Family Friendly Competition

No, I'm not talking about the sort of thing where teams play cooperative, non-competetive games, and everybody gets a trophy at the end. I'm talking about academia, here, and specifically the recent flurry of colleges and universities offering child care support:

In the last week, both Stanford and Yale Universities have announced significant expansions of the help that they provide to new parents -- with Stanford unveiling a plan for junior faculty members and Yale one for graduate students.

Those moves follow this month’s announcement by Princeton University of substantially increased support for graduate students who are or become parents while working on their Ph.D.’s. And while the institutions capturing headlines are some of the wealthiest in the country, there is also a flurry of activity from other institutions specifically around the issue of helping academics who are trying to launch their careers while caring for young children. On Tuesday, the University of Kentucky formally approved plans to build two new child-care facilities near campus, to eventually house 250-300 children. Kenyon College is getting ready to open a new child-care facility later this year.

All of this activity reflects the reality that “one of the key issues for early career faculty is ‘what do we do with the kid,’” said Cathy Trower, director of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education, a Harvard University-based project. Trower said she was particularly impressed with the Stanford plan for the way it sends a message to young faculty members that parenthood “is possible” to manage in an academic career.

Kudos to all these institutions for trying to address a problem that's a major concern for junior faculty, particularly women. I hope this sort of thing spreads throughout academia, preferably reaching Union before we need it...