Time to Hire A Housekeeper?
This article made the Best of Science Careers 2010. It stirred up a lot of debate and readers pretty much demanded the follow-up piece which was fun to write.
Sangeeta Bhatia is a scientist working in academia. She is married to another one. Bhatia is on the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her husband is a professor at Harvard University, both of which are in Cambridge. Their little girls have a Barbie but also a Marie Curie doll with a periodic table sticking out of the pocket of its lab coat.
When Bhatia travels for conferences, grandparents look after the two children. At other times, they’re looked after by a nanny. One woman cooks for the family twice a week; another cleans their home. “It literally does take a village,” Bhatia says, to run a household and two labs. I want to ask her who does the laundry, but I desist; it’s a legitimate work-life balance question for a woman in science, but I feel like a meddlesome in-law.
Read the rest of the story here. html.