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Nature News recently featured an article stating that almost half of women in STEM either leave their profession or switch to working part-time after giving birth to their first child in the US. This is more than double the statistics on first-time fathers, although fathers in STEM also leave the field at an alarmingly high rate after entering parenthood. This begs the question, why are we letting this happen? And what can we do to change these numbers?
I had my first child, a daughter, in August 2017. I returned to work as a postdoc eight weeks later. Being a new mom in science had its own unique challenges—the open lab spaces meant that there was no office to pump in, and my daily experiments meant that my incubation periods or use of core equipment changed every day; sticking to a pumping schedule or even a ...
