Let me tell you a story. Barely anyone will sympathize with it, but it’s true.

I’m a professor. And I have been extraordinarily lucky. First, I got a fantastic education. And then, right out of grad school, I got a great job (again, lucky, and it was also a different time).

I had my first child in 2010, while I was on the tenure track. I had SEVEN MONTHS (two quarters) of maternity leave. Again, it was the best possible situation. But I also had post-partum depression. It was *hard.*

I returned to work and put my son in full-time daycare. Like many academic families, my husband and I have no family support where we live. But we could afford a good daycare (again, a great situation).

My son got sick constantly. I know parents always say that, but it’s true. He was out sick at least one day out of five. He had chronic ear infections. Later he had childhood migraines. Meanwhile, I was also sick constantly.

I still traveled. I gave talks in California and came back on the red-eye. I pumped breast milk in hotel rooms, plane bathrooms, empty classrooms, and the Reischauer Institute for Japanese studies.

I had my second son the year I got tenure. He went to daycare full time, too. He was a handful (and still is), and they used to say he was the loudest toddler in the whole place.

I couldn’t travel as much, but I tried. After all, my research is in Japan. When I traveled internationally I usually brought one of the kids with me. My parents and in-laws helped (again, I was lucky).

During all this, I managed to hold onto my career. I made it to full professor this year. I think I’m the first woman with young kids to be poromoted in my department.

My point isn’t that I’m special. My point is that I was as lucky as I could possibly be in all aspects of my career, and I had lots of resources. But still, it was hard, and it was only (barely) possible because I had childcare.

If childcare goes - because of the pandemic and because of our indifference - no one who comes after me will be able to do it. We will not have senior professors who are moms.

We will not have them giving talks at our institutes (when talks come back). We will not have them asking questions in our seminar rooms. We will not have their books to read and assign to our students.

And we will lose many other working mothers, too. Staff. Graduate students. Assistant professors. Lecturers.

Universities don’t care about this. But I really, really do.

Here’s something I wrote (before COVID) about having small children as a professor. It already seems like an artifact of a different time. I can’t imagine what it’s like now. https://www.amy-stanley.com/blog-1/how-you-do-it