Assistant Professor of Anthropology Carole A.S. Mandryk spent last summer on an archaeological expedition in Northern California. As usual, she took her two young sons, Nicholas, 7, and Zachary, 2, with her.

"My in-laws were going to meet me in the field and watch my kids," Mandryk says.

But at the last minute, her husbands' parents weren't able to go to California. Fortunately, Harvard hired a nanny to fly to California to watch the boys.

But such programs as emergency day care for faculty are relatively new at the University. And Mandryk's situation highlights a problem which is increasing as Harvard hires more female faculty members; the tension between work and family.

"A lot of parents find it initially difficult to get field experience because they have kids and you wouldn't be bringing kids to a field situation," Mandryk says.

In work in archaeology, Mandryk has attempted to reconcile the conflict by taking her sons along. But the problem is not field specific.

Across the disciplines, classes, office hours, laboratory experiments and field research inevitably clash with ballet recitals, baseball games, parent-teacher conferences, bedtimes and--sometimes most problematically-children's illnesses.

Professors with teenage children say times have changed over the last ten years. While they were left to fend for themselves and find a way to balance academic work and family responsibilities on their own, they say they have noticed increasing University support for working mothers and acceptance of faculty members with outside responsibilities.

Professors with younger children praise newly implemented policies and programs which help them balance career and family.

But, particularly for junior faculty, subsidized day care and parental leave do not alleviate the pressure to publish and the demands of achieving a tenured position.

Family Planning

For many women, the issue is when, if at all, to have children.

Professor of Government and Sociology Theda Skocpol waited until she was 41 and been tenured before having her son Michael, 7.

Edie Greene, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado who is on sabbatical this year at Harvard Law School, married at 35 and then had her two children, David, 5, and Rebecca, 3.

"I was well on my way toward tenure then. I got tenure when I was on maternity leave," Greene says. "I think that it would have been hard to do it any other way."