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.

Pregnant and Purposeful

Raptor biologist, Shannon Skalos, in a photo taken during her pregnancy with an adult female (mamas represent!) Harrier (Circus hudsonius) that is part of her research.  

Supportive Work Environment and Successful Science

Bonnie Eyestone is the Rangeland Monitoring Network Coordinator for Point Blue Conservation Science (Point Blue), and she and her son were recently featured by Point Blue in a social media post celebrating her fieldwork with her child.  They wrote "Training the next generation of scientists is helpful with an early start! Check out our #RangelandMonitoring Network Coordinator Bonnie Eyestone monitoring vegetation this past field season in Sonoma County with her baby boy in tow. This mama is getting work done! Bonnie sent these photos to us, saying, " I am incredibly grateful to Point Blue for their family friendly culture, allowing me to bring my baby to work and inspire the next generation of conservationists." We are inspired by your multitasking prowess Bonnie! And little guy Axel looks like a great field partner "

Bonnie Eyestone and Axel, getting fieldwork done. Photo by Taj Hittenberger

The family friendly environment at Point Blue is so obvious from the celebration of Bonnie's accomplishments in that post. Bonnie shared some more stories, and they further confirmed what a positive experience doing fieldwork while parenting in that supportive environment has been like.

"With my first son, my team at work gifted me an Osprey child carrier backpack so I could take the baby along with me for work.  My second boy was born in February and got to join me for fieldwork when I returned from leave.  I brought a pop-up sun tent for him to take naps in and play in the shade while my coworkers and I collected vegetation data.  Newborn child care is hard to find, especially without family living nearby, so I am grateful I'm able to bring him with me.  My team at work is supportive and flexible even when our work gets interrupted for breastfeeding or to calm a fussy baby.

A great Covid work-from-home parenting moment occurred this past January when I was hosting a virtual event and set my "office" up in the back yard so I could watch my then 18-month-old play while I gave a presentation.  Of course, he was playing happily and safely during the whole event until it was my turn to present.  Nine-months pregnant I had to dash off-screen to rescue him out of some landscaping and proceeded with the rest of the presentation with him on my hip, snuggled against my huge belly.  Everyone was gracious about it and his smile charmed the audience."

Bonnie Eyestone and Axel, taking a break in the shade during fieldwork. Photo by Taj Hittenberger

We applaud Bonnie for all the good work she does as a scientist, a field scientist, and a mother.  We also applaud Point Blue for providing the kind of culture and environment that makes sure the good work done by scientists in their organization can continue through many life phases, including parenting young children.  This is good for the science, it's good for parents, particularly women in science, and this is a wonderful model for other organizations.  

Sweet Success Story

Hannah Melanie Parry-Wilson is a PhD student studying the biogeographic range shifts and physiological tolerances of native gastropods in response to climate change effects.  She had a positive story of her fieldwork that she was willing to share here as inspiration for others.  

"[I was] terrified to go on a PhD fieldwork trip for a week away from my little one (14 months) whilst we were still breastfeeding and co-sleeping…

Well, I got back from my fieldwork trip late yesterday (whilst baby was in bed) and thankfully the entire trip wasn’t half as stressful as I was expecting."

"Dad and baby now have a much stronger bond. Baby has been eating, drinking cows milk and sleeping like a trooper since I’ve been away, and thankfully hasn’t been distant at all from me since she saw me this morning (after her confusion wavered) - she is now happy to be held by both Mumma and Dadda and not being too preferential as she was before.

Thanks again to everyone that offered their stories in similar situations and I’m pleased to say the fieldwork trip was a success! 

Photo is of my gorgeous girl asleep with her dolly that she decided has become her comforter/sleeping partner since I left."

Survey Assistant and Habitat Restoration Helpers

I like to say that while I can't do everything with kids that I could do without them, I can still do everything I need to in order to excel at many field jobs.  One of my favorite field activities with my children is checking wildlife cameras.  It is exciting for me to see which wildlife came by, and the children are as excited or more.  There are also many parts of the activity that they can help with, even from a young age.  The following photos are from some work we did on the River Otter Ecology Project.

At the time, this project was just starting to document the return of this species to the region.  The work involved driving to beautiful locations in Marin County, California, hiking into a survey site, and setting up cameras or downloading images.

Here are some photos taken by the Executive Director of the organization, Megan Isadore, of me and my youngest son setting and checking cameras.

Setting up a camera station

Reviewing images in the field

Most of the sites involved short hikes, which the kids are great at and enjoy.  This photo was taken at a beachside field site.  The children just played nearby in the sand while I set the camera.  My older boy was fabulous at pretending to be an otter, to check if we had set up the camera properly.

The logistics of doing the camera trapping work were fairly easy.  I was able to get a child carrier backpack with space for gear in a lower compartment.  If I needed more space, I used a large hip pack, worn in the front.  Plenty of the child carriers are now made for people doing backpacking trips with their children, and doing a lot of fieldwork is really not all that different.  I found bringing a sarong was very useful for multitasking as a field changing table, sun shade, and wiping sand off of the camera lenses.  

  
I have also had the boys with me during habitat restoration work.  Thank you to Jude Stalker at the Invasive Limonium Removal project for this photo of my assistant during invasive species removal.

Removing Invasive Plants

And Jude also took the photo below of my older son helping with oak tree plantings at a restoration site.  He eventually got a shovel and started digging the holes in the soft dirt to put the acorns in.  Kids are great at digging in the dirt.  We need to go and check on those oaks.  This little boy is 10 years old now, and I bet the oaks may have outgrown the both of us.

Planting Oaks

Here is that same little boy 10 years later, taking a chorus frog from a pitfall trap 

I have found participating in citizen science field days is a great way to introduce kids to field work and get them experience with data collection in a low stress (for me!) situation.  We helped out in a Bioblitz, which was documented for a PBS special, shown here.

And this now budding wildlife biologist assisting with roosting bat surveys, part of the Great Causeway Bat Count, at nearly 12 years old.

And doing cast net surveys at 13 years old. 

and, at 16yo, starting to launch on his own beyond working with Mom - here he is participating in a Field Research Course, his first college credits.  

Working with Dr. Rosemary Smith, dye marking rodents as part of a study. 
Photo Credit: Kierstin Thompson

Field Pumping Victories, Progress, and Perils

We are not always able to bring our children in the field with us.  It just doesn't make sense in a lot of situations.  There are logistical challenges to not bringing the children, just as with any working parent, such as coordinating childcare etc..  If that parent is a breastfeeding mother, and needs to pump while not with her child, those logistical challenges can result in some heroic, harrowing, and humorous situations in the field.  We will update and add to this post as new anecdotes come in.

Before we get into the weeds on this, I think it is important to point out that every single breastfeeding working mom handles this, we deal with it fine, and generally without you even being aware of it.  Let the mom be the judge about what she can handle.  All moms and situations are different, and there is no need for other people to preemptively decide what these parent researchers can and can not manage, especially when it's not something you have personally dealt with.

To fully understand some of these stories, you need to understand a bit about breastfeeding and pumping.  For those unfamiliar with the purpose, need, and process of pumping in general - here is a quick tutorial.  The process is fairly similar to what dairy cows go through... If a woman is nursing her child, her body is making as much milk as the child currently taking out.  Production doesn't immediately cease when she isn't with the kid.  If she doesn't pump, after awhile she will experience engorgement and leakage, both of which are fairly self explanatory.  That sends a signal to her body that she doesn't need to produce as much milk in the future, which is not the case if she plans to continue breastfeeding.  Therefore, she also needs to take the milk out to keep her production up to the level her child needs.  Hence the milk extraction process.

The pumping process varies between models of pumps, but there are some consistent themes.  There is an electric motor (usually with a battery power option), that creates suction.  There are tubes from the motor that go to funnels placed on the breasts, and bottles attach to the front of the funnels to collect the milk.  There are special bras that will hold the funnel/bottle combo in place, and this allows a mom to work with her hands while she pumps.  Being able to be productive during pumping is important, because the process is not like dumping out a cup, it is more like emptying out a spray bottle by squirting it a bunch of time.  Milk extraction can take awhile (~10-20 min).  The entire process is creating food for babies, so all the parts need to be kept sterile if the baby is getting that milk later.  This means somewhere to wash, and possibly boil, components.  If that level of cleanliness isn't possible, there is always the pump and dump (which is sad, because that stuff is liquid gold), but being somewhere with access to clean water or sterilizing wipes is preferred.  Then the milk needs to be safely stored.  It can be refrigerated for up the three days, or frozen for up to three months (but that requires consistent access to refrigeration or ice).  Airlines technically allow frozen milk to be transported, if stringent rules are followed, but not all airline employees realize this, and there are plenty of stories of multiple weeks worth of milk being thrown out even when rules were followed.

So, for all of the reasons above, sometimes it really is easier and less time consuming to just have the baby in the field (with the mom, or in the vicinity with a caregiver).  That being said, sometimes that just isn't feasible to bring baby, so here are the promised heroic,  harrowing, and humous tales from the rock star field researcher pumping moms.

**We will update this with additional stories as they come in, so please share yours!  Let's normalize this and support upcoming field researcher parents!***

1. "I taught a field course in Saint Lucia while pumping. I could not afford to bring my family, plus we were on a scuba diving boat all day every day, no place for baby/dad to be asked to hang out! I pumped the whole time and was able to keep up my supply and bring back the last 6 days worth of the milk. I pumped between dives on the boat with my manual Medela breastpump (HIGHLY recommend!!) under a nursing cover, stored milk on the boat in a cooler, and use pump sanitizing wipes (the Medela ones) to sanitize. There was no way to have privacy on the boat other than my nursing cover. I think it was actually really good for my students to see a pumping mom and see how dedicated I was to both them (teaching the course) and my family. They learned a lot about pumping and no one was weird about it at all. It really was great!"  - Melissa Meadows
2. "I pumped when at work for roughly a year, in the office and in the field.   I'll save the office stories for another time, but here is one of an unplanned field pump.  When my son was about 8 months old, I was working as a consultant, and I had a site visit with a client.   By that time, I had been pumping while at work for awhile, and was a pro at timing it so I could slip away and pump between commitments, or during water breaks during surveys.  We had a three hour meeting scheduled, which was no problem.  I pumped prior to the meeting, and then headed over.  But the meeting went over time, and then the client wanted to go and visit the entire site with us.  As the meeting stretched out to 5 hours, other things were stretching as well!  I was getting fairly uncomfortable, and leakage was imminent.  I didn't feel comfortable telling the client, who I didn't know well, the situation.  But luckily the other person I was in the field with was a Mom, I quietly explained the situation to her, and she understood and was on board to help.  We told the client that I had a previously scheduled conference call, which is a perfectly acceptable corporate reason to need to step away if a meeting ran overtime.  She took over the meeting on foot, and I took the vehicle to a stand of trees and pumped out as much as possible in 10 minutes, and returned to the group.  It all worked out fine!  But I was extra careful to ask about the possibility of extended follow up site visits after that.  Most of my fieldwork was carried out within reasonable proximity to a vehicle, so it was easy to keep a cooler in the car and pump in there.  I could pump between field sites, while everyone was getting to vehicles and often breaking for a snack and water anyway.  For those wondering, I used a Medela pump, those things are efficient, and for the field they come with batteries and car plug adapters - woo hoo.  There are also small coolers that plug into car lighter ports, and those are nice to have for the milk if you have a vehicle (or even just a car battery) but not ready access to ice." - Anonymous 
3. Great article about international fieldwork while pumping - https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/international-travel-field-work-while-breastfeeding-a-mommys-tale/
4. Article about "(Re) productive fieldwork", including during pregnancy and while pumping.  Includes loads of good advice and relatable anecdotes.    "Milk, Guilt, and Turtles" - https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2021/01/26/milk-guilt-and-turtles/
5. [Insert your story here :)]

(Re)productive fieldwork: Milk, guilt, and turtles

 Lovely article by Callie Golba about pumping while doing wildlife ecology fieldwork in swampy conditions.  Includes advice about things to consider, great anecdotes.  

Some gems from the article: 

"I was only in my first trimester during the previous (re)productive field season, so the only thing that changed was my morning sickness.  I would just pretend I was searching for a turtle while I discreetly threw-up into the marsh."

"there are a ton of other considerations when pumping in the field.  Can I pump in a stand of cattails next to my turtle traps?  How long will my milk stay fresh in my wader pocket?"

https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2021/01/26/milk-guilt-and-turtles/

Family Friendly Field Station

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is located in Gothic, Colorado, near Crested Butte.  In addition to world class research being done, this field station is also host an exceptional science and nature summer camp taught by highly qualified educators.  My sons have attended this camp and loved it.  Camp attendees learn about the natural world from the researchers who are on the edge of discovery more about it.  The children see real experiments being done, and watch marmots and foxes play.  This family friendly research environment has spanned many generations, and is talked about in the posts stories below.

"Gothic is for Families" by Ian Billick, Executive Director of RMBL - https://www.rmbl.org/article/directors-letter-february-2020/

"How to Raise a Scientist" The story of Dr. Amy Iler and Dr. Paul CaraDonna  - https://www.rmbl.org/article/science-story-february-2020/

Yellow-bellied Marmot mother and pup that are part of the long-term monitoring at RMBL

Fieldsite Interview with Baby

Simone Whitecloud talks about her research on plant interactions in alpine environments, and traditional ecological knowledge, while holding her daughter on a hike up one of the mountains.

https://youtu.be/jSAOMQHtOYI

Nature Article - Ways to juggle fieldwork with kids in tow

Nature
Career Feature
by Emily Sohn

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01909-w

"Ways to juggle fieldwork with kids in tow Researcher-parents must balance their children’s needs with work priorities while in the field."

5-year-old Field Assistant for Soil Sampling

By Jessica Ernakovich

At the first weekly lab meeting of the semester, I asked everyone for summer highlights. Many had traveled abroad this summer for one reason or another, so those highlights were pretty self-explanatory. I too almost shared my summer highlight as a great two weeks in the field in Sweden, where I was exploring new collaborations and opportunities to study the effects of warming on permafrost thaw and Arctic biogeochemistry.

But, that wasn’t my highlight. This was!

Taking my 5-year old son, Clark, with me in the field at our local field site was the highlight of my summer. Even more, listening to my undergraduate student (thanks, Sam McNeil) explain science to my son was a highlight.

My 5-Year Old, Clark, slathered with sunscreen and ready to work.

Clark had been dying to know what a day in the field looks like. He begged to come along to the Arctic, but this didn’t pan out. So, when our local sampling got scheduled at the same time as a daycare closure, we decided that he would join me. We spent the day sampling local agricultural soils for our work exploring the effect of management on microbial diversity in New England. (Thanks to Dr. Jessica Mackay for coordinating and leading this effort, and to the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station for funding!) It was much easier than arranging a big field campaign with Clark, because we could be close to the car and he could run around the field site (a flat hayfield) without safety concerns. But, we both still got the experience of doing fieldwork together.

Of course, we had ups and downs that day. To me, the major pros were:

• Clark got to see what I do every day;
• Clark had lots of questions about soils, and it was fun to hear Sam explore the answers with him;
• This actually solved a real problem of daycare being closed, and I still got all of the sampling I needed to do that day done. 

And the cons:

• There were meltdowns and some pouting (it was 95F!), although they were brief and easily solved with diversions;
• While we started completely safe from sun and ticks, this devolved into nakedness (Clark only!) so we relied on a very thorough tick check for safety;
• I was definitely distracted. It took more mental energy to make sure the sampling was done correctly, and our sampling was roughly 10% slower with Clark than on days without him.

But, we ended the day with a race to pick up the flags. And the meltdowns and slower work pace were all worth it when I saw Clark racing Sam (who is graciously letting the 5-year old win) to pick up every flag. Clark was having fun, and he was part of our team. And now he is a passionate advocate of the importance of soils, and that is a great payoff.

When I do this again, I will prepare for success a bit differently. We brought toy trucks as his activity this go around. Both Clark and I thought this made sense since I’d be digging in the soil. Next time, I plan to design an activity relating to the fieldwork so that Clark gets really engaged. For example, I might have him do a drawing of the site, record weather data, sieve the soil, or match it with color charts. It’s not that I’d expect my son to produce useable data, but it was clear that the more that he felt an integral part of the project—rather than a bystander playing with his trucks—the happier he was. And who knows what breakthroughs might come from the random insights of a child? Would I take Clark to the field again? Absolutely. I’ll need another summer highlight! But, would I be ready to take him to my Arctic field station? Not yet. But, if he gets really good at the color chart over the next few summers of local sampling, then who knows—I’ll have to take him!

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, Michaela E. Howells, Max J. Stein

Journal article - "Anthropology is a field-based discipline that utilizes a comparative approach to understand humanity. However, social and financial barriers may undermine intersectionality in the discipline and prevent some individuals from pursuing an anthropological career. We examined perceived stress and family-career balance among anthropologists and those training to become anthropologists with regard to SES, gender, and family planning decisions. To accomplish this, we used a convenience survey."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203500

The discussion includes an exceptional overview of how anthropology fieldwork is managed by parents, and how it influences careers.  

Nice blog post discussing some of the details from a personal perspective by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie - https://blogs.plos.org/ecology/2018/10/31/family-and-the-field/

Ecology Fieldwork and Teaching Adventures with Children

By Andrea Worthington, Ph.D. Professor emeritus, Biology, Siena College, Loudonville, NY

I have spent my career teaching field courses in Plant Ecology and Tropical Biology at a small college in upstate New York.  With my husband’s help, I took all my children with me in the field for weekend field trips.  When I started teaching Tropical Biology, first in Puerto Rico and then in Costa Rica, I brought my husband and children along.  My husband and I collaborate on research, examining the prey capture behavior of dragonflies and the neuro-ethology of prey capture.  The history of my academic career is tightly woven to accommodate raising children.

I know that working while having babies requires lots of creativity. The best decision I made was to commit to breast feeding.  My first born arrived in March and I had already arranged an unpaid leave for the spring semester to care for my son.  When I had to return to work, I was very lucky to find a care-giver who was also a nursing mom and she was willing to help me. My plan was to nurse my first born during all my time at home including through the night. My care-giver knew how to offer water with a sippy cup to my son who was just 6 months old when I returned to work in the Fall. My daughter was born 5 years later in June but I also took an unpaid leave in the Fall.

I was hired by a four-year college to teach Plant Ecology (along with many other courses).  Every year, the Plant Ecology course would spend a weekend in the Adirondacks visiting sphagnum bogs and climbing a mountain collecting data on how plant communities change with altitude.  We would tent camp and cook meals on camp stoves.  Class sizes would vary from 15 to 30.  My husband came with me and so did our children as they arrived. I also invited colleagues (with or without children) to join us.  I found that having children present really led to more community and helpful behavior in the field. It also tamped down unwanted behaviors such as the urge to 1) sneak in beer and party when we camped and 2) race to the top of the mountain.

The following three photos are from various trips to study tree gradients on Adirondack Mts in Plant Ecology lab.

We would camp out Friday nights and hit the trails early Saturday to reach the summit collecting data on plant community structure and diversity on the way.

My son’s first Adirondack adventure was when he was 1½ years old. He was still nursing at the time.  He participated in 14 mountain data-collecting assents. My daughter’s first Adirondack adventure was when she was 1 years old. She was also nursing.  She participated in 12 mountain data-collecting assents. Thank heavens for child backpack carriers. With the help of my husband and other colleagues that joined us, the students collected data at each elevation interval gain and we got everyone to the top of the mountain. My children learned to identify plants and, as they got older, they were great teaching assistants.

The first time I taught Tropical Ecology, my son was 10 months old. The course was co-taught and we had a winter break trip to Puerto Rico.  My husband came along to care for our son while I was supervising student research.  Our son took his first steps in El Yunque National Forest.

The first time we taught Tropical Ecology in Costa Rica, my co-teacher brought his wife and their 2 year old child and I brought my husband and both our children (our son was 16 and our daughter was 12).

Author's daughter mist-netting birds with co-instructor and students

Author and son viewing monkeys in Costa Rica

We visited 3 different field stations covering various different tropical plant communities…traveling by bus and living in field station dormitories.  It was so helpful to have curious young people at any age.  The 1 year old loved the leaf cutter ants.

Costa Rica Tropical Biology Field Course

Again, traveling with families really impacted the student behavior. I would say they were a fabulous addition since they were constantly curious and had a wonderful ability to observe and discover creatures. They were great assistants in student projects. The students included them in their social activities too which I think damped down possible chaos.

The children also went along to international professional society meetings, along with field trips.

Worldwide Dragonfly Association 

Meeting in Sweden

Our children over the years helped us with our research on the neuro-ethology of prey capture behavior in dragonflies.  They helped us dig a backyard pond to attract dragonflies.

Building a backyard dragonfly pond to raise animals for research.

The have helped us collect dragonfly larvae and adults in the field.  They have helped us video prey capture behavior in the field. Each did independent research projects on dragonflies for high school honors research.

So after all that exposure to science, what have they chosen to do with their lives?  My son is a musician and is a partner in a music production studio and my daughter is working on a Ph.D. in plant genetics.

Fieldwork with Family Blog/Resource from aKidemic Life

aKidemic Life

https://akidemiclife.com/fieldwork-with-kids/

"Taking your kids into the field may be a fantastic educational opportunity, but fieldwork can be stressful at the best of times, even when you aren't juggling the demands of research and family. Here we provide information to help you kick-start a family-friendly research trip that is safe and enjoyable for all.  Join  the aKIDemic Life community today and we will send you the latest tips to help you prepare for your next fieldtrip."

Fieldwork with family in Madagascar

Lovely story about a paleontologist who does her research in Madagascar, along with her children and spouse, who studies lemurs.  The story glances over the twenty years they have
Spent doing research there, and offers practical advice for things to bring and getting started.

https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/paleontologist-mom/

Decades of Visiting a Greenland Field Site with Children

In this recent blog post, Pernille Sporon Boving shares an interview with her 3 children about their thoughts on climate change and climate change actions.  Interspersed among the Q&A are photos of the children from their Greenland field site over the last 2 decades.  We hope to have Eric, Pernille, and the three children write a post about their experience as a family in the field.

https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/what-can-i-do/youth-climate-views-keep-calm-and-vote-on/

Fieldwork, with and without kids, and Mom Guilt

DOCHPJONES@FemFieldSecrets has written a nice post about the trade offs of having children with you in the field, or leaving them at home.  She also includes an honest look at Mom guilt as it intersects with fieldwork.  Lovely photos of her daughters helping in the field as well.

https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/does-field-work-make-me-a-bad-mom/

Field work while parenting: an ideal summer in the mountains

By Chris Adlam

The bear really did it for me. Or was it the rattlesnake? Or maybe the daily menagerie of lizards, toads and garter snakes my 5-year-old held up happily for our inspection. I thought, “this is what field research while parenting should look like!”

My partner Rosemary, our two children (5 and 2) and myself were camping in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California for 6 weeks while I gathered data on the effect of wildfires on forest life. The Klamaths are easily the most remote area on the Pacific coast of the United States, typically ignored even by tourists, though the Pacific Crest Trail begrudgingly does a westerly detour through the high country. A few communities along the rushing Salmon River, relicts of the gold rush, were never connected to the grid. Bigfoot is everywhere. Tribal cultures, including the Karuk, Hoopa and Yurok, nurture a vibrant connection to ancestral lands marked everywhere by millennia of traditional care, from tanoak and sugar pine orchards to ancient village sites and spiritual trails.

The Klamaths are also exceedingly steep, poison oak is ubiquitous, mosquitoes are locally overwhelming and temperatures in summer soar to the three digits. So would our offspring take to living in this rugged place for half the summer, or would they be miserable? Would we all be miserable in this paradise? The last time we camped, we’d only gone a couple of days before hearing the tireless refrain of “I want to go home!”

This summer’s research was going to be critical to my PhD project. Though I have years of field experience, I had never organized a field season from scratch. I was also going to bring along two interns, whose needs I would have to attend to in addition to my family’s. Wanting to avoid last minute scrambles, I started organizing months in advance, including making packing lists, storing research and camping gear in plastic tubs for the day it would be needed, and really dialing in my protocol to avoid hang-ups. I designed my schedule to have a reasonable daily load so I could spend time with my family and also so I could be flexible if changes needed to be made in the field.

When we arrived at our destination, we had the entire campground to ourselves. We quickly investigated river access, which would turn out to be a key ingredient in spending a happy summer in the wilderness. Rosemary would go to the river with the kids every morning while I was off doing surveys. When I returned around lunch time, I would join them and sometimes take our oldest on a trip down the river in our inflatable paddle boat (though for all my organizational frenzy I hadn’t actually brought paddles!). Or we would build dams on small tributaries. We waded in search of water life, catching tadpoles, small fish, and, once, a lamprey. We collected dead butterflies and dragonflies and poked at scat piles. We would end our adventures looking for wood for the campfire, which was mostly unnecessary but very entertaining.

The kids were never bored and never complained about camping. They seemed to flourish and settled right in to our new rhythm. They became very relaxed playing and swimming in the river (with life jackets). Our youngest stopped needing diapers. They became experts at identifying poison oak, and no one got it, which was a miracle. Being in nature was relaxing and nurturing, for them and for us.

I love UC Davis as a school, but Davis is flat, surrounded by industrial agriculture, and generally a very unnatural place. Our time in the Klamaths was a perfect antidote for this. We visited an elk lick and walked on the deeply worn trails they made on their daily rounds; the scent of the herd was heavy and we could hear the cows calling in the distance. We cautiously investigated a rattlesnake, which seemed more intent on making a ruckus than actually striking. And then of course, there was the bear.

My oldest had asked to visit the elk lick at dusk, but we found it deserted. We continued to a meadow beyond, and as we squinted into the failing light, a dark shaped detached itself from the background. It was a black bear, and a good-sized one too. We watched it amble about, eating from abandoned pear trees. Though mosquitoes were settling all over us, I whispered that if we didn’t move, we’d be able to keep watching the bear. Still it didn’t notice us, and started walking on the trail that headed our way. I usually see bears running away when I’m driving. Never had I been in such a situation! When it got to about 20 meters from us, I decided to clear my throat, at which point it stood up on its hind legs, clearly confused (I was realizing what terrible eyesight they have!), and finally decided to go another way. For my son’s first bear encounter, this was the encounter of a lifetime!

So, it was a pretty ideal field-season-while-parenting, with science done and magical experiences all around. I almost wish there were some crises here and there to add nuance. Of course, I was incredibly fortunate that my partner was willing and able to come along so I didn’t have to be away from my loved ones for all this time. Not many people are this lucky. My protocol was also perfect since I started bird counts before dawn and wrapped up by noon, leaving the rest of the day to hang out with the family. If my protocol had been more demanding or required night-time surveys for example, this would have been difficult to reconcile with kids’ rhythms. It would have been challenging too if we’d had to move every day or every few days; the kids took some time to get used to a new place and would have been stressed by frequent moves (not to mention the logistics of packing and unpacking everything).

On the other hand, I think that part of the success was in fact not in spite of parenting but because of it. Of course, having kids inevitably means I can’t spend as much time on my work as non-parents. But I have learned to be better organized to make up for this, which is common for parents in academia (see for example my friend Jamiella Brooks’ essay on how to finish your dissertation while parenting: https://ideasonfire.net/dissertating-while-parenting/). I had backups for all my equipment, checklists, and built-in flexibility in my schedule. And I had excellent interns who were very understanding about my family needs. By the end of the field season, we were all already looking forward to doing this again next year!

Stumbling and toddling through (field)work: the first two years

By Seeta Sistla

Setting up micrometeorological stations 39 weeks pregnant and consumed by an early summer heat wave was less challenging than I had imagined it would be. Holding my month old child while trying to coordinate a small new field project proved more challenging – and ultimately unfeasible.  In the 2 years since the birth of our first child, my learning curve combining motherhood with ecological research has been sometimes steep but always worthwhile.

I became a parent early in my career as an ecology professor at a small liberal arts college. Without the support of family due to a combination of distance and our own aging parents, my husband (also an academic) and I have been largely on our own to embark in the new world of parenting while also trying to build our field research-based careers.  In the first year of my son’s life, my remote field work took a break while I focused on learning to be a new parent, navigating occasional stints of lone parenting while my husband was away for extended periods for his own research, 8-hour field courses which required (subtly) pumping milk in a class van, and those who remarked that parental leave is like a holiday (which I am grateful was balanced by others who recognized a period of reduced professional responsibilities after becoming a parent should be the norm rather than the exception).

While there have been distinct challenges – ranging from scheduling field and lab work around my son’s daycare schedule to attending a national meeting with a 14 month old while my husband’s research project took him across the world – we’ve also experienced a myriad of unexpected benefits. When my son has joined me in the field and lab, we have always been with students, whose curiosity and excitement is amplified by showing him why they’re doing the tasks at hand.

Our son's first time in daycare was at the 2017 Ecological Society of America meeting. The childcare providers were wonderful.  But frightened by the myriad of changes, he didn't last more than 2 hours. We attended the meeting together after that, which was challenging, but mostly successful

Earlier this summer, I had my first major field excursion since becoming a parent– over 2 weeks in a remote area of western Alaska accessible only by float plane – while my son stayed home with my husband. Although I would love to introduce my son to the Arctic, because of the nature of my field work, traveling as a family is neither practical nor safe. While I deeply worried for how our son would deal with my travel and lack of communication, in the end, I am grateful to report it was me who suffered his absence rather than the reverse. While my husband had already been away for multiple weeks in far flung locales since our son was born, I had serious reservations about traveling for so long and with so little potential for contact when my son had just turned two. In retrospect, it was a liberating experience for our whole family, and I encourage other young parents to feel confident in their decision to continue to pursue their research ambitions flexibly – with or without their children as possible and desired.

I’m writing this piece from Namibia – where I am the trailing spouse for my husband’s work. We’ve visited beautiful national parks and an ecological research station in the Namib Desert, walked across dunes and besides one of world’s largest sea lion colonies. My son has picked up every imaginable iteration of scat and skeleton fragment, combed the red Kalahari sand, and exclaimed with joy when we found fluorescent scorpions on night hikes. But, finding childcare was a large stumbling block, leading to moments of profound frustration as we tried to manage work obligations while also entertaining a 2 year old (who was missing other kids) in an extended stay hotel where freely playing outside was impossible.

Exploring the Namib Desert.
Scorpions, sand-hiding snakes, and the scorching sun
could not stop our son.

We ultimately found a combination of a playgroup and babysitter by asking US Embassy staff (who often travel as families) and local parents that we met in passing for advice. Learning from our experience, we now realize that when planning lengthy travel for field work, we must be proactive in finding a space and context that will accommodate the shifting needs of our growing son, which will likely mean extending our planned time away to accommodate finding necessities (i.e. a playgroup, safe and reliable childcare).  

Parenting in general, and especially when trying to combine the endeavor with one’s work, requires remembering to laugh when things don’t go as planned. Like when we tried to participate in the opening event for artist David Buckley Borden’s ‘Hemlock Hospice’ instillation within the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Site, which went well until we and had to step off to tour while our son wailed at not being able to touch the art.

Things were going well until they weren’t.
A family visit to the Hemlock Hospice exhibit
among the dying hemlocks in the
Harvard Forest LTER, Pertersham, MA. 

Having our son has changed my relationship with my work and in many ways fundamentally shifted how I move through my days. Our tiny child also makes me all the more aware of the enormous environmental challenges he will face and motivates me as an educator while also encouraging me to live in the moment and continue to find wonder in the natural (and human) world.