Karen Cunningham knew it would be difficult to balance her newborn baby with her research duties as a biology graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
The
Cunninghams live in student housing, and the on-campus day-care center was shut
down during the pandemic. They didn’t have relatives living nearby who could help.
Steve
Cunningham taught his middle-school math classes online and could usually care
for Katie while his wife was doing research in the lab, but there were times
when he had to attend meetings.
Fortunately
for the Cunninghams, somebody stepped up in early May to help.
Karen
Cunningham’s biology lab professor, Troy Littleton, thought perhaps Katie could
spend some time in the lab, so he asked the other nine graduate students who
work with Cunningham whether they’d like to help him buy a travel crib for her.
“When we have new fathers or mothers in the
lab, we usually have a baby shower and everyone pitches in on a gift,”
Littleton said. “We couldn’t have a shower for Karen due to the pandemic, but
we all agreed that a portable crib would be the perfect gift.”
“Child care in any profession is a challenge,
but in science, it can even be more challenging,” said Littleton, 54, who has
an adult son and has taught at MIT for 21 years. “Experiments don’t always fit
a 9-to-5 schedule. It just made sense for Karen to bring Katie in.”
On May 7,
Littleton posted a photo of his new office arrangement on Twitter, along with a caption:
“My favorite
new equipment purchase for the lab — a travel crib to go in my office so my
graduate student can bring her 9-month old little girl to work when necessary
and I get to play with her while her mom gets some work done,” he wrote. “Win-win!!”
Littleton
said he was shocked the next time he checked Twitter.
“I’ve posted probably 70 tweets in my entire
life,” he said. “I put this one out on Friday, and when I came back on Monday,
it had 9 million views. I was really glad that it sparked a discussion about
how to create more family-friendly working environments.”
Lack of
affordable child care, closed schools and lost jobs during the pandemic have
helped to expose a frustrating problem faced more often by
women than men, Littleton said.
“A graduate
student on my team makes about $40,000 a year,” he added. “When 50 percent of
that salary goes toward housing and 80 percent toward child care, the math
simply doesn’t add up.”
Karen Cunningham
said she’d like to see more subsidized day-care options for graduate students
who choose to have children.
Steve
Cunningham agrees and said he’s thrilled that his wife and her professor have
helped start a conversation about some of the systemic issues that new mothers
face in the workplace.
“The barriers
against having babies early in a career in academia contributes to the
underrepresentation of women in positions of leadership in science, and we
really need to fix that as a community,” he said. “If we lose the women from
science, we’re losing half of our best scientists.”
Professor Littleton
enjoys interacting with Katie when her mother brings her to the office.
“She’s a little ball of energy who points to
everything and says, ‘Dat!’ ” he said. “Nobody is disturbed if she cries a bit,
and everyone likes to play with her. Having a baby around is a good thing.”
Katie isn’t
allowed in certain areas of the lab and is never left alone.
She shows a
curiosity that might be useful in the field of science someday, her mother
said.
“She’s very
happy, independent and active, and she’s interested in the world,” Karen
Cunningham said. “I wouldn’t have done it any other way.”
From The Washington Post (edited)
