Balancing toddler & career - help!

[isitlunchtimeyet89]

Hi everyone,

I had a baby last June and returned to work in January, though I haven't taught this academic year.

I'm finding it super hard to balance everything because:

1. I used to work 9-5, with some evening and weekend work when I felt like it/when it was needed. Now, by the time I do childcare drop offs and basic housework and admin that needs to be done during the day, I'm not working a full day (my typical day is now 9.30 - 4 at best). I'm finding I don't work in the evenings as by the time she's in bed it can be 8pm and by the time I've had dinner and got things ready for the next day (e.g prep her food, pack her bag, wash her bottles, basic laundry) I just want to sleep as I don't know what time she'll be up in the morning or whether she'll wake in the night! Plus, I don't want to burn myself out even further.

1. Childcare can fall through at the moment (e.g. a whole week off nursery self isolating recently due to a Covid case amongst the staff) and I have to cancel everything short notice, which I'm finding super stressful.

1. I have major brain fog and just can't theorise the way I used to. I can do basic work but complex theorising seems to be beyond me. I think it's part tiredness, part working from home and needing a change of scenery, and I can't see either changing any time soon.

I feel like a shadow of my former self academically and don't know how I can keep up with expectations, especially once I return to teaching. I'm embarrassed at how much the quality and quantity of my work is deteriorating and I feel like quitting, but I'm not really qualified for anything else on an equivalent salary

Does it get better? Do things change? Have you found any ways to balance this better? Do I just need to embrace a drop in standards

P.S. My husband is working long hours and is not available to do the childcare drop offs or pick ups (not his fault, a change to his job due to covid that we hadn't anticipated when planning the baby), so he can't help.

I can totally empathise with all of this. To be successful in academia you need to productive out of hours (if, like me your working hours are spent teaching and course-leading). So evenings and weekends are the only time when research or anything related to output/ progression can be worked on.
After my first DC, it took about 3 years to get up to speed again, I did achieve a few big things, then I had a 2nd maternity & I’ll openly admit to a year or two of just keeping my head down, doing the bare minimum and making sure the visible stuff was done to a good standard.
I’m now starting to think about spending the next few years preparing to try and steam ahead when my youngest starts school.
It will be a good ten years of my career that has been really compromised, despite not taking long maternity leaves on either occasion.
So, no advice, just commiserations really, to let you know you’re not alone!

Hey @AlwaysColdHands - I'm glad it's not just me! I think that's why I'm struggling - because I'm not working in the evenings. If my husband was home we could alternate bath time/bedtime and I could work every other evening for a couple of hours, so I'm hoping that may be possible in the future.

Do you mind me asking what hours you worked when you felt you were able to make some good progress?

We're also planning to have another child in the next 2-3 years too - the first wasn't straightforward so we don't want to put it off too long. It's crazy that having children sets you back so far

I feel completely the same. I can't focus properly on work, and I know i am not giving it the effort I gave pre-children.

My oldest is now 10 years old, abs I haven't solved this yet. I went back after my first maternity leave and I started juggling, and I am still juggling 10 years later, with 4 kids aged between 1 and 10 years old!

I am burned out, mentally and physically. 10 years of running to the next thing having never finished the last thing. 10 years of nearly having it all, but feeling like I don't really get to enjoy any of it because I never manage to finish anything or feel like I have done a good job on anything. Neither work nor home get the best of me.

On the plus side, I haven't burned any bridges career wise, and my kids are happy and well balanced. I am knackered though.

I have no advice. You will survive it whichever path you choose

Even if you do have a partner doing a good deal of stuff (I don’t) you’re simply a lot, lot more tired than before children, because you dont get the same amount of rest and recovery time. There’s also all the mental load and extra child-related stuff to think about which consumes brain power!
So I hate to say it, but do lower expectations.

Unfortunately the only way I managed to achieve some things in between maternity leaves was to get up at 4.30am and do a few hours each morning - my first was a great sleeper. I was working about 28 hours a week then, 4 days I think (but of course more in reality).

I’d say pick your priorities and make sure the essential, visible stuff doesn’t slip. If you have any kind of choices over what your workload contains, now’s not the time to be ambitious. For example, there’s a new module I’d like to teach but I kept my mouth shut and am sticking with old ones for now.
Also see if your institution has any programmes or support specifically for women such as springboard, useful for some structured reflection

More solidarity, but no solutions. I went part time after coming back from maternity leave and it’s been a struggle to get any research done, honestly. My husband’s job has been made much, much busier and more complicated by COVID, so he hasn’t been able to help as much as we’d planned, and my admin role has also ballooned because of pandemic emergency measures (but without any additional workload recognition). I do work a lot in the evenings to make up for some quite partial days, but it’s exhausting and demoralising. Even pre-COVID workload was an issue, though. Before I had a child research was generally punted to the weekend and now that just can’t happen. It feels really unsustainable and I’m hugely ashamed of (and freaked out by!) my slow publication rate. I don’t really want to do it anymore and since my salary after commuting costs are taken into account is pretty low the incentives to stay are getting pretty hard to find. It makes me very sad, though.

For balance, I’ll just add that in many ways, academia does actually offer huge advantages when you have children: we shut for 2 weeks at Xmas; decent holidays (if your workload permits you to take them!), and crucially, often massive flexibility and autonomy.
I reckon there are few other jobs where I can block out my diary to go for a run/ attend assembly or nativity at school/ pick up early etc, and then just make up the work as and when. I’m not expected to be on campus unless teaching, so can work from home a good proportion of the week (even pre-COVID).

And I’ll be honest, if I wanted to I could use nursery and before/after school club to the max and work for 10 hours a day to research and write……but I don’t want to. So I work approx 9-4pm and pick up the rest in the evenings. Academic work seeps so much, this gives me zero time to do what’s needed to progress at present.

Haha I should qualify my previous post by saying that of course, when batches of assignments come in to mark it’s working allllllll hours to return them in the allotted time. Proper crunch points where there are no bedtime stories, beans on toast for tea and mummy is definitely on a short fuse 🙄

It is hard. I was just feeling that I’d come out of the baby stage and was succeeding in January last year when my kids were 2 and 4. Then Covid hit and the stress and lack of time has been awful.

I also think wfh all the time isn’t helping. When I had a day or 2 (I work 3 days a week) where I left before the kids were awake and then could stay as long as I wanted because I wouldn’t be home to do pick up anyway at least I had full day to work. I do much more childcare/ housework but my husband earns so much more than me so…

But work seems happy enough with what I’m doing. And I keep telling myself life is long (hopefully!).I’ve probably got at least another 30 years working so I just need to hang in there for now.

Honestly OP, the academic workload is so heavy that it is often a choice between kids and career. A huge proportion of female academics choose not to have kids. Those who do often lose their careers and have to do something else that’s more family friendly.

It's tough but you've put your finger on it - your job requires thinking time as well as time to do it. You need more childcare and if you and your husband take your job seriously, he needs to change his hours too (at least from the autumn). Why doesn't he do those prep jobs at 8pm instead of you? I know it's hard. I had a baby a month after qualifying as a teacher and I thought it over and decided we needed full time childcare and not term time only like some colleagues. And DH (academic) significantly reduced his hours for a while. I used the 'extra' days to get ahead on planning and marking.

academic with 2 kids here. I found the first few years very hard, especially as mine were very bad sleepers.

Things that helped were

• ignoring writing-work. I was too tired to sit at my desk and think of new ideas all alone.
• do more collaborative / supervising work. I found talking over ideas with colleagues / phd students etc much easier & more productive. especially if they would they write a first draft of a paper & I could edit
• dedicate 1 day per week to research. Tell everyone (including myself) that Tuesday is research day & try as hard as possible to make sure there is no admin / teaching / meetings on that day. Squeeze the rest of the admin as much as possible to fit it in the other days.
• do you have a cleaner? If so, can the cleaner also do baby laundry & tidying?

and finally, it will get better - much better. once children sleep reliably at night & go to school in the day, an academic career is great for having the flexibility to go to school plays etc occasionally but also keep your brain in gear.

Thanks everyone for your replies and advice, sorry you've found it tough too. If only we could normalise working more reasonable hours, so we wouldn't fall behind simply for not working all hours under the sun!

@Phineyj he does if he's home, but he's working such long hours that he's often not home until late. But yes, he could step up more and do some meal prep on weekends etc so I don't have to do it weekday evenings. His current contract ends in august so I'm keeping my fingers crossed he goes back to more normal hours then, though they're always unpredictable, which I hate! That's not going to change any time soon though as he's self employed and it's the nature of the industry.

@parietal I've hired to a cleaner to do 2 hours once a fortnight (although we had to cancel the last one as DD was self isolating so the house is a tip!) but she doesn't tidy or do laundry, just cleans.

It sounds like I need to lower my expectations a bit and acknowledge that my output may be a little lower for now. I'm not under any particular pressure from my line manager or Dean at the moment, but the rise int redundancies in the sector is making me nervous to drop my productivity. Maybe I'm putting unnecessary pressure on myself though!

Sell the kids on ebay? I am flakier, less reliable, less productive than without kids. They are cute though, so I probably won't sell them.

I have a DH who works 13 hour shifts as standard. My little one woke every two hours. I was a teacher and I had to give up. For all the reasons you describe. Money is fairly tight now but it was the right - only - decision for us as I simply could not do both.

I would have thought the point of freelancing is some ability to set your hours (even if you can't actually reduce them), but anyway...

Hi OP, it is tough but it does get better.

One thing that jumps out from your post - you are trying to squeeze a full time job into considerably less than full time hours (9.30-4 at best and that’s before nursery closures etc). That’s a lot of pressure to put yourself under. I think sometimes as academics flexibility can be our worst enemy and somethings out best friend.

I’d suggest either you need to get more childcare or go part time - either would be likely to make things feel less stressful.

Pre-children, could you do your work 9.30-4pm? I suspect the answer is no. On top of this you will more tired and have less headspace now.
I would say either increase your childcare or you or your husband need to go part time.
Good luck. It's hard.

It does get better. I'm a single parent to a child with mild SEN. DD is 15 now and the last few years have been easier and I've started to get my research back. Before then I was swamped with admin and teaching and struggling to keep up.

@Igmum glad things are getting easier for you now 

@OneKeyAtATime @RoseRoseRoseRose thanks for the advice. I did consider going part time, but given that the main area I'm struggling with is research, I wonder whether going down to 4 days a week would make much difference? I think I'd still feel the pressure to be working, as a lot of the pressure is coming from myself and my desire to keep up with others in my field and to finish projects I started pre-pregnancy, rather than from my department/school (for now!). I'm worried that I'd end up working similar hours overall for less pay. Plus I'm the main earner so to be honest we need the money! I'm a bit stuck for options really, other than maybe lowering my standards for research output, but it's going to leave my collaborators pretty annoyed/frustrated.

@Phineyj he runs his own business and normally he'd be doing lots of smaller jobs here and there with more say in what jobs to accept, but unfortunately with Covid the only thing available was a contract that tied him up 12 hours+ every weekday for several months, with no flexibility. It was that or risking losing his business. It's been a nightmare for both of us to be honest, some days he doesn't see DD in person for days.

Nursery have just rung to tell me DD is unsettled today. Not asking me to pick her up at the moment but these calls just make me feel like a bad mum for leaving her there when she's upset 😢 plus I've just had a call about a hospital appointment next week for DD that will mean another afternoon with no work. Just fed up and ranting sorry!

I second everyone else’s advice and experience. It’s very very tough.

Do the minimum you can on the teaching and admin fronts. Don’t volunteer for extra projects. Don’t waste time on fiddly things like book reviews. Come in to projects at a stage where you can edit or add but don’t do the work of writing from scratch - my brain was too sleep-deprived and full of other stuff to do that. Delegate where you can and push back on unreasonable demands. Mine your network for timesavers - do you have friends who can send you reading lists, old exam papers etc?

Remember it’s the beginning of the REF cycle so you have plenty of time to write, take the pressure off yourself.

Accept that you may have to work late/early to get things done and you will probably feel very tired for a long time. About five years ago I was running a module with two colleagues. We all had two children, all under 8. We would regularly convene online around 10pm for work stuff.

Courage!!

Also: Do NOT go part-time.

It does sound tough. Have you thought about a nanny? We used one part time a while back to cover that awkward 3 to 6pm period that is causing you the problems. Easier in a city of course. Yes it costs but you need to offset that against the unavailable husband, the long term, promotion, pensions etc. My neighbour is a doctor and cannot do her paperwork within clinic hours so she uses a nanny to drop then pick up DC and feed and entertain them in the house while she works. That would be too expensive for us but the after school thing worked fairly well.

Gosh, I've just seen you're the main earner but also the one making all the compromises - does that make sense? Definitely time for a serious talk with the husband...

I felt this brain fog for years. I was always on alert to be interrupted or worrying about them when they weren’t with me, so I feel for you. On the upside, I suddenly noticed that was gone recently (my youngest is 8). So it does pass.

I clung on with my fingertips and am now progressing again. My pub record was so slim and I was ashamed of it - I remember the shame of not publishing for 4 years (my field is a slow publishing one). But once I had another paper out it was all fine again and no one mentioned my gap (it helps that it was a good paper).

I said no to admin if possible (Eg Athena swan). I took an outside admin role with my professional body to keep my profile up and helped to organise a conference. But I said no to many paper reviews, thesis exams and so on. Now I am doing these so I feel like I am paying my debt to the community!