(More than) 500 miles from my home

In July, I traveled to Kenya for ten days on a research trip, returned home for one day, then left for Boston for an academic conference. I was gone for a total of two weeks and one day, but it felt like a lot longer than that. When I got back, my two-year-old son ran up to me with a hug, as he does when I pick him up from daycare, then resumed playing with his trucks contentedly. Strangely, I was relieved that my absence didn’t seem to affect him negatively—but there was also a small part of me that wanted him to make a bigger fuss about my return!

Of all the requirements that seem to weigh on mothers who work outside the home, business travel apparently causes the most stress and guilt. It’s easy to see why—being physically absent from your family is never easy, and doing so while your children are young can make you feel as if you are neglecting key parental responsibilities. Women who have been writing about career and family recently, from Anne-Marie Slaughter to Sheryl Sandburg, all have tales about children clinging to their legs, begging them not to leave on a trip, or learning about a child’s trouble in school from hundreds of miles away.

Academics have an interesting relationship with travel compared to those in, say, the corporate sector. A certain amount of travel—to conferences, review panels, and for research—is required for our jobs. However, we have a lot more autonomy over where and when we travel compared to those employed outside of academia. There’s no boss popping into our offices and telling us we have to leave for Hong Kong the following day. Generally, we can choose which conferences to attend and how to schedule our research trips. This is a terrific advantage for academics with families, because we can coordinate with spouses and care-givers to choose a travel time that works best for everyone. However, it also—at least for me—places a higher burden of justification on us for each trip we take. Do I really have to attend this conference? Should I say ‘yes’ to this review panel? How much will it help my career, compared to the toll exacted on my health and my family?

Those of us who do international research feel this especially acutely, because international trips take so much more time, energy, coordination, and money compared with domestic travel. I can literally count on one hand the number of female academics I know who have undertaken international research projects while their children are young. This is, in a way, depressing, but on the bright side those few women seem to have done amazing research and have involved their children in many exciting trips and opportunities. I’ll never forget the memorial service for my husband’s first Ph.D. advisor, who tragically passed away the year after he arrived in his program. She was a remarkable lady, and although I knew her only briefly, she remains one of my role models. An accomplished academic whose research focused on micro-credit projects to empower poor women in the developing world, she was also a warm mentor to her graduate students and a supportive wife (her husband ran for the presidency of a foreign country while she was at the pinnacle of her own career, and she gamely played along as a potential first lady!). Most impressive to me, at her memorial service, picture after picture was displayed of her standing with her smiling family in the many countries in which she conducted her research. She managed to do important work that informed real-world problems, while exposing her two children to experiences and opportunities that anyone would be fortunate to have. At the service, both of these children, now adults, spoke movingly and tearfully about their mother and how she had inspired them through her work and her love. Wow!

So, in spite of the many, many people who have tried to dissuade me from doing international research as an early-career academic/mother, I will continue to do it. I can’t help it—I first caught the passion for the work I do during the year I spent abroad in the Philippines after graduating from college. There, I learned on a visceral level that the greatest challenge for humanity in the 21^st century will be assuring that the basic needs of all people are met, without irreparably damaging the natural ecosystems on which we humans, and other life, depend. The developing world is in many ways where this challenge is felt most acutely. That’s why I continue to go to Kenya, the Philippines, India, Burkina Faso, Nigeria. I’m not arrogant or naïve enough to think that I will solve these enormous problems, but I remain hopeful that my presence and expertise will tip the balance just a tiny bit in the direction of peace, justice, and sustainability. And I believe that it’s worth the involvement of my family, and the carbon footprint (which I always try to offset!) to do this work.

But it’s still hard. While I was in Kenya, there was a death in my extended family, and I was desperate to be with my loved ones as they struggled through a very difficult time. I called my mother and sister from my hotel room in Mombasa, as dusk fell and the evening call to prayer resonated from the muezzin outside my window. They cried, and I cried with them, feeling very far away and very alone. And, in spite of all that my colleagues and I had learned and accomplished on the trip, at that moment I wished that I were home.