What are the solutions?

Enterprise reporting

Lewis also prefers the enter­prise report­ing that is eas­i­er to come by as a free­lance reporter, both for per­son­al ful­fill­ment with her work and for sched­ul­ing pur­pos­es — not being in break­ing news was a “real­ly great fit” to also allow for the demands of moth­er­hood. 

Jacque­line Rabe Thomas, an inves­tiga­tive reporter at Hearst Con­necti­cut Media Group, not­ed that bal­anc­ing the needs of her kids and the needs of her report­ing got a lot eas­i­er when she was able to stop focus­ing on the “quick-hit” sto­ries and “news of the day,” or in oth­er words, “things that aren’t going to mat­ter tomor­row.” 

Relying on personal networks 

Angela Greil­ing Keane, pres­i­dent of JAWS and news direc­tor at Bloomberg Gov­ern­ment, said that she was able to bal­ance child care and being a reporter when her daugh­ter was younger through rely­ing on her friends in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions for last-minute child care, as her par­ents and in-laws were too far away. 

“Liv­ing in DC, I had lots of friends with impor­tant jobs too, so there was a net­work where we had each oth­er down as emer­gency con­tacts,” she said.  

And when there real­ly wasn’t any­one else when a last minute inter­view, press con­fer­ence or meet­ing popped up, she would just “bring her kid along.” 

Newsroom redesigns 

Christy DeSmith, author of the Poyn­ter piece that sparked this report­ing project, not­ed that there are news­room changes that could ben­e­fit care­givers work­ing in jour­nal­ism as well. For starters, hav­ing shifts and a “func­tion­ing night desk” along with ear­li­er dead­lines makes it eas­i­er to “turn off” from work at the end of the day, and just focus on care­giv­ing. 

Fur­ther­more, a redesign to the idea of what the role of an edi­tor is would also ben­e­fit par­ents. 

“The ‘Catch­er in the Rye’ idea is too much,” DeSmith said, not­ing that edi­tors can­not be expect­ed to do every­thing when also ful­fill­ing oblig­a­tions out­side of the news­room. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, DeSmith believes it would ben­e­fit care­givers to “include men­tor­ship of young writ­ers in job descrip­tions, rather than leav­ing it to the whims of a news­room.” In  her expe­ri­ences, women are either assigned or pres­sured into the job of edit­ing, train­ing and men­tor­ing young writ­ers. 

“This can be huge­ly reward­ing work, but it’s also time con­sum­ing — and it has nev­er, in my expe­ri­ence, been includ­ed in job descrip­tions,” she said. 

This “invis­i­ble and unre­ward­ed work” is nec­es­sary, but often falls to women with care­giv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties on top of their own job require­ments to main­tain.

“Nev­er did a senior edi­tor praise me for the work I did with young writ­ers,” DeSmith added. “How­ev­er, I’ve had count­less young writ­ers reach out to me to express their grat­i­tude.”

Paid parental and maternity leave, child care

There are some indus­try-wide fix­es that would ease the bur­den on moth­ers and care­givers in jour­nal­ism as well. Thomas also not­ed that her cur­rent news­room offers two ben­e­fits for its work­ing par­ents that she takes advan­tage of — in addi­tion to a good mater­ni­ty leave pro­gram. There is “a gen­er­ous dona­tion to that account and [she] can con­tribute,” pre-taxed, and also a “gen­er­ous month­ly reim­burse­ment pro­gram as well,” for child­care costs. 

All in all, these two pro­grams togeth­er cov­er about half of Thomas’ infant’s day care costs. How­ev­er, she has two oth­er school-aged chil­dren that she and her hus­band must pay after­care for. 

Regard­ing the ben­e­fit pro­grams, she said, “That’s gonna keep me!”

To Thomas, a com­pa­ny pol­i­cy that pays for sum­mer camps or oth­er child care ser­vices is dif­fer­ent from just increas­ing pay to accom­mo­date child­care costs. 

“It’s mak­ing a state­ment that they pri­or­i­tize moth­ers, fathers and par­ents.” she said. 

Greil­ing Keane not­ed a change in parental leave poli­cies would have helped at the time when her daugh­ter was born as well. When she became a moth­er, she got six weeks paid when daugh­ter was born and then chose to take six unpaid weeks as well. 

This is in line with the fed­er­al Fam­i­ly and Med­ical Leave Act, which pro­vides cer­tain employ­ees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-pro­tect­ed leave per year and requires that their group health ben­e­fits be main­tained dur­ing the leave. (Though state laws for parental leave may dif­fer, they are in addi­tion to FMLA.) 

Under FMLA, employ­ees can take this leave for lim­it­ed rea­sons, includ­ing the birth and care of the new­born child of an employ­ee, place­ment with the employ­ee of a child for adop­tion or fos­ter care, to care for an imme­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­ber (i.e., spouse, child, or par­ent) with a seri­ous health con­di­tion, or to take med­ical leave when the employ­ee is unable to work because of a seri­ous health con­di­tion.

Employ­ees are only eli­gi­ble for leave if they have worked for their employ­er at least 12 months, at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months, and work at a loca­tion where the com­pa­ny employs 50 or more employ­ees with­in 75 miles.

Years lat­er and work­ing at a dif­fer­ent news­room, com­pa­ny poli­cies allow for six months paid parental leave. Greil­ing Keane appre­ci­ates see­ing the change now, even though it was not an option avail­able to her when her daugh­ter was born.