It's that time of the year again: midterms, thousands of pages of reading and a six-hour presentation all due in the next few days. Though the workload seems impossible no matter how many times we face it, everything generally gets done with a little bit of sacrifice — think sleep and free time.
Imagine adding the responsibilities of caring for a crying newborn, who needs to be fed at 4 a.m. For student-parents at Brown and schools across the country, finding an effective and manageable balance between work and family time is a real concern.
A tough balancing act
Debra Ballentine GS, a seventh-year doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies and mother of a two-year-old boy, described the experience as "definitely challenging."
As a parent, "you tend to be more tired, especially when kids are very young," she said. "It is more difficult to get work done, or feel that your work is as good as it can be."
In some cases, other considerations can make the balance even trickier. Matthew Duperon GS, a fifth-year doctoral student also in the Department of Religious Studies, became a father about five months ago. As a Providence resident, he said that his situation is particularly difficult because his wife needs to commute to Boston every day for work.
Fortunately, "in terms of actually getting work done, it hasn't been too bad," Duperon said. By the time his son was born, Duperon already knew people in the area and could more easily become part of the community of graduate students who have kids, he said. These connections made the transition into parenthood less challenging than it might be for those "who are uprooting themselves and moving to Rhode Island out of the blue," he said.
Given the wide range of resources available for students at Brown, one might assume the University would provide support for the unique needs of student-parents.
But according to parent Angela Mazaris PhD'10, Brown is "absolutely lacking a centralized information point" for all parenting-related needs, such as childcare and health insurance, and could be doing a lot more to help.
Duperon, who is in the early stages of organizing a group for fathers at Brown, said he was unaware of any efforts by the administration to address student-parent problems. "As far as I can tell, it's not even an issue in the administration," he said. "They don't engage in it at all."
Ballentine expressed a similar sentiment, saying that, aside from a listserv for parents, she was not aware of any relevant programming.
The Herald attempted to locate a central information source addressing common needs such as child care, health insurance and support groups, but could find no one office or Web page that provided a comprehensive picture of the options available to student-parents.
Addressing unique needs
The University does offer eight weeks of paid parental leave to graduate students, as well a subsidized day care program. But interested parents are put on a waiting list for childcare services, and the prices are still prohibitive when living on a grad student's salary, according to Mazaris. As for health care, students do have the option of adding their newborn children onto existing plans. But Brown does not cover any of this cost, which Mazaris said comes out to several thousand dollars a year.
One group that has addressed the various problems student-parents face is the Sarah Doyle Women's Center. Jennifer Eyl GS, a sixth-year graduate student, is in charge of programming for graduate and medical students at the Center. This year, she plans to organize social events for students with children, something that Mazaris also did in her time as the center's graduate programmer.
Later this month, the center will hold a panel discussion for female graduate students interested in going into academia. It will discuss how to balance being successful in their academic work and having a rich family life.
Eyl said the panel was particularly relevant since "females in academia are at a disadvantage from the getgo."
Other potential programs feature topics relating to health and nutrition, such as a course in CPR and first aid. Still, there is room for more initiatives, Eyl said. "Personally, I think there should be an office dedicated to these students because they have a separate set of needs," she said. "Brown is an undergrad-focused school, so a lot of resources go to them, but the grad student community is really not as cohesive."
Mazaris pointed to a lack of family support policies as a problem that plagues universities in general. "Corporate America has moved much further than universities in this regard," Mazaris said. "If Brown wants to commit itself to cultivating the next generation of work force talent, it has the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of developing policies to address the work/family life balance."
The culture of academia may play a role in this trend. According to Duperon, having children during graduate school is "not too common because, especially at a prestigious institution like Brown, a lot of people are of the attitude that you shouldn't have kids until you're well-established in your career."
"A lot of professors got married later into life, and that culture kind of rubs off," he said.
‘All of the cheesy things'
Regardless, Ballentine said, "Beyond any official programming the University has or doesn't have, each individual grad student-parent's experience is more determined by their relationship with their advisor and core faculty." The extent to which professors are understanding of their advisee's family responsibilities and the amount of schedule flexibility they allow are very critical factors, she said.
Despite all of these challenges, it is important not to lose track of the positives. Duperon explained that Providence has proven to be an "extremely family-friendly city" with frequent events such as farmers' markets and storytime.
"There are tons of playgrounds and parks in good condition," Ballentine said.
And according to Duperon, Rhode Island is unique in that it has a large childbirth and early childhood network. "Because it's such a small state, it's also easy to make connections," he said.
Ultimately, Ballentine said, she loves being a parent. "Watching a kid grow up is very rewarding and all of the cheesy things that you hear people say," she explained. "Comparing life now to what it was before, all grad students go through time when they're not being productive with silly things like checking Facebook all day. Hanging out with my son is a distraction and a break from work, but it's more productive."
