Some people consider that having children while studying or before you have gained tenure is career suicide. I had my first baby while a PhD student and my second 9 years later after I had gained tenure. For me, while having my first baby was much more difficult financially, having a baby when I was younger was a lot easier in terms of my energy levels and perseverance, even with little sleep and other responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a tough year or so finishing my PhD after having my first child. I used to joke that completing a PhD was like being pregnant and in labour – there is a lot of hard work to form your larger thesis (the gestation part) and at the end the harder you push the faster the agony would be over (active labour)!

After I was back from my 12 weeks leave with my second child I faced the daunting task of an unusually heavy convening and teaching load. I do acknowledge that I am relatively privileged that there are many people in the US and other countries who do not have access to this leave, and I had some flexibility with work arrangements when my daughter was very young. I found expressing and dealing with infant sicknesses an almost full-time job. A vivid memory that has stuck with me was writing a large grant application when staying in hospital with my daughter when she was 3 months old while suffering from respiration issues. There were other real disruptions, e.g., I  missed a major fellowship deadline when my baby was a newborn, which could have been a career changer for me. Although I was working long hours and being successful and productive there was a ‘dip’ in my research.

As I am a (bio)archaeologist, having children poses some real difficulties for the logistics of my work, but this also provides my children with many opportunities (see my earlier post on this).

Some universities have acknowledged that parenting and parental leave impacts upon research momentum and that parents needed additional support to help get that going again when they return to work. E.g., as part of the Athena SWAN Charter, Durham University have introduced a policy whereby staff returning from maternity/parental/adoption leave are eligible for a term of research and study leave.

There also seems to be an increase in recognition in archaeology that there are gender equity issues. Here are a hand-full of resources in archaeology that seek to encourage participation and improve the status of women in our field. Check them out!

Trowelblazers runs outreach activities and events with the aim of “encouraging participation of women and underrepresented groups in archaeological, geological, and palaeontological science.”

The Gender Equity in Archaeology Project “examines the relationship between gender, author, and editorship in conference presentations and publications as a lens to examine current disciplinary sociopolitics and the relative contributions of men and women to archaeological research.”

There are also committees that focus of gender equity in archaeology in societies. For example, the Society for American Archaeology has a Committee on the Status of Women in Archaeology which “seeks to understand the current status of women in the profession through the gathering of data and to improve the position of women in archaeology.”

There is also a resource here that lists some women’s academic organisations, including anthropology.