Parenting school-aged children as a Postdoctoral Scholar

Well, it’s 3:30pm on Thursday – time to pick up my sons from after school care, drop one off at dance lessons, meet up with my husband to do the kid trade-off, then head back to the lab.  Maybe I should eat something now?  Nope, don’t have time.  At least I have a flexible schedule so I can make it work, and a very understanding boss.  This is my life as a postdoc with school-aged kids.

It can be hectic, but having kids and being a postdoc certainly can be done.  However, you do need LOTS of support.  I am lucky in that I have a very supportive husband who also has a lot of flexibility with his job.  Without that, it would be extremely difficult, and I probably wouldn’t be able to put in the required hours.  Well, maybe if I didn’t sleep, but I really need sleep!

Many people have help, often live-in help, from their families when they have kids and also work, but that’s not our situation exactly.  During my Ph.D. back in Ontario, I had my twin sons.  That’s where our family is, so we had more help when we lived there, although not any live-in help.  I took a total of 8 months off, then started back with a modified schedule because we could only afford a couple of days of daycare per week at first.  On the non-daycare days, I would go into work when my husband got home from work, around 5-6pm.  Here’s something else to consider: even if you find a childcare provider, it’s not a sure thing.  After two weeks, i.e. a total of only 4 days of daycare, my first childcare provider quit because she couldn’t handle taking care of twins.  That added a lot of stress, but we figured it out, again with the help of a friend.  We slowly added more daycare days, up to full time, and I did end up finishing my thesis and graduating!

Then we decided to move to Calgary for my postdoc, right when my kids were heading off to kindergarten.  That was quite challenging because my husband didn’t have a job at first, we needed to find after school care for our kids without knowing anyone, and almost all of our family remained back east.  Fortunately my brother came to Calgary with us and looked after the kids for that first summer before school started.  School was only a half-day for kindergarten, so my kids went from 8:00-10:30am – that’s it!  Again, if I didn’t have (paid) help, I would have barely been able to get things going for experiments before I had to leave to pick them up from school!  I find that this type of schedule really does not make any sense for working parents.  You could argue that it’s only for one year.  However, remember that a postdoc is a time-limited training position, not a permanent job, so the countdown is on.  One year is thus a significant amount of time in the life of a postdoc.  And it doesn’t get that much better when kids are in school “full-time”, because this is still only 6.5 hours/day.  So, before and/or after school care is still required.

I did find after school care where the caregiver picks up the kids from school, even the kindergarten kids that are done at 10:30am.  What a relief!  Not a relief for my wallet, though.  For this service I pay a pretty penny.  But, it lets me get my work done…almost.  I still have to return to the lab in the evenings sometimes to finish up experiments, after the kids are with their dad.

In this respect, subsidized childcare for postdocs would be a HUGE help.  Or a co-operative child care program.  Or something.  Because even if you can afford it, there are often long waiting lists for childcare.  Just FYI, you should call about childcare AS SOON AS YOU ARE EXPECTING A CHILD.  No joke.

So, my overall message is that you need lots of help if you want to be a postdoc and have kids, but it is possible with support and flexibility.  Although our schedules are quite crazy at times (I live by my Gmail calendar!), there is nothing better than coming home to your family every night…even if it’s midnight sometimes.

Stefanie A.G. Black, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Scholar with Dr. Gerald Zamponi

If you are interested in joining a Postdoctoral Parent to Parent group please contact PDAC@ucalgary.ca for more information

Helpful Resources:

1. Other parents!
2. Your local community association: https://calgarycommunities.com/community-info/find-a-community/
3. Calgary Board of Education: http://www.cbe.ab.ca/
4.  Calgary Catholic School District: http://www.cssd.ab.ca/
5. Calgary’s Child Magazine: http://www.calgaryschild.com/
6. City of Calgary Recreation: http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Recreation/Pages/Home.aspx

Another post from this series: Parenting a Toddler as a PostDoc