American Scientist

American Scientist's publisher, Sigma Xi, and the Journal of Science Policy and Governance (JSPG; sciencepolicyjournal.org) released a special issue in May on STEM education and workforce development. In this series, authors from the special issue discuss findings from their work.

For many people who pursue STEM careers, the years they are in graduate or professional programs coincide with a period of increasing family obligations. Some students may want to have children, whereas others may be dealing with the failing health of aging relatives. These students find themselves under the compounding pressure of academic and personal demands, and an increasing number of them decide to leave STEM education in order to focus on their families. Despite high rates of attrition, policies designed to support students both academically and personally are rare. (See the first part of this Policy column, Impossible Decisions.)

In our primary research, we study fetal alcohol syndrome and transgenerational inheritance of trauma (Arzua) and human cytomegalovirus (O’Brien)—the two most common causes of nonheritable birth defects. We are passionate about improving health outcomes for children and parents, including helping graduate students balance their personal and professional lives. We believe that taking a pragmatic, policy approach to STEM education can improve the environment for students and the well-being of their families. We have focused our advocacy on three of the most common concerns of student parents: accommodations for parental leave, childcare financial aid, and lactation support.

The majority of academic institutions in the United States do not have an explicit family support policy for students. This omission hinders students’ ability to balance family planning with degree completion, and it may even dissuade students with families from applying to postgraduate programs. Making meaningful steps toward increasing equity for student parents will result in a more resilient student body and workforce while also supporting the next generation of students.

Student-Parent Challenges

According to the World Policy Analysis Center, the United States is one of only seven countries worldwide that does not guarantee paid parental leave for workers, so it is perhaps unsurprising that most U.S. institutions do not have specific provisions for student parents. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 protects the jobs and insurance coverage of eligible employees during parental leave, but students in graduate and professional programs are often not considered employees, so they cannot take advantage of that benefit.

The Mayo Clinic reviewed current parental leave policies for medical students in 2021 and found that only one in four MD-granting medical schools has a parental leave policy listed on the school website or online student handbook. Many graduate schools have general statements recognizing the challenges that student parents face, but they do not provide resources or programs to assist those students. Some schools direct students to consult with their department faculty, who make student-parent accommodations on a case-by-case basis. These vague policies can induce anxiety and distress among students who lack the resources to make informed decisions regarding their own lives.

Vague policies can induce anxiety and distress among students who lack the resources to make informed decisions regarding their own lives.

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If current graduate and professional program enrollment trends continue, more students will likely face the challenges of balancing education and family life. As of 2020, data from the Association of American Medical Colleges indicate that women account for more than half of the medical student population, and other STEM disciplines have similar trends. These data also show that over the past decade the mean age of matriculation for medical students has increased from 22 to 24 years old, which is approaching the median age at which women have children, 27 years.

The lack of clear policies and programs also perpetuates gender disparities in education. (See “When Scientists Choose Motherhood,” March–April 2012.) A study by Jennifer Glass, professor of liberal arts at the University of Texas at Austin, found that female students in STEM education are five times more likely to leave their field compared with women in other professions and that new mothers are twice as likely as new fathers to leave STEM. Further research by Margaret Sallee, associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Buffalo, confirms a commonly held notion that women spend much more time caregiving and performing household tasks than men do, which adds significant pressure to these students. (Much of the available data portray a binary version of gender, actively excluding transgender and non-binary people from the conversation. Nonetheless, the policies we describe could benefit parents of all genders.)

Well-defined family support policies would also benefit academic institutions, which are facing rising rates of attrition. A 2019 study by University of Florida biochemists Stephen Mark Chrzanowski and Rosha Poudyal found that between 40 percent and 60 percent of U.S. graduate students do not complete their degree programs. Research by Megan Theisen at the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at North Dakota State University found that lack of family support was a common issue cited by students struggling to complete their degrees.

Three Pillars of a Successful Policy

To understand this issue and what a potential policy might look like, our group, Milwaukee Advocates for Science Policy (MASP), consulted with the Council for Women’s Advocacy (CWA), a group of physicians, professors, administrators, and students at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) in Milwaukee. Through this process, we identified three major components that an effective family support policy should include: course and program accommodations for parental leave, childcare financial aid, and lactation support.

These pillars are the result of three MCW- and CWA-convened listening sessions held virtually in the fall and winter of 2021. Team members from MASP and CWA also reviewed existing MCW student handbooks as well as literature, policies, and resources from other health sciences universities to identify best practices in supporting student parents. The issues students raised at these sessions overlapped significantly with those identified in the literature regarding the complaints of student parents in professional schools.

Each component in the family student policy framework we developed addresses a specific area of concern. Course and program accommodations would support a student parent’s postpartum recovery and child bonding time. These accommodations could be deadline extensions, rescheduled clinical rotations, excused absences from class, or the option to attend class virtually. Childcare financial aid would alleviate pressure on student parents who struggle to balance childcare with their continued studies. Lactation support would provide a protected space on campus where student parents could feed their children or use a breast pump and have access to shared breastfeeding equipment.

MASP has begun sharing these ideas with other groups with the goal of sparking similar conversations throughout STEM graduate and professional education institutions. Clear and equitable policies can have a significant societal impact, even when they affect a small subset of the population. If academic institutions backed up their statements of support to student parents with real policy, they could forge a path for other industries to follow.