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I became a parent in the latter part of my 3rd year as a PhD student, just a couple months after qualifying for candidacy. Becoming a parent while entering the more nebulous, open-ended portion of my PhD program was a challenge. Eight months later, the COVID Pandemic arrived and my family experienced a whole new level of difficulty. Among other setbacks, we missed out on much of the typical socializing that happens between new parents in those early years.
Working in academia, especially as a graduate student, postdoc or other term-limited employee, presents a particular set of challenges when you're a parent. I knew I wanted to try and connect, exchange resources and commiserate more with fellow academic parents and carers facing similar circumstances.
The first place I began to find some of this support, back in 2019/20, was on Twitter, where there was a large community of academics, a large subset of whom were also parents. While some of those accounts and networks remain, this has become less of a valuable resource in the intervening years. This shift in utility has been one of the bigger losses of the change in ownership and general change in tone at Twitter/X for me, personally.
At a certain point I found I wanted more than what Twitter/X had to offer. I wanted a space that could facilitate more consistent contact, open up options for virtual and in-person meetings, maintain some institutional memory about prior conversations and resources, etc. To help fill this void, I co-founded the Academic Carers Community, centered around our Academic Carers Slack group. Anyone who is interested can join using this link. If this link isn't working or you're struggling to join the group, please reach out to me and I will make sure we get things sorted out.
The group now includes over 100 members. I think it has been a particularly valuable space for my fellow early-career scholars: grad students, postdocs, pre-tenure and non-tenure-track faculty and the like. In the past we have not only communicated on Slack, but also have had periodic Zoom meetings. As of the American Political Science Association (APSA) Meeting in September, 2022 in Montreal, we've also had a few in-person meetups. Some of my closest friends in academia now were folks I initially met or became much closer with as fellow academic parents through Twitter and/or the Slack group. I hope that the group will continue to grow and offer an increasingly valuable space for those who want to be involved. Please reach out to me if you'd like to talk about parenting in academia, want to learn more about our group or have suggestions for improving it. Thanks!
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