The Department of Anthropology presents

"Parenting in the Academy"
A reading group on parenting, academia, and work-life balance

Tuesday, January 22, 2013
3:30 p.m.
Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway, Room 3323

This reading group will provide a space for interested graduate students and faculty to read about, explore, and discuss the challenges facing graduate student and faculty parents within academia. As such, the group will not only offer a space for examining the challenges to creating a balance between academic and family-life but also directly contribute to the success of graduate student parents who may struggle to sustain such a balance. We will ask: How have academics successfully combined parenting-work and academic work? How could the university become a more family-friendly place for academics with families? Specifically, the group seeks to 1) identify how faculty with small children manage parental and professional roles; 2) identify key institutional supports for and barriers to balancing parental and professional roles; and 3) contribute to graduate students’ success by supporting creative ways for academics to combine family-work and academic-work.

We will discuss journal articles and books on parenting in academia, the methods or introductory chapters of books and articles that specifically discuss authors’ experiences combining family and research or fieldwork, and original work by UCI graduate students. We will also invite a number of UC Irvine faculty to speak about their own experiences pursuing tenure-track positions while raising families.

Sponsored by the School of Social Sciences

Please RSVP to Caitlin Fouratt, cfouratt@uci.edu. Children are welcome!