recently when I visited Northwestern University during a Chicago blizzard. Northwestern is my host institution for my sabbatical year. Since, like most professionals these days, I do not actually have a portable family (we have great daycare here in Maryland and my husband has a good non-portable job), my decision was to make visits to NU during the year and conduct my sabbatical at GSFC.

Luckily on this trip I chose the “embedded daycare” model and had my mother meet me in Chicago. Last time I hired a Loyola grad student to help me with childcare but she would not have been able to make the trip to where I was in Evanston (the area of Chicago where NU is). Also fortunately my brother and sister live in Evanston, with my brother approximately 20 minutes walk away. Granted that is impossible to arrange for all trips, but I recommend having an uncle and aunt who love babies to be within walking distance if you’re traveling with a baby in a blizzard.

Women in STEM Organizations- Getting Started

Post by guest-blogger Meredith Danowski*, PhD student in Astronomy at Boston University.

The day-to-day work of science can be difficult. There are grant proposals to be written, courses to be taught, data to be analyzed. But that's the stuff we came for! That's what we do. It's when we encounter other roadblocks on our path--juggling family and work, finding adequate health care, fostering our own professional development-- that we realize we need friends, we need a community, and we need supportive institutions.

Many organizations dedicated to the cause of women in STEM are designed to address this need - not to ease one individual's struggles, rather to act as an incubator for a more diverse and supportive community. I have been lucky enough to have been involved in the founding years of two such groups-- the Society of Women in Physics (SWiP) at the University of Michigan, and most recently, the Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (GWISE) group at Boston University.

In a time when the numbers are improving, many people ask why these groups are necessary. I mean, we're aware that there's a lack of diversity in science, right? Outright discrimination might be rare, but unconscious bias is pervasive, family leave policies are lacking or inconsistent, and mentoring and community greatly improve one's chance for success. While things are definitely looking up, we still have work to do. So why not work to build a community that strives for these goals?

Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." GWISE at Boston University started in 2008 with a few people in a room and a conversation. It began with a small group of women concerned about their professional development, bias in their departments, and parental leave policies at the university. They were looking for a community, and there wasn't one, so they built it.

A few conversations led to a discussion with the dean. The group set up a luncheon and invited women in STEM from across the university to gauge interest. A few months later, they made a list of goals: a mission statement. They borrowed from other organizations and devised an executive board structure. They found an advisor.

Two years later, GWISE is thriving. With a board of graduate students across STEM disciplines, faculty and staff advisors, and a board of advisors from the Boston area, we work to provide professional development programming, opportunities for mentoring and networking, social events, outreach activities, and we work with the administration on policies and practices. Our events vary in size and reach anywhere from 10-100+ people. We brainstorm, borrow ideas, and partner with other organizations to effectively reach the community.

So if you're looking to start up a group for women in astronomy/physics/STEM at your institution, what should you do? Invite some allies for coffee. Discuss any issues you've encountered, discuss institutional policies, and determine if you have a critical mass of people who can devote the time necessary- maybe invite the biologists and engineers, too! Once you're there, make a list of goals and priorities. You might have great leave policies, but few chances for professional development, or a lack of a social community. Maybe you want to start an official mentoring program. Put together some information and make an appointment with a department chair or a dean and see if you can obtain some preliminary funding - showing your events/activities will improve the environment goes a long way.

And it all starts with just a small group of dedicated individuals.

*Meredith Danowski is a PhD student in Astronomy at Boston University and this is her first guest blog at the Women in Astronomy Blog. This is the first in a series where she describes her experiences with GWISE-- she'll be back to discuss how to find & utilize institutional and community support for your organization, and how to build partnerships to effectively provide unique programming.

Elementary Parenting

Happy New Year!

The 217th AAS Meeting is getting under way here in Seattle. Lots of cool science going on here,
and several excellent sessions sponsored by the CSWA, too. (see here for more info)

My kids saw me off at the airport yesterday, and I don't know if I've gotten them really used to my frequent travel schedule or if they're just naturally callous, but there was hardly any fuss. The younger kid, in fact, whined quite a bit about being dragged all the way to the airport to say goodbye to me instead of, I don't know, watching TV or something.

Suffice it to say that balancing my career with having elementary school age children is a completely different game from when they were babies. Ann has made some terrific posts about her own experience, and I know that back then, I would have found her advice invaluable. Still, those early years of parenting are but memories that I can look back on with some nostalgia now. It was tough, but I got through it, and now I can tell funny and/or horrifying stories about it. Not unlike a sorority/fraternity hazing or boot camp, I suppose.

You don't hear much discussion about balancing work and family after the early years. That's because it's much easier. I'm blessed with children free from significant medical, emotional, or mental issues. I can count on getting a full night's sleep on a regular basis. Since my kids are in public school, my child care costs are a whole lot less. There are excellent in-school programs that I can rely on to care for my kids after school, on snow days, and even some school vacation days. Heck, I can even assign chores to my kids to make dinner time and morning getting-ready times a lot easier on myself.

Still, I end up doing a lot of chauffeuring, taking my kids to some activity or another. I wrote an early draft of this blog post at my kids' karate studio, for instance. There are still times when I need to drop everything to take care of a sick or hurt child, but it's not a constant drain on me the way sleep deprivation is. And of course, whenever I travel, like right now, I depend on my spouse to pick up a lot of slack in my absence.

I'm enjoying these elementary school years while they last. My kids are now real people that I can have real conversations with. Still, it won't be long before my kids will be teenagers, and then I may well have to kiss my reliable nights of sleep goodbye. For now, I'll go enjoy the AAS Meeting, confident that my family can get by without me, and maybe by the end of the week they'll actually miss me.