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/

Anthropology fieldwork with children, sometimes kids get sick

An article by Dr. Reetta Toivanen, an Adjunct Professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology and a Finnish Academy Research Fellow at the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki. 

She discusses how her children help her make contact with everyday people while traveling.  She also shares a journal entry from a particularly harrowing travel time when her child fell ill. 

http://allegralaboratory.net/fieldwork-with-children/

Anthropology Fieldwork with Kids in China - Book

There is an entire book about doing anthropology fieldwork in China with children, aptly titled "Doing Fieldwork in China…with Kids!", by Candice Cornet and Tami Blumenfield, which chronicles the experiences of 7 researchers.    

Emily Chao PhD at Pitzer College provides an in-depth summary of the book here.  The brief description of the book provided through Amazon.com is below.

"While many anthropologists and other scholars relocate with their families in some way or another during fieldwork periods, this detail is often missing from their writings even though undoubtedly children can have had a major impact on their work. Recognizing that researcher-parents have many choices regarding their children's presence during fieldwork, this volume explores the many issues of conducting fieldwork with children, generally, and with children in China, specifically. Contributors include well-established scholars who have undertaken fieldwork in China for decades as well as more junior researchers. The book presents the voices of mothers and of fathers, with two particularly innovative pieces that are written by parent - child pairs. The collection as a whole offers a wide range of experiences that question and reflect on methodological issues related to fieldwork, including objectivity, cultural relativism, relationships in the field and positionality. The chapters also recount how accompanied fieldwork can offer unexpected ethnographic insights.An appendix alerts future fieldworking parents to particular pitfalls of accompanied fieldwork and suggests ways to avoid these." 

Anthropology Fieldwork with Children - Panel

This Inside Higher Ed article by Elizabeth Redden shares multiple stories of women conducting anthropology fieldwork with their children.  These stories were from a panel on fieldwork and mothering at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in 2008.  Great job AAA for hosting this panel!

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/25/anthro