Academic parenthood

Written at 6:45am on a Sunday morning during a Dora the Explorer marathon, gods help us all.
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Last summer I wrote about being a heathen and a mother in the first essay published on this version of An Currach. I found the exercise tremendously helpful for collecting my own thoughts, and many other people found resonance and wisdom in my writing. Since mid-October I have functioned as a solo parent and PhD student an ocean away from the rest of my family. The time has come to try to collate my experiences here and see if I can build that same bridge to other peoples' understanding.

First, an introduction to my specific circumstances for context. I have a son born May '15, 'Skyforger', so at the time of this writing he is three going on four years old. I am in the second year of a four-year research PhD in Ireland while my family all live in New Jersey, and as my husband has an immobile (albeit successful!) career, we've had to split our household during my degree work. I'm able to support my household here on an IRC scholarship and government student loans, and my husband visits as often as possible.

Skyforger is in the eldest class of the on-campus crèche (daycare) and will be starting school in Ireland this September. While I only teach a few tutorials and have a single mandatory weekly lecture, I require hours every day for research and writing, and I also need to attend and occasionally participate in conferences, symposia, and other academic events. I have a regular childminder as well as a flatmate who can watch Skyforger during events and emergencies outside of daycare hours, but there's no one here who is 'obligated' or invested in watching him; no dropping him off at the grandparents' for the night, for instance.

I gave birth to Skyforger when I was 28 years old. There are American women intentionally bearing their first children at 18 years old, and others at 38 years old; I thought I'd be smack dab in the middle of fellow mothers at my maternal age. (And I struggled with sub-fertility for several years first.) I didn't realise how much the average age at first birth skewed upwards for academic women. I may as well have given birth as a teenager for how unusual I am to have a child as a PhD student.

I knew I'd be slightly out of kilter with my cohort, starting my degree in my 30s. Being a foreign student as well doesn't help, but I've done it before, and at least I speak the languages. Having a child, though, means I may as well have beamed down from Alpha Centauri as far as shared experiences with my colleagues go. I only exist between 8:00am and 5:00pm every weekday, when I not only have to do all of my writing and heavy reading, but also everything else that is nigh-impossible with a preschooler on hand: grocery shopping, exercise, house cleaning, and so on.

I am a morning person, at least, but I had to buy a bedside clock to show my son how we can't get out of bed before 6:00am. I hit the ground running getting breakfast into and clothes onto Skyforger, then bringing (often carrying) him to campus a kilometre away for his crèche. Then back to the flat for my computer, lunch, and whatever reading I brought home in a futile attempt to stay on top of my work during the evening; and a return to the campus office. (That's 3km by 9:00am most days.)

I use an iCalendar shared with my husband to keep track of my larger schedule, and a complicated paper planner to chart out each day's priorities and record my time usage to the half-hour. Rather than get mired in the minutia, it'll be suffice to say that by the time Skyforger goes to sleep around 8:00pm and I've cleaned up his dinner and bath toys, I rarely stay awake to 9:00pm myself. He'll crawl into my bed around 2:00am, ask for the toilet or sing himself to sleep again, and most nights instead of my falling asleep again right away, I spend an hour or two staring at the ceiling running over everything that still has to be done. Then around 5:30am I'll be begging him to read the clock and wait until it reads 6:00. Every day. Even weekends.

No nights off. No sleeping in. Ever.

And because of this... I have no pity for my colleagues. It stinks. I don't mean to be cruel, but sometimes I don't have the energy to keep smiling.

Insomnia happens. Inability to fall asleep at a decent time happens, and difficulty getting out of bed and getting the day started happens. Executive function disorder happens. But I can't empathise, and most days I can't sympathise either. You were out late and you missed a morning's work? That's a shame. You wasted your entire weekend watching Netflix? How unfortunate. You went out drinking and now you have a hangover? That really sucks. But don't fucking complain to me, please. It's not going to end well for either of us.

Student-parent problems are so low-level yet widespread that few people even notice that they exist. Children aren't allowed in the libraries, for instance, not even over the threshold. This means that when a ILL or stack request comes in and I have 48 hours to retrieve it from notification, if it comes in on Friday afternoon, I have to ask someone to watch my child for thirty seconds so I can walk 10 metres into the library and get it.

My department has mandatory lectures on Thursday evenings, followed by an optional but oft-attended trip to the pub afterwards. I have a standing childminding session for this, as one night a week out is for everyone's benefit. But when my colleagues don't want to go out after the lecture because they want to stay in and study, or they've been out too many times that week already, I want to cry. 'This is my only outlet! Please stay!'

I was accepted for a Friday-Saturday conference at my institution. Hooray! So I requested that I speak on Friday so I don't have to book a childminder. Granted, thanks! And then I remember that I've already got all my tutorials lined up on Fridays so I only have one day to worry about finding care for Skyforger if he's out of crèche for whatever reason. Back to another email! The conference organisers have been wonderful, thank goodness, but this is the over-engineering, constantly-planning stuff perpetually spinning around in my brain and affecting my ability to function.

I go to every weekday day-time lecture that I possibly can, and if I hear about an important evening lecture I make plans to attend. But even being on multiple mailing lists and social media announcement groups, I often hear about exciting opportunities with less than a week's notice. Forget about things going on in other cities, or the UK/continent. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't keep running into this door over and over again.

'Oh, you have to attend this symposium in Edinburgh.'
'Will there be childcare?'

'Come to our new lecture series! We've got this and that and this -'
'When is it?'
'Evenings at -'
'Can't afford another night of childminding.'

'Did you see the Anglo-Saxon exhibit in London?'
'I would have loved to go, but I couldn't spare the time or expense.'
'Flights to London and hostels are cheap if you don't mind traveling! It's easy to get around the city.'
'Not when there's a three-year-old involved...'

And that's academic stuff. I get to have versions of these conversations over and over again with Irish language events, metal shows, pagan meetings... It's a heavy mental toll. It fucking adds up.

And even when people try to be accommodating, they have no idea. For instance, there's a family friendly trad sesh going on at Trinity next week. Awesome! It starts at 7:00pm, which is when Skyforger needs to start brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed. Damn.

I can play this four-dimensional chess game with my son's and my life. I've done it and I'm going to continue to do it successfully. I work on everything that I can as soon as I can because either of us getting sick derails everything, and as you can imagine this happens often in a damp city in winter. I try to sympathise when my son misses his father or is frustrated by his schedule, and I leave weekends open for us to do whatever matches the weather and our energy levels.

But I'm at 100% capacity, all the time, and I cannot give any more. The student society I helped to set up suffers because I can't give it the attention it needs, my offline friendships are wilting, and I've got genuine FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) hitting me every hour of the day. This is mostly during these early mornings when I'm online seeing photos of everyone's last night.

I try to justify this to myself that some of my colleagues are going to become parents, and then they'll 'get it'. But many will never become parents (which is fine!) and very few will do so in a precarious employment situation with their partner an ocean away. What really gets me is when other postgraduate students, particularly straight men, casually mention that they'll become parents in a few years, like it's that easy to slip a kid or two into their careers.

I genuinely hope that any of my cohort who wants children has them at their convenience and never has to deal with the multi-limbed plate-spinning that I do. And I console myself that, if there's a time of life to have too much going on, it's when I'm in my early thirties and excellent health. This will definitely pay off in two decades when I have an amazing career and a young adult son that I don't have to worry about. Right?

Right...?