An MIT professor put a crib in his lab for a graduate student who needed help with childcare
- MIT Professor Troy Littleton put a crib in his office to support a new mom graduate student.
- It's a Band-Aid for the US's unaffordable childcare and inadequate parental leave, the student said.
- Working moms have largely carried the burden of childcare and homeschooling, leading to burnout.
Eleven-month-old Katie Cunningham already has a robust resume: The baby frequents an MIT lab, where she's occasionally watched by experienced scientists while her mom, a biology graduate student, conducts research.
The setup isn't an early childhood STEM program; it's a creative childcare solution conceived by Cunningham's professor, Troy Littleton.
The neuroscience professor wanted one of his students, Karen Cunningham, to be able to come into the lab like the rest of the team once everyone was vaccinated. But doing so was tricky for Karen, who delivered Katie in July 2020 and didn't have any childcare options during the pandemic, she told The Washington Post.
While she and her husband, a middle-school teacher, were mostly able to juggle responsibilities, Littleton's idea to put a crib in the lab eased their burden.
"Childcare in any profession is a challenge, but in science, it can even be more challenging," Littleton, a father of an adult son, told the Post. "Experiments don't always fit a 9-to-5 schedule. It just made sense for Karen to bring Katie in."
So along with support from Karen's labmates, the professor bought a travel crib to keep in his lab. It was the team's gift to the new mom who they weren't able to celebrate with a baby shower.
When Littleton posted a picture on Twitter of his new office furniture in May - one of about 70 he's posted in his life, he told the Post - it went viral, accumulating over 117,000 likes.
"My favorite new equipment purchase for the lab - a travel crib to go in my office so my graduate student can bring her 9-month old little girl to work when necessary and I get to play with her while her mom gets some work done," he wrote. "Win-win!!"
Commenters praised the professor for supporting working parents in the US, where the childcare is "unaffordable" and the parental leave "inadequate," Karen said.
"I want this in every single work environment," one Twitter user wrote. "Enough with daycare and pre-school. I WANT TO BRING MY FUTURE CHILDREN TO WORK WITH ME. Let them learn what I do. Let them interact with older generations. Let us all be a community."
Littleton was surprised the tweet garnered so much attention, and followed up to put the spotlight back on Karen. "I wish people were able to spot the real hero here," he Tweeted. "It's the graduate student mom, not me. She's amazing to do all she has to with her daughter and still keep up her thesis project research."
The pandemic has hit working moms especially hard
A recent Insider poll found that 41.1% of women reported feeling "very" or "extremely" burnt out, compared to 30% of men.
When looking at moms in particular, a survey out of the New York Times, NPR, and Morning Consult found that 80% of moms said they managed homeschooling responsibilities. Three-quarters of parents didn't get any breaks from employers other than more flexible hours.
"We are all really struggling now, and parents have really been put in an impossible situation," scientist Gretchen Goldman previously told Insider. "Support systems have been ripped out, and we're expected to do our jobs as if nothing is different."