In today's episode, Rico interviews Eva on the research she did with a group of international colleagues on the impact of COVID-19 on academic parents.

We discuss the main findings of the research, that show that the negative impact on the research of academic parents is considerable, that most academic parents found more challenges than opportunities, and that associate professors are dealing with COVID-19 on top of the mid-career minefield. Another interesting finding is that both academic mothers and fathers have experienced negative impacts, even though academic mothers worked on average less hours but the gender differences related to time expenditure were larger before the pandemic than during. We also look into some regional differences, such as the larger fear to send children back to school in Central and South America than in other parts of the world.

Besides the findings, we also discuss the methodology: how Eva assembled the international research team, how the team held Zoom meetings across many time zones to discuss the findings, and the quantitative and qualitative analysis methods that we selected for this work.

Then, we turn in to Eva's personal experience as an academic parent during COVID-19, and see if her personal experience is in line with the findings in the paper, and what the main challenges were. We also look at the particular support measures Eva's two universities provided, and how she used these (or not). Then, we round off discussing how COVID-19 will affect academic parents in the future and if we can take positive lessons from this experience into the future.

References:

• Lantsoght EOL, Tse Crepaldi Y, Tavares SG, Leemans K and Paig-Tran EWM (2021) Challenges and Opportunities for Academic Parents During COVID-19. Front. Psychol. 12:645734. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645734
• WonkHe: How to support academic parents to succeed 
• PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: The Challenges of Parenting and Academia