I am going to rant a little bit. I got to get this off my chest. It is really bothering me. Child care is a limiting problem for many young women (and a few young men) in STEM.

There is the obvious difficult situation when mothers (and fathers) of young children take up a major such as physics. Definitely a difficult situation to manage. I am not going to talk about that, because it is somewhat obvious. I am going to talk about the hidden family responsibilities that many students (mostly female, though some male) have. Child care of siblings.

This was bad before. I can’t count the number of female students I have had in class who had a job and child care responsibilities at home. It’s difficult enough to manage a job and a fierce degree like chemistry or engineering, but then you throw on taking care of children?

In many cases, this isn’t babysitting – I seen my students in defacto parent mode, handling things like their sister’s IEP and being the “parent” at the parent-teacher conferences.

The pandemic has amplified this by 1000. I just got an email – I would love to come to your in-person class, but I have to stay home and help my brother and sister with their classwork because my mom will be working all day. – It sounds like you are an AMAZING big-sister. But what about YOUR school work?

Are STEM degrees too hard? IDK. We don’t have much forgiveness for things like this. One or two bad classes and you’re out the door.

At the same time, being that big sister is amazing! You are giving your brothers and sisters a role model, critical help with their homework, and a second parent. The extra help gives single parents the space they need to keep earning a living for the family.

It’s a mess and I don’t have any solutions. Here’s my advice for professors:

• Keep communicating with the student. The only way you know about a student’s situation is if you are talking with them.
• You need to develop a level of trust with the students. The students need to know that you generally care about them and their families.
• Assume students are excited about the material – STEM professors often get too excited about test scores – students that haven’t had time to study don’t always do so well.
• Be flexible. Its not about when you do something, its about can you do something.
• Of course, draw the line. There are expectations for someone in a given class to meet. If the students don’t meet them they can always retake the class. The fact that scholarships are tied to GPA is another matter.

I have been amazed over the years at watching students who had massive familial child care responsibilities excel later in life (e.g., graduate school) when their schedules were freer. Of course those are the ones that made it through and didn’t leave when they got bad feedback.