Keeping Kids Close

Table: Showing how universities have expanded their child-care centers or built new ones as demand from faculty members has grown Article: Report Calls for a More Flexible Tenure Process Read the transcript of a live, online discussion with Kathy L. Simons, co-director of the Center for Work, Family, and Personal Life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the importance of child-care centers as benefits for faculty members, and whether colleges could be offering other work-family benefits. Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints

By ROBIN WILSON

Washington

When Karen A. McDonnell was nine weeks' pregnant, she heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time on a monitor in her doctor's office and decided it was finally time to share her good news. So the assistant professor of public health at George Washington University called her mother, her sister, and her best friend. Then, before she told her department chairman, or her other friends and relatives, she walked a block from her office to put her expected newborn -- who did not even have a name yet -- on the waiting list at George Washington's child-care center.

Ms. McDonnell's son, Christopher, is now 2 and spends his days in a toddler room at the university's Bright Horizons Family Center. "I almost couldn't have a better scenario," says Ms. McDonnell, who directs George Washington's program on maternal and child health. "This is a block away from my office, it's reliable, and it's approved by a national accreditor."

As female professors struggle to earn tenure and raise small children at the same time, colleges and universities are hoping to make the task easier by building child-care centers right on campus.

Mounting evidence shows that female professors who have kids before tenure are much less likely to succeed in academe than are their male counterparts. "Universities are using child-care centers as their major initiative to address gender-equity issues," says Marc Goulden, a research analyst in the Graduate Division at the University of California at Berkeley. In a 2003 survey, professors in the UC system said campus child care was the most important "family-friendly resource" the university could provide. The system is offering up to $1.25-million in matching grants to encourage campuses to build new centers.

In an effort to compete for rising stars, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is even guaranteeing some recruits with young children a spot at its new state-of-the-art child-care center.The guarantee allows new faculty members to bypass the waiting list, which, for the university's four centers combined, stands at 350 kids.

Despite their popularity, on-campus child-care centers are not a panacea. "They still don't solve the problem that faculty jobs are becoming bigger and bigger," says Ellen Ernst Kossek, a professor of human resources at Michigan State University.

"People are trying to be excellent researchers, get the best teaching ratings, bring in grants, and be on every committee," she says. "What I think universities need to do is provide ways for people to cut back" so they have more time with their kids. But building a day-care center, she acknowledges, is "much easier than restructuring work."

Flexible Schedules

Universities have had child-care centers for decades, but those built 20 or 30 years ago differ from those popping up on campuses today. The earlier centers were designed primarily as teaching laboratories for schools of education, and offered day care to university employees as a side benefit. Other centers were established as cooperatives for undergraduates with young children.

The new or expanded centers, like those at Bowdoin College, Duke University, and Michigan State University, are being built specifically for the convenience of faculty and staff members and graduate students. As a result, unlike some commercial centers -- which require parents to pay for full-time care or offer limited part-time options -- university-based centers frequently have a variety of part-time hours that suit professors' flexible schedules.

Some of the centers also offer emergency backup care for professors whose regular form of child care, such as a baby sitter or a relative, falls through. And some of the centers offer summer programs for employees' school-age children.

George Washington was a bit ahead of the curve in designing a child-care center for professors and staff members. The university's Committee on the Status of Women Faculty and Librarians began lobbying for a center more than a decade ago, and Bright Horizons was established in 1996. The university hired an architect to design the center, which occupies four rooms in the basement of an eight-story building where George Washington leases space. The cost of child care in the Washington area is steep, and the price tag at George Washington is no exception -- running as high as $1,321 a month for toddlers.

One morning, after a 20-minute drive from their house in suburban Maryland, Ms. McDonnell hoists 29-pound Christopher onto her shoulders for the brisk walk from a university parking garage to the Bright Horizons center. She points out garbage trucks along the way as Christopher offers sound effects. Much to his delight, Christopher is wearing white socks on his hands because Ms. McDonnell left his two pairs of mittens at Bright Horizons the week before.

That Bright Horizons is just minutes from Ms. McDonnell's office is one of the things she likes most. When Christopher was 6 months old, the center called her and said he might be sick: He seemed cranky and was pulling on his ear. Within 30 minutes, she had picked him up and walked to his pediatrician's office just half a block from the center. Christopher didn't have an ear infection, but Ms. McDonnell appreciated the center's vigilance. "This showed me the love they had for my child, and that they knew him well enough to know when something didn't seem right," she says.

When Christopher arrives at Bright Horizons about 8:30, he hangs up his coat and marches straight to a tiny sink to wash his hands in time for breakfast: a muffin and a banana. When he is finished, he rushes to a colorful playroom with children's drawings tacked to the wall and a swing hanging from the ceiling. Children are racing around the room with toy grocery carts and vacuums. Ms. McDonnell disappears for a moment, and Christopher looks up and asks: "Where my mommy go?" But when she leaves for good a few minutes later, Christopher doesn't blink. He is too busy putting purple, red, and green blocks of "hamburger," "pasta," and "eggs" into his cart.

Unlike children who spend the day with a nanny or at a center out in the suburbs, bringing Christopher to campus each day means that he is part of Ms. McDonnell's work world. On her way up to her seventh-floor office after leaving Bright Horizons, the professor first stops to chat with the guard in her building, who asks about her "little man." (For Christopher's first birthday, the guard bought him a toy that makes animal sounds.)

Everyone in Ms. McDonnell's suite of offices knows Christopher. He is a frequent visitor and sometimes plays in Ms. McDonnell's office with Thomas the Tank Engine, or wanders around "delivering mail" to her colleagues. "When we come here on the weekends," she says, "he likes to run up and down the hallways."

Although Ms. McDonnell thinks about Christopher during the day -- and sometimes sneaks downstairs at 10 a.m. to watch him on the playground of a local elementary school -- she doesn't have trouble focusing on her work. "Having him close by doesn't directly help me write another article," she says, "but I don't question his well-being, and while I'm at work I can get my work done."

Papers and Pedicures

One of the unexpected benefits of Bright Horizons is the network it has created between Ms. McDonnell and two other young professors who work in the School of Public Health and Health Services and also take their children to the center. The three mothers have created an informal group -- part think tank, part support group -- that they call the Metro Academics.

One day last fall, the mothers spent their lunch hour getting pedicures at a salon. "We actually pounded out some grant ideas there," says Ms. McDonnell, who is 35.

At another afternoon meeting over cake and coffee near their offices, the women passed around scholarly papers and offered one another ideas.

"We all have the same issues," says Amita Vyas, an assistant professor of maternal and child health, whose 1-year-old daughter, Saira, goes to Bright Horizons. "We are writing grants, teaching, and doing papers, and we all have young children. You can't really talk about this at any other place because you don't want it to come out that you are complaining or can't handle things."

Sometimes the women share their ambivalence about working, and talk about their problems with child care. Ms. Vyas occasionally wonders whether having a nanny would be easier than taking her daughter to Bright Horizons.

"If all I had to do is get up and get myself out of the house, we'd be okay," she says. "Now we have to get this third person out of the house. At the beginning, I was up at 5:30 in the morning, labeling her bottles and rushing around."

While on-site day-care centers can be convenient, they don't always make being a working mother easier. Last month Saira came down with a 103-degree temperature, a respiratory virus, and an ear infection. Ms. Vyas had a grant application due in two days, and her husband could not take off work to be with their daughter. "I was home with the child on my lap, patting her with one hand while my other hand was on my laptop," explains Ms. Vyas. She briefly considered bagging the grant proposal, but realized she would regret it. Still: "Every 10 minutes I thought -- I need a nanny."

Although Ms. Vyas says she likes Bright Horizons, "You still question: Should I be in a tenure-track position, or should I just be at home?"

One day last month, the professor stopped by the child-care center at noon and peeked in the infant room at Saira, who happened to be screaming. Had she been doing that all morning? Ms. Vyas wondered.

In fact, the infant room at Bright Horizons, which holds 12 babies, sometimes seems a bit chaotic. Licensing regulations typically require one caregiver for every four infants, but Bright Horizons likes to keep a 1-to-3 ratio, which means its infant room is perhaps more crowded than most. Still, the caregivers can't keep an eye on everything.

One morning a baby boy propped up on a pillow on the floor howled as a little girl reached over to pull his ear. For a while, no one noticed.

Questions of Cost and Safety

Another subject that comes up when Ms. McDonnell and Ms. Vyas get together with their colleague, Manya Magnus, an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics, is when to have a second child. While a nanny could take care of two children for nearly the same price as one, the cost of bringing a second child to Bright Horizons doubles a family's day-care bill.

"It's like a second mortgage," says Ms. McDonnell, who already pays $1,165 a month for four days of care. That is one reason Ms. McDonnell and her husband, Robert Latchford, haven't moved from what she calls their "housette," which is just 1,000 square feet.

Besides the hefty cost of Bright Horizons, some parents worry about whether a child-care center just five blocks from the White House is the safest place for their kids. A couple of days before President Bush's second inauguration last month, loud planes flew over George Washington's campus, sending a shiver through some parents.

"Being in a city with all of the terrorism. ..." says Susie Wilson, a reimbursement analyst for the university's medical school, her voice trailing off. "I just try not to think about it." Ms. Wilson's 16-month-old son has been at Bright Horizons since he was 2 months old.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the child-care center developed an "evacuation" plan in case of an emergency. And Bright Horizons keeps a pack under each crib with enough formula, baby food, and diapers for two days in case the children are ever trapped at the center.

Using on-site day care in a large metropolitan area poses other problems that are less frightening but still a challenge. Ms McDonnell's 20-minute commute from home to the day-care center isn't bad. But when she must travel out of town for work, taking Christopher to Bright Horizons poses a logistical nightmare for her husband. A drive from their home to Bright Horizons and back out to Mr. Latchford's office in suburban Maryland can take more than an hour.

In general, fathers are a pretty rare sight at Bright Horizons. Only a handful are spotted within the sea of mothers flowing in and out of the center at morning drop-off and evening pickup.

For his part, Christopher appears to be thriving at Bright Horizons. He is a charming little boy who likes to show off by shooting a basketball into a miniature hoop. He is just as verbal as he is physical, something his parents attribute to the socialization he gets at Bright Horizons.

One afternoon just before his mother stops to pick him up, Christopher sits on the floor at Bright Horizons, energetically yelling out "ladybug" and "elephant" as his teacher passes out stickers. Although Christopher didn't nap that day (he spent the hour in a darkened room looking at a book with his teacher), he isn't ready to leave when Ms. McDonnell shows up about 5:30. He runs aimlessly around the big playroom until she snatches him up to put on his coat and hat.

By that time, his eyelids are flagging, but Christopher doesn't fall asleep on the drive home. Instead, he and his mother sing "The Wheels on the Bus," over and over.