Fieldwork, Forest and Babies.... how mothers do it

A couple of days ago I got an email from a friend and fellow wildlife biologist who is currently doing their Ph.D. in India about how to continue your research with pregnancy and child rearing. Her exact question was "if in the US, a Ph.D. pursuing student gets pregnant, what are the options she has which facilitates her to get back to the program?" She raised an important question. It made me think about the systems in India and in the USA and other countries for graduate students. In fact, recently there was series of emails on this topic when a grad student mother wanted suggestions about bay gears and other stuff for conducting field work with her three month old in the alpine zone. If you are working full time, you can get maternity leave. In some countries you can get even up to a year of paid leave. But what about grad students? Are they considered a full time employee in an institution? do they have all the rights as the other employees have. Most of the time students do not even have a lot money to hire help or leave kids in a day care even if there are day care options. In India for example day care options are not always available. What do you do especially if you are doing field work? How do you take care of your child, especially an infant or a toddler or and do your research? Before I hd my first child little more than a decade ago my examples and role models were (and still are) Jane Goodall, Jeanne Altmann, Alison Jolly, Rosemary Grant, and Patricia Wright who have successfully raised children and did research in the wild. Before that I also had spoken to Dr. Lalitha Vijayan in India who had done field work with her then nine month old son  Robin Vijayan in the forests of Kerala. But none of my cohort or contemporary wildlife biology students in the late 1990s thought of having a child and continue to do field work. In fact, we thought having a child will go against our goals of life!  So when I decided to have a child in the middle of my Ph.D., it came as a shock to my mentors, peers and family members. What on earth is she thinking? How could you do field work and have a child? On top of that, I studied a nocturnal prosimian in the wild. How would I do field work and have the baby at the same time? Won't it be difficult and challenging! It has been a challenge and part of the ups and down of my academic carrer! I ended up with two children in the middle of my Ph.D. and with the second one I had a full time job five weeks after I had the baby. So how did I do it? I did it with lots of support from spouse, family, friends, mentors and every one in my field site! It did take a global village. In fact, my Ph.D. advisor was in the hospital when I delivered the first child. It is perhaps about time I shared my story with others in India and elsewhere who would like to have a child and continue field work especially for their Ph.D., eh? In recent years in India, I may be the only one who did field work with a child since Dr. Lalitha Vijayan had done it. 

For a significant part of her toddlerhood, my firstborn literally grew up like a wild child as we spent a year and 5 months in field. In the beginning I had my sister coming to help me for 5 months. In the beginning of my second field season we used to boil the water and filter it since we were afraid of waterborne deseases but by the end of the year she was directly drinking  from the river, and even spending days away from me in the villages with my field assistants' families. She was fluent in three languages at age 3 and would translate back and forth between English, Bengali and Tamil, She went with us at night for catching lorises. or with tiger reserve field stuff at night for patrolling or looking for wilddogs hunting or elephants or following monkeys during the day. She developed a deep connection with forests that is so deep rooted, that even now she sparks up whenever she sees any kind of forest land, national parks or thick bushes even in corners of urban habitats!

So here is what I wrote to my friend who asked me the question.

I guess the big difference between here and there is that people are doing Ph.D. with children (especially young ones) more and more. But it is not easy! It comes with a price. Professors do not like it and of course there is not a whole lot of support system. In our department at ASU I only know two female grad students (including me) who had children during grad school. And both of us did field work. I think it is doable and it is good for the grad students to be a good role model but it is not easy. It also depends on the health of the mother and child in the initial phase. My grand plan was to have the baby and take her to field when she is 6 months old. But due to complication of child birth as well as fulfilling the university requirement in terms of proposal defense etc., I had to postpone the field work by a year and half. That made things tougher to finish especially because I did not have day care options. But once I was in field it was not too difficult! I certainly had a lot of family and friends' support. My entire immediate family (my sisters, parents) came and stayed in field. We also had enormous support from the field assistants, local villagers and forest range office staff. You need to have a strong support network to do the work. I knew the field staff for many years and in fact, KMTR was my second home so it was not a strange place, and above all I trusted the villagers with my offspring. In the US you can be enrolled in the Ph.D. program even if you are not doing your research. Or you can take a year of leave of absence from the program. I do not know what the rules are in India. Do you get maternity or paternity leave from UGC (University Grants Commission which sets rules for graduate students) or individual institutions, like in any other jobs. Who is your Ph.D. advisor? A lot depends on him or her. The advisor has to be supportive. I know there was lot of resistance in India when I had the first child. People thought I am giving up my research etc. The pressure was a lot from both sides - India and the US. It did slow down my productivity and changed the focus. But I do not give up. Most women decide to have children after finishing their Ph.D. because of the pressure. I know they are more successful than me in some ways. I was thinking of people in India who have children in wildlife field. I can't think of anyone who had a child during Ph.D.. It would be good to do a survey of how many Indian wildlife ecology students/ postdocs have children while they were doing their Ph.D or would like to have one. I have done it with bothmy kids. With the second one, I was also teaching apart from finishing up my thesis, and without a baby sitter.  had to carry Nilavi in a sling while teaching for a semester. I do not think any of these were possible without Madhu! Sharing parental responsibility and co-parenting play a big role here. 

So the bottom line is, it is possible to do the work. It may slow you down little bit but do not get discouraged! Find out frist whether you can get maternity and paternity leave from the program. Then decide: when would you like to go back to field? Ask for help from your parents and as well as from the locals. Do not worry too much about being in the forest with a child. Breast feeding is the best option when you do field work because you do not have to worry about outside infections with waterborne bacterias and viruses. Carry your baby in a sling or a pouch so that baby will have body contact. Try to get a breast pump and a refrigerator if possible so that you can store milk. But otherwise schedule your field work in a way that you can work around the feeding. If you wait till 6 months then baby will be on solids in between breast feeding. Try for a natural delivery if you can because the healing and recovery is faster unless you need a C-section. In case you need to have a C-section, keep your options open for that and go for it. Recovery is slower but you can do it. I started working about 5 weeks after a C-section with my second child. After baby's birth do not listen to others who may warn you about not producing enough milk, or say that the baby is starving. Milk production depends on the mother's emotional health, persuasion and frequent sucking by the new born. You also need sleep and rest, lots of water to drink. Mothers of a new born generally get little sleep and it takes a while to get used to the baby's sleep cycle. Think of the mothers in rural areas and the support network they have. Allomothering is really important especially if you are in field. I also think it helps if you can read up on developmental psychology of newborn and attachment theory of parenting, mother-infant co-sleeping, and cultures of child rearing in different regions of the world., Given that we are so much more into the popular contemporary western culture which suggest a lot of things that is contrary to child rearing by a natural mother in a more rural set up I think reading what the other mothers have done or do is very helpful. I have referred to some of the materials that I read and used in this blogpost and the other one about allomothering. And do not worry about taking them to conferences and meetings. Our kids are with us since few months old. Now they are older they help us in organizing meetings.

Hope these are some of the helpful tips for mothers or mothers to be in field. I would like to get all of you mothers who have done or doing currently and balancing family. 

Alloparenting or nuclear family.... from Sarah Hrdy to my grandmother's house

I am rereading this interview again. I wish there were studies on mother-infant relationship or parenting type and comparison of large extended families vs nuclear families and also bonding between mother and child even after the infant/toddler phase. What Dr. Hrdy talks about alloparenting is perhaps not only just crucial for the mothers but also from the child's perspective and development it is important. I have anecdotal data on growing up in a large extended family and some what semi nuclear family with extended families nearby. Now that I am living in a country halfway across the world from the country where all of my kins are and raising my two children with some time single parenting, I feel more the  importance and evolutionary significance of living in groups. Here we try to recreate a community or support network with friends and I am lucky enough to have that network. After all, it takes a village to raise a child! 


My maternal grandmother’s house was a great example of alloparenting. Mothers are getting help from other mothers, fathers, siblings and cousins. That house was built sometime in the 1950s (they moved from what is now Bangladesh after India’s partition). My grand ather’s family and his two brother's family lived in the same household. Th extended family was scattered for a few years after the partition but moved back together when the new house was built. It has 20 plus room and used to have only two kitchens. One was used by my mother's brothers' families and the other one was used by the cousins' families. They all cooked together and took turn to cook. highly organized division of labour and  timing of breakfast, lunch dinner was strictly scheduled. My mother’s 3 brothers and 4 male cousins have raised their families. Most of the sisters (including cousins) were married off by the 1960s. It is really interesting to see the bonding of the cousins (first and second) have. Even now we do not distinguish between first and second cousins. And I am perhaps much more closer to some of my second cousins and their offspring than my own cousins! When it comes to wedding or death or any other difficult situations all the family members are together. 


We had one cousin who had down syndrom and he survived until age 48. He was most attached to his aunts and raised by aunts as well as older cousins. I remember once he was lost and did not come back for 3 days (in his 30s), how every cousins went out looking for him and eventually found him some where about 15 km away from home. This was when he was showing his independence to go out on his own and hang out away from home. I do not think it would have been possible to find him if he was growing up in a nuclear family! The love and affection he had received from the extended family perhaps would not have been possible in a nuclear family! I think growing up in a family like this made my cousins more socially mature and have the skills of dealing with complex social issues than living in a nuclear family (e.g. my paternal cousins).


But not sure whether every mother was a happy mother! Adults could occasionally feel some tension between my aunts. My mother's eldest brother's wife was not always happy. Some wanted their independence, wanted to break out and live in a nuclear family within the same house. One of the wives of one of the brothers did get a separate enclave including kitchen in the same house but she took the advantage of allomothering, leaving her children at home with others while she went to work. Another aunt left her older child  in the family while she worked and lived in another town! Now after retirement  she moved out of the  family's joint house and built her own. And in the late 80s when my male cousins were getting married their wives slowly started breaking the joint family kitchen system. By the 1990s they all had their own flats with kitchen in the same house. The house itself gone through modifications to accomodate all those. And my uncles’ generations slowly aged and died off! Three of the aunts are gone now. The current generations still do things together but not as cohesive as before.


I often think about cost and benefits of living in large extended family.... yes, there are certain disadvantages. One cannot raise a child with her own wishes etc. And women can be suppressed more  than men! Their opinion may not be heard! But now that I am living by myself so far way, I understand the value of living in groups much more! For a social creature like me it is sometime so hard and depressing in living in a single family home especially in the US where you cannot just go and hang out with your neighbor next door. My older one had the experience of living in the forest where the village  and my sister  took care of her while I did my  field work on a non human primate. That was the best time of my life about raising a child! I could completely rely on the allomothers to take care of her while I was there for her whenever needed! She did learn to speak the third language fluently, learn to interact with others and be independent and at the same time being very social. Her third Birthday she spent with one of my field assistant's family in the village and did not show up for two days. Coming back here was hard for her even at age 3. While she was really happy to be back in our small nuclear family with her father but misses the larger social groups and interactions! It seems like it happens to us every time we come back from India. 

Attachment Parenting mothers and....

It made me write a blog after a long long time!! I was listening to local NPR station's Valley Edition program on " attachment parenting". They had two valley blogger mothers and a CSUF faculty from College of Education. Can't remember his name.  Wonder why haven't they contacted another CSUF faculty Katie Dyer who not only does research on this subject but also has been raising four daughters. Those mothers were talking utter BS which was unbearable! It is almost like when you are converted into a new religion you become a fanatic! But do your homework before coming to talk in the radio! Try to understand and read biology, culture and developmental psychology before you talk. There are quite a few books on developmental psychology about brain development and parenting for common people. As well as scientific reserach being available on why you need to sleep with your new born child. The way attachment parenting is in this country right now as if the parents have discovered it.... do they even know that it is nothing new both biologically and culturally? It is an age old practice in most other traditional non industrialized nation's culture! And it is biological instinct to pick up a child when it is crying or hungry! Not the Western European culture though! Have they even read Meredith Small's books on Culture and parenting? Her book "Our Babies Ourselves" and Kids are very well written came from years of experience working in the field of observing non human primate mothers and mothers from other cultures as well as her own experience of raising her own daughter in the USA. Go do your home work mothers before calling yourselves experts! As if the Time Magazine cover is not producing enough controversy!!