One Science and Engineering Faculty Member’s Exerience of Taking Childcare Leave
Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering
This May Not Help Everyone, but It May Help Someone
▲Balancing work and childcare?
When I was asked to contribute an article, I accepted in the hope that my experience of taking childcare leave, a decision about which I felt strongly, might be helpful to someone. However, when I actually began writing, I found myself wondering, “Who will this help?”
I am a faculty member, a professor, a man, and a specialist in science and engineering. My circumstances are relatively unusual, and I wondered whether my experience could really serve as a useful reference for anyone else.
As I continued to reflect on this question, however, I realized that everyone has different circumstances in both their work and childcare responsibilities. No two people are in exactly the same situation. In other words, everyone’s circumstances are, in their own way, unusual.
I therefore stopped trying to write something specifically intended to “help someone” and decided simply to describe my experience honestly. As a result, this article may not be useful to anyone. Nevertheless, I would be pleased if even one part of it proved helpful to someone.
Why I Took Childcare Leave
My first child, a daughter, was born in September four years ago. I took four months of childcare leave, from September through December. Even today, as at that time, it appears to be relatively uncommon for a man who is a professor in a science and engineering field to take four months of childcare leave. I once saw a comment on social media suggesting that a man who takes an extended period of childcare leave must either have been told to do so by his wife or dislike his work. Neither applied to me. On the contrary, I enjoy my work, particularly research and education.
▲This photograph was taken after my childcare leave. My family spent one month in the United States because of my wife’s work, and I also experienced caring for our child alone overseas for one week.
My motto is to work hard at various things so that I can do what I want to do. For me, raising my child was something I genuinely wanted to do. I also identify with an observation made by an acquaintance:
“A person’s value can be seen in the difference between a world in which that person is present and a world in which that person is absent.”
Research can have this quality as well. However, I find particular value not merely in something that would continue without me, but in something that would not have come into existence if I had not been there. In that sense, participating in the care and upbringing of my own child would create a substantial “difference,” and I wanted to be actively involved.
Childcare Leave Is Not a Vacation
I came to fully appreciate that childcare leave is not a vacation, but a leave of absence from work. Before taking leave, I imagined that I might spend some time thinking about ideas for my next research project. In reality, I had no such spare time and could not secure an uninterrupted period in which to think.
The greatest challenge arising from the fact that childcare leave involves being entirely away from work was managing my laboratory. In science and engineering fields, undergraduate and graduate research supervision is generally conducted within individual laboratories. Because the work is highly specialized, it is not easy to ask another faculty member to take over. I believe this is a challenge shared by science and engineering faculty members regardless of gender.
▲Still giving my all to both work and childcare.
I felt that it might have been possible to manage the laboratory to some extent if I had been permitted to hold research meetings for even half a day each week. Under the system in place at the time, however, childcare leave required a complete absence from work, so this was not possible. The system is gradually changing, and I look forward to further developments.
Another possible approach is to make use of support arrangements such as employing part-time lecturers. In my case, I asked a faculty member serving on a fixed-term appointment and a doctoral student to take responsibility for part of the laboratory’s operations.
I feel that research and childcare have something in common.
In addition to both being things I want to do, neither ever feels complete, regardless of how much time is devoted to it.
Not everything went smoothly. I was able to take childcare leave only because of the understanding and cooperation of many people, including the members of my laboratory, faculty members in my department, research collaborators, and those who taught my classes in my absence. I remain deeply grateful to them.
Childcare leave systems are also gradually being adapted to accommodate a wider variety of circumstances. I hope that, in the future, everyone will be able to take childcare leave in the form they desire and in a way suited to their own particular circumstances.
■ Profile ■
Eiji Iwase joined Waseda University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering as a full-time lecturer in 2012. After serving as an associate professor, he became a professor in the Faculty in 2019. In 2016, he received the Waseda University Okuma Memorial Academic Award, Encouragement Prize. In 2023, he was selected for support under Waseda University’s program for developing the next generation of core researchers.
