As caregivers and parents, we try to squeeze everything we can out of each moment -- both professionally and personally -- to manage the added responsibilities in our lives as we navigate our careers in academe. With limited hours in the day, we are forced to find ways to maximize our efficiency by having focused goals that must be accomplished in a predetermined time period. That time period can vary greatly from when we have negotiated childcare handoff with our spouses to whenever schools or day cares close, and could even include arranging our schedules to be able to walk pets.

The needs of the family member whom you are caring for typically determine caretaking schedules, so your time is often not under your control. Parents don’t get to choose their moments, and our children often introduce us to a whole new level of on-demand performance that is an energy sinkhole. But we can also develop an extremely high level of efficiency through grim determination.

And an often-invisible benefit of taking on family responsibilities is that it enforces a level of work-life balance whether we want it or not, by placing external limitations on the potentially all-consuming nature of our work -- as graduate students, postdoctoral trainees and even as young professionals or academics in our respective fields. This has reached an added level of complexity for those caretaking and working during the pandemic (blended pandemic work-life, avoiding burnout, focusing on fewer goals). But even, so prompts like dinnertime and bedtime routines to care for our kids can provide sanity checkpoints and regular moments to help structure our lives.