Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

Working Towards a Family Friendly Conference Culture

by Michael R. Ford

Several years ago I attended an academic conference in Florida.  It was a Friday to Monday conference and I presented on a Sunday. I flew down Saturday, presented Sunday, and flew home. It was a typical conference experience for me as a junior tenure-track scholar trying to build a record. In other words, it was nothing remarkable. What I did find remarkable was a critique I received from a senior scholar who attended the conference. He told me, bluntly, that I was behaving like an invited speaker, and that I had not yet earned that right.

I was taken aback. I had chosen this conference specifically because it was a weekend and afforded me the opportunity to actually go and present. Why? I have two school-aged children and my spouse works full-time. I get the kids ready in the morning, I feed them, and I get them to school. My spouse’s schedule is a bit unpredictable, so I need to be available to pick them up from afterschool care as well. At the time of this conference I was actually taking a friend’s child to school as well because their family had similar childcare challenges. For busy parents, being able to attend any conference is a major logistical challenge. My “behavior” was not arrogance, it was me making it work.

My family’s scheduling challenges are not unique. People in and outside of academia deal with similar challenges all the time. But for some reason we seem to lag behind in making our profession accommodating for those with young children. Conference presentations are essential to an academic career. It is hard enough with tight travel budgets for many of us to make it work. The last thing we need are senior scholars thinking that having family responsibilities somehow means we are not dedicated to our career.

As the president of the Midwest Public Affairs Conference (MPAC) I am committed to making our conference as accommodating as possible. The obvious first step is working to provide on-site child care. This can be difficult to arrange, and of course comes with a significant monetary cost. Funding childcare also means less money for stuff (bags, giveaways, fancy meals, etc). A second step is selecting locations that are easily drivable or accessible by train from Midwestern universities.  That means our locations may be less accessible to those outside of the Midwest, and perhaps not as exciting (at least on the surface) as popular national conference destinations. But even with childcare at the conference I am not buying three plane tickets for me to present one paper! A third step is creating family friendly receptions that are not too late at night, and not centered around alcohol. 

But perhaps the biggest thing I can do for MPAC (and we can do as a profession) is to normalize the idea of kids and families being part of the conference experience. Specific gestures matter, but a culture that embraces the reality that academics have family responsibilities, is something that will have a lasting impact. To change the culture all of us must be mindful of our own behavior and expectations regarding conferences. I know everyone will not be happy. If I have learned one thing running a conference, it is that at least some people will be critical of every decision you make. I get it. Some people want the flashy location, want the stuff, want the fancy meals, and do not want kids around. That is fine. But I am committed to carving out a space for those of us who need something different.

Michael R. Ford is an associate professor of public administration at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he teaches graduate courses in budgeting and research methods. He frequently publishes on the topics of public and nonprofit board governance, accountability and school choice. He currently serves as the president of the Midwest Public Affairs Conference.

Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

The Abstract Academic: Why We Need to Radically Change Conferences

by Nuri Heckler, University of Nebraska

We were awake for most of the night worrying. We just moved to Omaha and did not yet have a babysitter, much less a network of friends to help us care for the children when we were unavailable. Yet, she had an important meeting with several elected officials and I was scheduled to be at a national conference. Which of our careers would take the hit? Both of us felt guilt, hurt, and distrust. It is no wonder, I thought, that so many my fellow tenure-tracked colleagues were leaving the profession.

Feminist organizational scholar, Joan Acker argues that most workplaces are designed for an abstract worker who has few to no private life or health concerns, and is generally imagined as a white heterosexual man. 

What, then, is the abstract academic? 

You probably imagine someone who looks a lot like me. I am a white heterosexual man with a wife, two children, two advanced degrees, and a tenure-track appointment at a state university.

If we look any further, this ideal starts to break down. Women now hold more than half of all jobs in the American workforce, and a recent survey showed that 53 percent of assistant professors are women. Unlike the abstract academic, my wife is a lawyer and lobbyist for wageworkers, which is why I spent four years as a stay-at-home dad. We work consciously to share the childcare, and that means that when I leave for a conference, her life is significantly disrupted.

Conferences conflict with my values in two ways. Conferences disrupt my family’s lives. If I bring my children to a conference, they cannot be at their school, but research shows that absences profoundly impact their education. If I leave them home, my wife must negotiate her responsibilities to underserved clients to spend time doing logistics I normally manage. It is clear that conferences are designed for the abstract heterosexual academic man with a stay-at-home wife.

In the long term, conferences are even more irresponsible. Parents are keenly aware of the global climate crisis we face, and every time we get on an airplane, a part of us is thinking about the consequences for our children. In my case, flying to conferences accounted for more than half of my family’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. When I get on an airplane to fly to a conference, I force my children to clean up the mess that I know I’m creating.

It’s time we do better.

Conferences must enter the 21st century. Membership organizations, like ASPA, ARNOVA, APSA, PATNet, and APPAM should work on establishing regional conferences with opportunities to attend sessions electronically. Shorter regional conferences can accommodate working parents by establishing timelines that mostly overlap with weekends, and by enabling more participants to drive or take busses/trains with substantially lower carbon footprint. 

Connections between regions can be maintained using stable online technology. Used well, these systems can encourage working relationships across wide geographies. This process not only reduces the burden on parents, but also opens up conferences to participation from underrepresented areas in the global south.

Regional conferences like SeCOPA, NeCOPA, and MPSA already provide terrific opportunities. Adding a means of accessing panels and colloquia over the internet would enhance these conferences. Additionally, working on ways to facilitate topical conversations related to conference or panel themes would enable borderless collaboration. As these systems develop, it is crucial to include paywalls so that this technology does not unintentionally hollow out these important organizations.

Pursued carefully, these solutions can support a new image of the abstract public administration academic. A parent who prioritizes their family and their children’s future. This academic lives the values that the field of public administration advocates both in their public and their private lives. They live in a world that is more sustainable and cleaner, and they enjoy conferences even when they have young children. This abstract public administration academic is ready for the middle of the 21st century.

                                                  

Nuri Heckler is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha studying administrative and Whiteness and Masculinity in public organization including governments, nonprofits, and social enterprise. He was a stay-at-home dad before going back to school to pursue his PhD. In his free time, he enjoys taking his kids hiking and cycling, introducing them to musical theater, and teaching them how to enjoy good food.

Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

Creating Formal Representation for Parents and Caregivers at Academic Conferences

By Shilpa Viswanath, University of Wisconsin

I started my PhD program as a full-time graduate student and teaching assistant when my daughter was two years old. Reducing my experiences as a student parent to an issue of time-management would be a misappropriation of sorts. My dilemma between being ‘present’ for my child for the most part and having to forego several academic pursuits in graduate school was vexing. Since then, my daughter has grown, but, I remain as vexed as ever, wondering how to be a persevering scholar without withdrawing from my parental duties. 

Parenting with a partner or, parenting by oneself is challenging work. Added to this mix is the fact that as a first generation American immigrant, the possibility of having family or an extended family to help is nonexistent. When any access to informal childcare support is unavailable, one is wholly reliable on formal sources of childcare support. In the context of academia, these formal sources include childcare provided on-site at the university/college campus or off-site by private providers. But, what happens when part of your work occurs in a third exclusive space without access to either of these childcare infrastructures?

When I attended my very first academic conference in 2014, I remember looking around, trying to gauge the feasibility of bringing my two year old daughter to the conference; only to realize that, student parents and caregivers were not ‘formally’ or ‘visibly’ represented at the conference, leaving me wondering if bringing along a child or talking about childcare at public administration conferences was not an openly acceptable practice? As the semesters went by and I attended more conferences, I was always on the look out for other student parents like myself and often found a few engaged in private discussions around their encounters of making costly child care and travel arrangements for the conference duration. It got me thinking about why senior scholars in the field, faculty members and conference organizers were not openly embracing their roles as parents and caregivers? Why were conference attendees expected to keep their personal caregiving responsibilities isolated from conference spaces? Was being a caregiver detrimental to one’s academic image?

Being a parent and caregiver is a valid identity. Public administration conferences have recently created professional spaces in the form of conference sections, workshops, networking events, professional development opportunities for participant’s to explore their identities of race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, immigration status and educational attainment. In a similar vein, it is time for conference organizers to create spaces for attendees to explore identities as parents and caregivers. By creating these spaces, conference organizers are recognizing the important intersection between academic identities and care giving responsibilities. Encouraging formal visibility and representation of caregivers in academic conferences is the first step in creating a professional space for supporting the unique set of needs and challenges faced by caregivers in academia. 

Public Administration conferences should plan for and create bold visibility for care giver attendees, allowing them to bring their children on-site and, discuss their caregiving challenges in public forums (including conference panels/roundtables), network with other caregivers and constantly brainstorm at conference workshops. Acknowledging the caregiving identity of conference goers is a first step in creating both symbolic and active representation of student/faculty/practitioner caregivers at academic conferences. This representation is necessary to give voice to previously unspoken challenges of an underrepresented academic demographic.  

Dr. Shilpa Viswanath is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse. And, faculty affiliate at the University of Wisconsin - Madison’s Center for South Asia. Her research and teaching engage in themes of gender and social equity; labor unions and local governments, and, are rooted in her identities of being an immigrant in the United States, a faculty woman of color and a mother. She presently serves on the executive board of American Society for Public Administration’s Section for Women in Public Administration and, on the board of the Section for International and Comparative Administration. 

Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

The Value of Informal Childcare

by Jamie Levine Daniel, IUPUI

Palmer House, Chicago, November, 2015. I am attending the annual meeting for the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).  My family is with me. The twist: My husband is recovering from knee surgery. My 14-month-old child has recently figured out walking. We manage our drive from Indianapolis to Chicago, and arrive with minutes to spare before the session I am supposed to chair.

Given my husband’s temporarily limited mobility, he is pretty much stuck in our room.  Given my child’s recently improved mobility, all they want is to get out of the room. The next two days become a blur of sessions, presentations, and childcare. One hour I am talking about the relationship between nonprofit mission and earned revenue.  The next hour I am pushing a stroller in Millennium Park, hoping my child will take the nap they so desperately need.

Friday morning, I am able to meet with a fellow assistant professor with whom I had been hoping to collaborate.  We find a couch on the mezzanine level and start to chat. Or, at least, we try to chat, but I have to constantly chase after the toddler who wants nothing more than to pull down the holiday decorations tucked into all of the alcoves.  Suddenly, one of my more senior colleagues swoops in, picks up my child, puts them in the stroller, grabs the diaper bag, and says, “We’ll be back in half an hour.”

That break gave me the time I needed to focus on the business at hand. The person with whom I was meeting was Dr. Rachel Fyall. That meeting led to the first of the three articles Rachel and I have now co-authored. The senior colleague was Dr. Suzann Lupton, whose spontaneous generosity created much-needed space for intellectual exchange. 

Childcare has been a hot topic lately, coming up at and among leadership for ARNOVA, Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA), and many other associations.  Many of these conversations center around formal mechanisms for easing burdens: drop in rooms, dependent care scholarships, amenities for nursing parents. These amenities would help address some barriers that childcare presents, but take time, effort, and money to implement and institutionalize. 

One thing we tried at ARNOVA 2019 was an informal network of people willing to help with last-minute childcare.  We put a call out on Twitter to ask for volunteers, compiled a list of availability, and put out announcements letting people know that volunteers were on hand should they need emergency/last-minute coverage.  The idea was inspired by my own experiences, when help I did not know I needed came unasked. The effort was low-key: social media and a Google form.

These types of efforts could be even more low-key, done on an individual level. If you know of someone bringing a child, and you are comfortable offering help, reach out before they even ask. If you are a session chair, reach out to the presenters and let them know if children are welcome in your panel.  Even if no one takes you up on your offers, sending these types of signals can help shift the culture of an association and lead to more systematic, formal changes at the scale needed to take on these challenges.

Dr. Jamie Levine Daniel is an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Her research focuses on the relationship between nonprofit resource acquisition and program service delivery, with particular interest on the relationship between earned revenue and mission.