In recent years, and especially since the summer of 2020, diversity, inclusion, and belonging have become buzzwords — and sometimes even offices — at colleges and universities across the country. But when it comes to parenthood, college and universities do not live up to their stated values. Institutions of higher learning can’t solve the problem of parenting in the U.S., a wealthy country that guarantees neither paid parental leave nor affordable child care to its citizens. But they can certainly do more than they are doing now. [...]

Without accessible and affordable child care, some new parents worry that they will fall behind other junior colleagues who aren’t parents. “If it’s a tenure committee that’s not familiar with your personal life situation, it’s going to look like: Here are two people at the same stage and one of them seems to have done a lot more,” Morris said. Historically, these two hypothetical people have been a man and a woman, and the man would seem “to have done a lot more.” Several studies have suggested that male academics take advantage of parental leave and other accommodations to advance their careers, while female academics, many of whom are recovering from labor, are often fully absorbed in child care. According to some researchers, this places female academics at a disadvantage, since they will go up for tenure with fewer publications than their male counterparts. [...]

“It would serve so many people if higher education would start to function like a workplace,” Blackwood continued. “Not a place for special unicorns, but like an actual workplace.” This would involve establishing clear and transparent policies for parents and caregivers, but it would also require a cultural change. Faculty members would have to demand fewer sacrifices from themselves and from each other; they would have to recognize that, as Blackwood put it, tenure-stream professors are “professionals, but they also have these other full lives that they’re pursuing.”