The Balancing Act: An Assessment of the Child-Care Options Available to UCB Graduate Student Parents

By Katrinell M. Davis, on behalf of the Graduate Student Parent Project

“I am considering scrapping my academic career because if I put family first, my colleagues won't consider me competitive and the job options get even scarcer. I can't travel for conferences, attend lectures and groups, etc. I just don't think it's likely that I can expect a decent job after taking the ‘time off’ (teaching & writing part-time for a few years) to raise my son. I can't choose the job over the child. I didn't understand how bad this dilemma would be when I started grad school.”
---UCB Graduate Student Parent


Due to the increasing number of women and older students entering graduate programs in recent years, colleges and universities have made efforts to address the changing needs of their student populations. However, despite the fact that schools including the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) have developed a variety of services for “non-traditional” students, many are left wondering if the available resources are effective in helping students finish their programs while raising children.

Amidst rising housing costs and the reduction of resources needed to help balance work and family, it has become necessary that we examine how graduate student parents are affected by the affordability and availability of child care at UCB. In response to this crisis, the Graduate Assembly and Graduate Division commissioned this study in 2007 in order to learn more about the child care hurdles UCB graduate student parents confront in their attempts to balance parenting and the work of preparing for an academic or professional career.

There were four distinctive goals of the 2007 Graduate Student Parent Survey, which is the primary data source for this report.1 The first goal was to learn more about child care expenses, and which forms of child care arrangements graduate student parents generally use. The second goal was to learn more about the school-related factors that limit their ability to balance work and family. The third goal was to learn more about which University sponsored programs most benefited this population, and also which programs seem to under-serve graduate student parents. Finally, the fourth goal was to learn more from graduate student parents about the services they need to be productive parents and students.

When UCB graduate student parents were surveyed almost ten years ago by Alice Jordan, the current director of the Student Parent Center, they were asked what the university should consider as top priorities in its attempts to help student parents balance work and family. At the time, most students reported that the university should consider expanding its services to include summer child care, sick child care, and short-term or drop-in child care.

The results from the 2007 survey indicate that, despite the change in times, the resources graduate students require are very similar to what they needed in the past. In fact, graduate student parents in this sample (n=299) overwhelmingly agreed that greater efforts must be made by the university to find innovative ways of addressing the child care problems they face. Specifically, most UCB graduate student parents contend that the university should expand its efforts to create affordable housing. Many also report that the administration should help facilitate a change in the affordability and accessibility of UC childcare. Furthermore, others ask that the proper steps be made to ensure that family-friendly policies are acknowledged within departments and implemented in ways that meet the needs of all graduate student families.

The full report is available as of March 14, 2006. You can find it at the graduate assembly webpage at http://ga.berkeley.edu at the Graduate Student Family Researcher Page under the heading “Resources”.


1 -Anonymous surveys for graduate student parents & graduate student assistants were distributed via email. There were 299 graduate students that participated in this survey, & 38 UCB graduate student assistants that responded to this questionnaire. Telephone interviews & online surveys were sent to family resource center staff at schools that are members of the Association of American Universities, a organization that helps its members develop national policy positions on topics relating to academic research as well as graduate & professional education. Overall, 6 out of the 60 American members of the AAU responded to this survey.