Case Study: Sana Siwolop

By Made­line Pap­cun | UConn Jour­nal­ism
April 2024

As a jour­nal­ist for near­ly 40 years and a moth­er of two, Sana Siwolop was adamant the solu­tion to her “bal­anc­ing act” of rais­ing chil­dren while being a jour­nal­ist was “not whin­ing about it, but mak­ing sure every­one got on board” — even if that meant occa­sion­al­ly tak­ing her kids along with her for a sto­ry. 

“I hand­ed them a note­book, stuck them in the back­seat of the car and off we went,” Siwolop laughed, lean­ing back in her chair in a gath­er­ing room at Colum­bia Col­lege in Chica­go between ses­sions at 2023 JAWS CAMP.

If she brought her kids along, Siwolop said, it was for jour­nal­is­tic obser­va­tion­al work — she was not con­duct­ing sen­si­tive inter­views with a young child in tow.  Siwolop found this prac­tice helped her chil­dren under­stand what she was doing to bal­ance the demands of fam­i­ly life and jour­nal­ism. 

“I’d say, ‘You guys have a note­book, so you take notes!’ and they just got it,” she added. 

Siwolop holds a Master’s degree in sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion and start­ed her career as a sci­ence and med­ical writer and edi­tor for a few dif­fer­ent mag­a­zines. She’s also been a free­lance jour­nal­ist and taught jour­nal­ism. For about 15 years, she was a con­trib­u­tor to the New York Times, which was a “real­ly intense place to work, even as a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor.” 

If writ­ing for the New York Times was not intense enough, right around that time was when Siwolop had her two kids. 

“At about the same time I start­ed work­ing for the Times I got preg­nant and had two kids pret­ty close to one anoth­er,” Siwolop said. “I was an old­er mom, 38 and 40, which actu­al­ly worked out well because I sort of knew who I was.” 

Siwolop said she con­sid­ered her­self “lucky” while writ­ing for the Times because her arrange­ment was flex­i­ble. She worked from home with two young kids and had help from a full-time babysit­ter who “saved her life” dur­ing those years.  

“They were there from 9 to 5, but after 5 o’clock I was on my own with the kids,” Siwolop explained. “Some­times I was on dead­line, and that was tough.” 

Sim­i­lar to bring­ing her kids on some report­ing assign­ments, Siwolop not­ed part of her suc­cess in man­ag­ing her career and kids in those years required being hon­est about her sched­ule with her chil­dren. 

“I def­i­nite­ly let my kids know from ear­ly on — they knew that when I was on dead­line, mom was on dead­line,” she said. “And they got it. There was no knock­ing on the door, scratch­ing at the door like ‘Mom where the hell are you?’ or any of that sort of thing.” 

Siwolop made a point to stress that care­tak­ing not only applies to hav­ing young chil­dren. On top of her job writ­ing for the New York Times and tak­ing care of her kids, from about 2007 to 2013, Siwolop’s moth­er was sick with demen­tia. While her moth­er was even­tu­al­ly placed in a nurs­ing home, she still faced a high care­tak­ing bur­den regard­ing her mother’s med­ical needs as the stages of her dis­ease pro­gressed. 

Despite these con­flict­ing forces all need­ing her atten­tion, Siwolop han­dled it on her own. 

“I nev­er told them,” Siwolop said, refer­ring to her employ­er, though she did cut back slight­ly on her work for the Times. “I nev­er unbur­dened on any­body like, ‘I can’t do this,’ I just jug­gled.” 

Siwolop sug­gest­ed this was sim­ply the nature of jour­nal­ism — a lack of a set time­frame nat­u­ral­ly makes the “jug­gle” dif­fi­cult.

“You may have sources call­ing you at the end of the day that you’ve been try­ing to reach all day long,” Siwolop explained. “So you have to talk to them.” 

Jour­nal­ism may be “around the clock,” but it isn’t impos­si­ble, at least in her expe­ri­ences, Siwolop added. 

“You kind of just do what you have to do, don’t whine too much, and see the help you can get.” 

As for what might have made her care­tak­ing roles a bit eas­i­er, Siwolop said she wished she’d known oth­ers in her sit­u­a­tion — oth­er moms work­ing in jour­nal­ism with young kids.

“I mean this may sound crazy but I didn’t even get to know my neigh­bor­hood until my kids left the house. I didn’t know my neigh­bors.”

While she described this peri­od of her life as “pret­ty relent­less work,” she still looks back on it fond­ly. 

“Do I regret it? No. I just had to do what I did,” she explained. “Fam­i­ly was real­ly impor­tant. I want­ed them to have a par­ent who was even sort of around.”