Fermilab: A Leader In Child Care As Well As In Physics

When physicist Wyatt Merritt shows up for work each morning on the campus of Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., she’s accompanied by Frank, her three-year-old son. After dropping him off at a little blue house surrounded by a white picket fence, Merritt goes to her office and begins her work day, comfortable in the knowledge that while she concentrates on the high-energy physics of the lab’s D/O project, her toddler is safe and happy just five minutes away, listening to stories about pilgrims and learning his shapes and colors. The house with the white picket fence is the Children’s Center at Fermilab, an innovative model for day care facilities that has been operating effectively for the past eight years. While most other research institutes and corporations are still only in the study phase in dealing with the child care issue, the Children’s Center at Fermilab has evolved into a model of an employer-sponsored on-site program. According to the United States Labor Department, just 5% of all U.S. companies offer some sort of child care assistance to their workers, and among research labs, an extensive on-site program is probably even rarer. Few of even the most prestigious corporate and nonprofit institutes have made as much of a commitment to child care: Battelle Institute offers no day care at any of its several sites around the country; both IBM and Bell Labs offer referral services but no on-site care at their research facilities; Amoco’s Naperville, Ill., lab has nothing yet. And the Brookhaven National Laboratory is still studying the issue. But day care is emerging as an increasingly important lab management issue. Today, relatively few scientists are women— only 15% versus 48% in the work force as a whole, according to the National Science Foundation. But that may change. Some observers strongly believe it has to change. In a recent article in the journal Science (September 30, 1988, pages 1740-1745), aeronautics scientist Sheila Widnall, who is also chairman of the AAAS, wrote: “The issue of the full participation of women in science is at the heart of the question of who will do science in the years ahead.” The U.S. is facing a shortage of scientists, a personnel gap that women could help fill. The college-age population is decreasing, and by the late 1990s the pool of traditional graduate students—white males—will shrink by 26%, NSF predicts. Fortunately a nontraditional source of scientists is growing; that is, women are the most rapidly increasing group of scientists, according to the NSF. In a letter published earlier this year in Science (January 1, page 10), Stanford University chemist Carl Djerassi wrote: “Women are the largest untapped human resource in science.” He went on to ask whether the current low number of female chemists and physicists in the U.S. is due in part “to the time demands of responsible motherhood and the 60- to 80-hour macho work weeks required of males and females alike during their pretenure life?” The same question occurs to Caroline Herzenberg, president of Women in Science, physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, and mother. Obviously, a whole tangle of forces inhibit women’s careers in the sciences, but Herzenberg suspects that “many of the dropouts aren t able to deal with all the arrangements for their children.” She worked out care for her children at her home because “Argonne unfortunately doesn’t have on-site day care.” “Lack of day care is a good way to keep women out of science,” says Jean Slaughter, a physicist based at Yale University, where the limited day care available usually means a 45-minute drive out of the way. During the past 13 years, however, Slaughter has been working on experiments at Fermilab, and her son has spent more than three years at its on-site center. Fermilab’s day care center provides a vivid example of how a research facility can ease the burdens and distractions of child care, encourage women to pursue their careers to the fullest extent, and free both male and female staff members’ energy for science. The center’s staff regularly receives calls from other labs that are studying day care issues, including Brookhaven, Amoco, and Argonne. Fermilab’s Children’s Center was formed in 1979 by an impassioned grassroots movement of the institution’s small fraction of women workers, who this year still account for less than a fifth of the total 2,030 workers. The original seed money for the center, about $10,000, came from the Universities Research Association, which operates Fermilab for the Department of Energy. The URA also acts as a financial safety net for the center, helping to cover expenses if the not-for-profit center has a less-than-break-even year or if additional funds are needed for major purchases. It was the dedication of the lab and URA, notes center director Linda Brady, that kept the doors open when parents, although interested, were at first reluctant for their children to be the guinea pigs. Just two youngsters showed up on day one of operation. But within months, enrollment had reached 20, and today it ranges between 65 and 78. Does the center cost Fermilab an arm and a leg to keep open? Not according to John Barry, who heads up the lab’s accommodations office, which oversees the Children’s Center budget. The bulk of the operating costs are met by the tuition paid by parents, which is based on average fees charged by private day care in surrounding communities. The center charges $22 a day for infants, $18.40 for toddlers, and $12.40 a day for older children. A 20% discount goes to families for siblings. In return for this expense, Fermilab scientists get much more than just a babysitter. “We don’t look at the Children’s Center so much as a babysitting facility, but an educational center,” says Barry. “The first goal is primary care, but education is important to their parents, so we try to help them learn through not only the classroom but through other experiences.” The center cares for children as young as six weeks but begins a structured program for the two-to-three-year-olds. These toddlers work through such concepts as the names of farm animals, “community helpers” such as the firemen and librarians, shapes and colors, simple art projects, music, and, of course, a story time. For the big kids—those of four and five, that is—the center offers a range of experiences tailored to the child’s in- terests: more crafts for some, more reading or music for others. For example, Brady recalls one Japanese boy who arrived full of the joy of dinosaurs, whose enthusiasm led to a general Children’s Center project of making an eight-foot-long papier-mAcha creature painted Fermiblue and called Fermisaurus. (The project tested the mettle of the stall’. After being displayed in the main research building, Fermisaurus was being taken apart for the trash—he was a fire hazard as the building stall’ pointed out— when one of the children happened by and was horrified. Brady quickly explained that it was a dinosaur’s job to stay buried under- ground so archaeologists could dig him up.) The location of the Children’s Center, about a mile from the main research facility, also invites participation by the parents. Fathers come in at lunchtime to feed infants; mothers come in to read to their children in the afternoon. If the lab provides special benefits for the children, the children give something special to the lab according to physicist David Ritchie, who has served as president of the parents association. “Seeing the children having lunch with a parent in the cafeteria or coming through the building trick-or-treating humanizes work here, “he says. Richie is steadfastly loyal to the center. “Good day care ties you to an employer like a ball and chain,” he says. “When I considered leaving, I suddenly had to think about how Jamie had been at the center for four years.” Jean Slaughter agrees: “It’s just so difficult to do the job and be a mommy too. Having a good program like the one we have [at Fermilab] certainly frees your mind and allows you to concentrate on your work.” She and other Children’s Center parents hope that research facilities here will follow Fermilab’s model in helping scientists have their children and do their science too. Kathleen Flinn is a freelance writer based in Chicago.

Fermilab: A Leader In Child Care As Well As In Physics

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