Welcome!

Stories about people in the field shape the narrative of who a field researcher, teacher, caretaker, and leader can be. Our goal is to show that parents can be successful in field based roles, and that there are many different successful solutions to fieldwork while parenting.  This will help provide some good advice and examples for people wanting to do the same, and also be a proof-of-concept for those concerned that it can not be done.  With that being said, as with both research and parenting on their own, things don't always go smoothly.  We also warmly welcome stories about adventures that didn't completely work out as planned.  There is value in the null results!

We want to share all of the different solutions parents have figured out to doing fieldwork when they have children, and there are a lot of different situations and solutions.  So your experience is important. These stories can be about fieldwork ranging from adventures in other countries to local day-trips.  They can be in the wilderness, at field stations, or in the wildland/urban interface (or anywhere in between).  We are not limited by discipline.  The fieldwork can be for surveys, research, professional photography, or teaching (and everything in between). The children could just be along for the trip and watched by another caregiver during the actual work, they could be side-by-side with the parent, or any combination.  Children could be infants to teenagers.   The story could be recent, or decades ago.  If you were the kid brought along in the field, we would love your perspective too.  Stories about managing pumping and traveling welcome as well.  The story could be a paragraph or multiple pages, photos or no photos, all up to you.

If you want to submit a paragraph now, and turn it into a few pages later, we will happily update it later.  We know you are busy!  If you aren't sure if your story "counts", email me and we will figure it out together.

If you have a story you are willing to share, please send me a message - FieldworkWhileParenting@gmail.com.  We can post with credit or anonymously, whichever you prefer.  We also will happily post a link to your blog post, if you have already shared a story of this elsewhere.

Journal Article - Family and the field: Expectations of a field-based research career affect researcher family planning decisions

 

Family and the field: Expectations of a field-based research career affect researcher family planning decisions

Christopher D. Lynn, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing,

1,* Michaela E. Howells, Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing,

2 and Max J. Stein, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing1

Mellissa H. Withers, Editor

PLoS One. 2018; 13(9): e0203500.

Published online 2018 Sep 7. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203500

Abstract

Field-based data collection provides an extraordinary opportunity for comparative research. However, the demands of pursuing research away from home creates an expectation of unburdened individuals who have the temporal, financial, and social resources to conduct this work. Here we examine whether this myth of the socially unencumbered scholar contributes to the loss of professionals and trainees. To investigate this, we conducted an internet-based survey of professional and graduate student anthropologists (n = 1025) focused on the challenges and barriers associated with developing and maintaining a fieldwork-oriented career path and an active family life. This study sought to determine how (1) family socioeconomic status impacts becoming an anthropologist, (2) expectations of field-based research influence family planning, and (3) fieldwork experiences influence perceptions of family-career balance and stress. We found that most anthropologists and anthropology students come from educated households and that white men were significantly more likely to become tenured professionals than other demographic groups. The gender disparity is striking because a larger number of women are trained in anthropology and were more likely than men to report delaying parenthood to pursue their career. Furthermore, regardless of socioeconomic background, anthropologists reported significant lack of family-career balance and high stress associated with the profession. For professionals, lack of balance was most associated with gender, age, SES, tenure, and impacts of parenting on their career, while for students it was ethnicity, relative degree speed, graduate funding, employment status, total research conducted, career impact on family planning, and concern with tenure (p < .05). Anthropology bridges the sciences and humanities, making it the ideal discipline to initiate discussions on the embedded structural components of field-based careers generalizable across specialties.