The Childcare Squeeze
By Katalin Wolff

As it becomes clear that a lack of campus infant care options can affect faculty recruitment, UW-Madison is beginning to address the situation.

You could have forgiven a visitor for doing a double take when peering into Professor Hazel Holden's office a few years ago. A baby gate spanned the doorway. Toys were scattered over the floor. In one corner, a child's mobile hung above a crib. Soothing music played on the stereo, and a high-tech computer graphics system doubled as an improvised changing table. Next door, in the office of Professor Ivan Rayment, Holden's spouse, there stood another crib.

This may be an unconventional way to furnish biochemistry faculty offices, but it probably isn't unique. On college campuses across the country, professional couples are having to make do because of a shortage of spaces for their infants at campus childcare centers. The situation is also critical at UW-Madison, even though the university is doing better than its peers in this area.

"UW-Madison is a leader in the Big Ten with respect to childcare facilities," says Lynn Edlefson, UW-Madison's childcare coordinator. Still, the number of campus day care spaces falls far short of the needs of those who work and study here. There are only 376 spaces, counting 20 for infant care and 26 for after-school care, to serve the entire university population of 60,083 students, faculty, and staff.

"I had no idea how bad the situation was," Holden says of the couple's fruitless search for suitable care after their first child was born seven years ago. They had hoped to find a childcare center near campus because they felt it would afford them more reliable staffing and longer hours than home-based care if they had to work late. Unable to find an adequate arrangement, they ended up taking their baby to work with them for the first year. Later, they did the same thing with their second child.

"Hazel and I split childcare fifty-fifty," explains Rayment.

"We have adjoining offices, so it was workable, but I wouldn't recommend it," says Holden. "It got pretty difficult toward the end. But we got things done. We published just as much as we had before."

As parents who have been juggling the demands of career and family, Holden and Rayment have developed strong opinions on the subject of day care. What's more, as senior faculty members, they've come to appreciate how it affects the campus as a whole.

Long considered a "women's" issue, childcare is increasingly seen as a cause for concern at the nation's universities. Administrators are acknowledging that it's a factor in the retention, recruitment, and productivity of faculty, staff, and graduate students. It has also been proposed as a tool to promote diversity on college campuses. Not surprisingly, men are among its strongest proponents.

"In reality, childcare affects men just as much as women," says Rayment. "You can't think if you're worried about your children." In academics, he adds, career advancement depends on the ability to get grants and publish scholarly articles, and the work is very time consuming.

"Without good childcare," he says, "it's difficult for faculty members to consider having children. There's a feeling that if you're serious about your work, you can't have kids — which is a completely miserable attitude."

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