Being a scientist and a parent

For young investigator group leaders, the time of building a research group is often also the time of building a family. This double excitement comes with potential for double stress. How shall one balance work with the new responsibilities at home? How does the academia-family juggle transform one’s everyday work and approach of leading a research group? How do peers and colleagues respond? Three YIN members kindly share their experience and lessons learned regarding these and other questions.

In 1.5 years back to full-time
When my first child was born, I had projects running and could not afford to not be working for a longer time. Hence, I only took a few months of full-time leave before coming back part-time. My husband supported this strongly by taking full-time and part-time parental leave. We were also in the lucky situation that my mom supported us tremendously by taking care of the baby during two days per week and later also during work related travels.

I also experienced my colleagues at KIT-Campus Alpin to be very supportive. They allowed for enough flexibility to combine work and parent duties. Still, supervising my group and structuring my work day was challenging: I concentrated very much on the work that needed to be done and had less time for coffee breaks and other social activities with colleagues. I was awarded an Emmy Noether research group by the DFG when I was pregnant with my second child and was able to postpone the start of the group by a year. The first 1.5 years I headed the research group in part-time, which was fine but also very demanding. Besides, there were conferences to attend, collaborations to maintain, and even teaching responsibilities.

To master all this was only possible because my husband took over a great load of responsibility for the baby and supported me. For instance, we often traveled together to conferences taking the baby with us and sharing the duties. As we both worked part-time at the same institute we could also spontaneously re-arrange our schedule to attend meetings.

Being a scientist and a parent is demanding, but also a lot of fun. Make sure you have a good network of support from family, friends and daycare facilities close to your work environment. For instance, when traveling with the baby to conferences overseas: colleagues typically like to have a little chat with you over the baby, which helps you to get to know other scientists better. You just have to find out what works best for you.

Being a parent also changes how you perceive the world around you. You become very structured, set priorities more easily, and try to become as efficient as possible during work time. This has advantages but also may have disadvantages because colleagues or group members might feel they don‘t get the attention they deserve. It helps to talk to them and explain your situation.

All in all, I think there is no golden standard on how long parents should take parental leave. I think there should be enough flexibility to try and find out what works best for the kids and the parents. I also think that all funding agencies, scientific metrics and committees should respect parents to take time off to care for their children. I explicitly say parents here because it should be common that fathers take their responsibilities as well and this should be supported by the culture at KIT.

Two times a month
With regard to the birth of our son in 2019, I had two months of parental leave: one in the first month of his life, the second about four months later. The main drivers were to spend dedicated time with my son during his first year of life to really “get to know him” from the beginning. I also wanted to relieve and better support my wife, who is on parental leave form her job as a teacher for an entire year. At KIT, I am leading two research groups with 17 research associates (all doctoral students) in total. They as well as my professor supported my parental leave and really had a positive perception of it. A few members of my groups had been on parental leave before. So there was some experience on how to handle things.

Reflecting my two parental leaves today, ev- erything turned out quite smoothly, as the two months were rather short and separate from each other. Regarding the organization of the research groups, it generally felt like leaving for two longer periods of holiday. As for those, of course, it is important to plan in advance manifold organizational tasks and duties, such as substitutions at project meetings or the signing of documents. The time of parental leave was most challenging at the beginning of the first month: Our son was born three weeks before the expected date all too suddenly, right before the Easter holidays. So everybody in my groups was surprised when I was suddenly gone. Especially, as just a week later, I was supposed to give the first lecture of a newly created laboratory course, for
which I am the responsible lecturer. Thus, very instantly a colleague had to substitute me.

During my parental leaves, I was not at KIT at all, except for a few hours one day regarding an important project meeting. However, I was constantly reading my emails to prevent myself from having a very large amount of emails waiting at my return – I also do so during holiday leaves. Nonetheless, I communicated in advance that my groups should not rely on me answering, and take over responsibility by themselves. Consequently, I only replied in cases that were very important from my point of view. Yet, a few associates gave me the feedback that for them it was sometimes confusing when I nevertheless replied and proposed to me to just consequently take time off. From my point of view, though, it still was a good decision to provide my support where I could do so easily without much time effort and, thereby, prevent misunderstandings.

Due to the short time of parental leave and keeping up with emails, my reintegration was very easy and fast. What I changed in my every- day life after the birth of our child is to come home from work a little earlier in the evening to be able to spend time with our son. If necessary, I compensate this by finishing work later at night. For the time, after the first year, I applied for the KIT KITAs. However, the current status of my inquiry is still pending. Altogether, I am mostly satisfied with my parental leave. It was a really good decision for my family and me. With regard to my research groups, I think it definitely was an advantage to split up the two months. Most crucial, however, are an open communication and detailed planning with the team in advance.

In nine years back to full-time work
The question of balancing research and family arises at the beginning of many scientists’ careers. Especially when both partners are professionally ambitious and when grandparents live far away, it is not easy to find a suitable solution. My husband was working in Karlsruhe and I was working in Braunschweig when we were expecting our first child. I had completed my doctorate and was working as a tenured scientist and project leader at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Braunschweig. But with the birth of our child, it was no question for me to take a year of parental leave and live in Karlsruhe with my family. Nonetheless, I could not quite let go of research completely and chose to work 20% part-time for one year. Thankfully, the head of the DLR institute in Braunschweig offered me to work from home in Karlsruhe. I am more than grateful that this exceptional solution was possible.

Due to the known number of months before giving birth, there was sufficient time to prepare for my absence. I was able to hand over tasks to colleagues, pre-prepare a few significant upcoming project tasks and inform the project partners. In this way, the shift of responsibilities worked reasonably well. During the first six months after the birth of our daughter, I could well use her sleeping periods to work for an European projectto a small extent and to be available via email and phone for my colleagues and project partners. After seven months, my daughter spent two mornings per week with a day-care mother. It was a new situation for both of us, but extended our freedom and horizon. My daughter got to know a lovely day-care mother and two older day-care sisters. Meanwhile, I could concentrate on my work and was much happier afterwards to spend time with my child. A win-win solution.

When my girl turned one year of age, she got a place in childcare. Thus, I was able to increase my part-time work to 50%. My husband took two months of parental leave to ease my start into the half-time work and to take care of our daughter and her settling in at childcare. From that time on, I traveled to Braunschweig and worked there for three days per month, while my husband took care of our daughter. As for the rest of the part-time work, I was again allowed to work from home in Karlsruhe. It was an exceptionally good situation for having a family in Karlsruhe and a 50% job in Braunschweig. However, the distance was of course not advantageous for scientific exchange, for supervision of master or doctoral students, and for project coordination. Nevertheless, I could use the time for my own
research, for more involvement in the European project, for paper reviews, for acquisition of a new European project, and for some long-distance supervision to assist a doctoral student of mine in another project.

Just before our daughter turned two, she got a little brother. Since we had made good experience with the 20% and later 50% part-time model, we decided to do the same again. When it became clear that we would stay in Karlsruhe, I looked for a new position here. It was good fortune that at KIT a new chair for Lightweight Technology had been established. The professor was an expert in processing of polymer composites, and he was looking for an experienced scientist in composite simulation. So, it was an easy decision for me to take the offered postdoc position and to start coordinating an exciting large-scale project at KIT. At that time, our son was one year and a half, and he had settled in well at childcare.

I started my new position with a 60% part-time employment to have sufficient time for our two kids. I am grateful that my new boss at KIT again gave me a lot of freedom and allowed me to work some hours from home. This made it easier to spend more time with the children and ad- vance my work when they slept. In the years that followed, I could successively increase my responsibilities. I successfully applied for a Young Investi- gator Group and supervised more and more doctoral students. With the growing responsibilities and the growing age of our children, I could also increase my part-time employment from 60%, to 75%, to 90%, and, finally, to 100%, when the kids were seven and nine years old.

Looking back I am rather happy with the way things have developed, and I would probably do the same again. However, for a steep scientific career, it is certainly not the best strategy to work part-time for such a long time. Nevertheless, I would not have wanted to miss any more time with the kids. Now that they are getting older and more independent, I still have enough time to make progress in research and enhance my topics and collaborations.