You're expecting your first child a few months from now and will need child care when you return to school. What does the University offer, and would you be better off finding child care off campus?
You have to travel abroad and your baby is too young to leave with relatives. Where can you find information about traveling with an infant?
You'd like to get away for a family weekend at the coast, but you're living on a student budget. Can anyone recommend a reasonable place to stay in Santa Cruz?
You're coming to Berkeley from overseas with your spouse and children. How can you get some information about local elementary schools?
The UCB-Parents Mailing List (ucb-parents@parents.berkeley.edu) is a good place to seek help for all of the above. Berkeley faculty, staff, and students use the e-mail list to post questions and answers about all kinds of campus and community resources for families. They also use it to post consumer safety alerts about specific children's toys and equipment. Through e-mail, they commiserate about juggling the responsibilities of work, school, and parenting, and they share advice on how to raise, educate, and have fun with children.
The electronic forum's origins, appropriately enough, are in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS).
A few years ago, a number of graduate women in EECS drew up a departmental parents' policy that would let graduate parents reduce their course load after having a baby and allow them a longer time to degree. Ginger Ogle, who was studying for her master's degree in computer science at the time and also serving as president of Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WICSE), joined the effort and created an EECS-Parents Mailing List to "rally the forces," she says.
When the parent policy received unanimous approval from EECS faculty, the mailing list was used to gather support for a parents' office and changing tables in both the women's and the men's restrooms in Soda Hall. Gradually, the department's moms and dads began to use the list to post child care openings and other information of interest to parents.
"About two years ago, I decided that we should make the list campuswide," says Ogle, who received her master's degree in 1993 and now works on a digital library project for the Electronics Research Lab.
The mother of two boys, Jacob, 10, and Joseph, 13, Ogle has watched the list grow to include over 450 parents who teach, work, or go to school on the Berkeley campus. Fifty percent of its subscribers are men, and 50 percent are women (the more vocal half). Graduate students make up 25 percent of the list.
"Originally we had rules about polite postings, but now that it's a moderated list, I haven't had to screen out anything," reports Ogle.
Messages posted to the list are intercepted by Ogle, who cuts and pastes them into a digest, which she sends to subscribers every three days.
The Family Network
For the many moms and dads who spend long hours in their classrooms, offices, or labs, the list offers a connection with other parents and a large network of support.
Subscribers may need practical information on summer camps for kids and families, music lessons, appropriate allowances and chores for youngsters, or party ideas for a teenager's birthday. Sometimes they need feedback on personal issues involving divorce, adoption, child custody, or the challenges of being single parents or stepparents. Some topics, such as how to help babies sleep through the night, elicit a landslide response and a wide variety of opinions. Summaries of longer discussions often are included on the UC Berkeley Parents Network Web site (http://parents.berkeley.edu), also administered by Ogle.
In addition to advice from the UCB-Parents Mailing List (local child care recommendations, movie reviews, and places to go with children), the UC Berkeley Parents Network Web site includes information on summer programs for children (day camps and educational programs on campus, community recreation programs, and family camps), campus information (including a student resource guide), and local information (Web pages for Berkeley's public schools, the City of Berkeley, and the Oakland Unified School District). Even an explanation of Ebonics can be found there.
Last summer, staff and student parents used the mailing list to vent their frustrations about campus child care options. Many parents in graduate school scramble for informal child care arrangements during the summer months. Families living at University Village in Albany often post notices for child care exchanges in the laundry room and the recreation center located there.
"One of the problems students have with campus child care is that it shuts down in the summer even though research projects continue," notes Ogle. "Students often have to go outside the University to find someone to care for their kids. When I was in graduate school, I was a GSI for three semesters and had to patch together child care in order to teach my classes. I also brought my kids to class at times or took them into the lab when I had to work on projects."
Parent Trap
Even though Ogle had her children before she began graduate school, she empathizes with women who are trying to start families during graduate school. She knows some who became pregnant during graduate school and later dropped out of their programs and others who may forego having children in order to pursue an academic career.
"For them, there's this big conflict between wanting to have a family and wanting to advance in academia," says Ogle. "I can understand that. It's difficult. You need to come in everyday to do research, and you're not going to get any special time off to take care of the baby. You're competing against people who don't have that problem, so there's not a lot of sympathy."
The many questions subscribers posed about campus child care prompted Ogle to contact Peter Jacobson, the director of University Child Care Services, for clarification. His response was posted to the UCB-Parents Mailing List and is also included on the UC Berkeley Parents Network Web site.
Ogle has received an avalanche of positive response on both the mailing list and the Web site since she began working on them. Last spring, the wife of a visiting scholar en route to the University of Texas at Austin posted a personal thank you to Ogle for creating and maintaining the list. It had made a world of difference during her family's stay in Berkeley, she said, and if Austin didn't have something like it, she promised that it soon would.
When asked whether she ever wonders about the faces behind the e-mail, Ogle says she does. She's even thought about reserving an area in Tilden Park for a UCB parents picnic.
"Unfortunately, I just don't have time to organize it," she says. "If someone wants to volunteer, I'll be happy to post it!"
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