How news organizations can better support working mothers and other caregivers

By Made­line Pap­cun | UConn Jour­nal­ism
April 2024

As a senior jour­nal­ism major attend­ing the 2023 Jour­nal­ism and Women Symposium’s Con­fer­ence and Men­tor­ing Pro­gram in Chica­go, Illi­nois, I noticed a replay­ing theme. Speak­er after speak­er ref­er­enced their dif­fi­cul­ties bal­anc­ing fam­i­ly life and their careers as jour­nal­ists.

Whether shared as a quip or quick joke while the crowd laughed, or morose­ly recount­ed as a time where they were forced to choose between their fam­i­ly and their job as the audi­ence solemn­ly nod­ded, every­one seemed to “get it.”

My dou­ble major in jour­nal­ism and human devel­op­ment and fam­i­ly sci­ence con­verged: Why is it so hard to be a jour­nal­ist and a moth­er or care­giv­er? What will it take to rec­on­cile the two?

As a soon-to-be col­lege grad­u­ate embark­ing on my own career in the news indus­try, I won­dered why work-life bal­ance strug­gles were such a uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence among female-iden­ti­fy­ing jour­nal­ists. These are the ques­tions I sought to inves­ti­gate over the course of this project.

In the ear­ly stages of my research, I came across Christy DeSmith’s insight­ful Jan­u­ary 2022 opin­ion piece for Poyn­ter, “Jour­nal­ism can’t keep los­ing moth­ers and oth­er fam­i­ly care­givers.” DeSmith argues that news cov­er­age is lack­ing with­out a care­giver’s per­spec­tive in the news­room.

DeSmith’s piece opens with her acknowl­edg­ing that she’d always known it “wouldn’t be easy to be a jour­nal­ist and a moth­er all at once.” DeSmith left her “hard-won news­pa­per career” when the demands of “pan­dem­ic-era fam­i­ly life” began to over­whelm­ing­ly clash with the demands of her work.

“It was already dif­fi­cult hav­ing to be in two places at once,” DeSmith said to me in a Sep­tem­ber 2023 video call inter­view, explain­ing the needs of par­ent­ing and the needs of being an edi­tor. “Then the pan­dem­ic hit.” 

DeSmith explains in her Poyn­ter essay that she noticed she wasn’t the only female jour­nal­ist doing so, not­ing that while any care­giv­er who “stepped up for their fam­i­lies” was affect­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly by the school and day­care dis­rup­tions and youth men­tal health cri­sis that COVID-19 caused, moth­ers were impact­ed at high­er rates. 

As I did more research and talked with female jour­nal­ists, I heard sim­i­lar themes. These accom­plished pro­fes­sion­als that I strive to be like told sto­ries about bal­anc­ing acts and sup­port sys­tems, miss­ing out on child­hood mile­stones or bring­ing their kids along to press con­fer­ences — every­one had an anec­dote that spoke to sac­ri­fice, both at home and in the work­place. 

For exam­ple, Angela Greil­ing Keane, pres­i­dent of JAWS and news direc­tor at Bloomberg Gov­ern­ment, told me about her time as a reporter cov­er­ing the White House. She explained it was a “cool” beat to have, but the extreme­ly long hours and the amount of trav­el­ing required made it hard as a par­ent. 

“That’s not a unique expe­ri­ence,” Keane said. “It’s some­thing a lot of peo­ple jug­gle.” 

If it’s not a unique expe­ri­ence, and it is some­thing a lot of peo­ple jug­gle, sure­ly news­rooms would have fig­ured it out by now? My research and inter­views point­ed to larg­er sys­temic fail­ures with­in the news indus­try that ulti­mate­ly placed the entire bur­den on the indi­vid­ual — hence DeSmith’s fears of jour­nal­ism lack­ing sig­nif­i­cant cov­er­age as moth­ers and care­givers are forced out. 

Enter, Bar­bara Selvin.