As an early-career ecologist who's male and childless by choice, I'm definitely not the "target demographic" for the birth/adoption portion of the CLB -- and yet I'm going to benefit a LOT from it.
It's already been pointed out that helping cover employees' or collaborators' absences benefits the project and everyone involved with it. We're also going to have more amazing scientists of all different stripes stay in the profession, which is another major benefit to all of us and to advancing our scientific knowledge. I'm also going to benefit directly, albeit a little further down the line. This effort is an important stepping-stone towards a scientific culture that respects and supports a wide range of career-life balance needs. Cultural shifts are a gradual process, with lots and lots of little steps over time adding up to some astoundingly big changes. This particular funding is the opening piece of a much larger Career-Life Balance Program that's already going beyond just kids, and will continue to expand its scope (especially if we keep pushing it to...). This is NSF putting its money where its mouth is, saying that we need to start valuing the fact that scientists are human, too. This is pushing back against the professors who still feel perfectly justified to say in public that it's better not to hire employees or take on students who might have kids in the near future -- and all the quiet or subconscious biases that agree with them. In doing so, it paves the way for us to build on these changes so all of our life choices are valued, working towards a scientific culture where it's normal and expected that one's career makes space to have a life (not just to have kids). We're going to see more people taking leave for having kids, for caring for relatives, etc -- and we won't see the sky fall. We'll watch this happen again and again until the firsthand empirical evidence finally overcomes our preconceived notions. And that will make it much easier for someone like me to say I need some flexibility for something major in life, too, and the sky won't fall then, either. Every time there's proactive support for some specific target demographic or another, there's a cry of reverse discrimination. It only looks like that because there's currently discrimination against (real or perceived) family-related needs -- but we don't call that out as "discrimination," we call it "normal." Best, Daniel Daniel Nidzgorski Ph.D. Candidate NSF Graduate Research Fellow Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
