A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor has gone viral for installing a crib in his lab for a graduate student who is also a new mom.
When grad student Karen Cunningham, 29, was coming back to school after having a baby, her biology lab professor Troy Littleton, 54, wanted to make things a bit easier for her — so he asked the nine other grad students to chip in on a crib where Karen could put her 10-month-old daughter Katie.
Last month, he shared a photo of the crib on Twitter, where it quickly went viral — and prompted a passionate discussion about resources for new moms.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Karen Cunningham, 29, and her husband welcomed a baby girl named Katie last July
Troy Littleton, 54, who runs a biology lab, chipped in with Cunningham’s fellow graduate students on a travel crib for the office
MIT actually offers on-campus daycare for parents, but it was shut down during the pandemic last year — which was an unwelcome surprise for Cunningham.
‘It really was a little stressful to have the world shut down in the middle of our pregnancy, then give birth knowing we were going on this big adventure without all of the infrastructure we needed,’ she told the Washington Post.
She and her husband, Steve, welcomed Katie into the world on July 6, and planned for Steve to be home with Katie while teaching classes online.
But sometimes, things come up — he has meetings, or she has a quick errand to run at the lab.
So Littleton enlisted Cunningham’s fellow graduate students to go in on a travel crib together, and he surprised her with it when she came back.
‘Usually in non-pandemic times we always have baby showers for expectant mothers and fathers where we give them gifts and we weren’t able to do that with Karen because of the pandemic, so this was sort of the lab gift for Karen, 10 months later,’ he told Good Morning America.
‘Child care in any profession is a challenge, but in science, it can even be more challenging,’ he added to the Washington Post. ‘Experiments don’t always fit a 9-to-5 schedule. It just made sense for Karen to bring Katie in.’
The school offers on-campus daycare, but it was closed during the pandemic
Cunningham’s husband has been home with the baby, but when she returned to school, her professor had a surprise
Littleton said he was ‘delighted’ when Cunningham came into the lab for the first time with Katie, prompting him to share a photo on Twitter.
‘My favorite new equipment purchase for the lab — a travel crib to go in my office so my graduate student can bring her 9-month old little girl to work when necessary and I get to play with her while her mom gets some work done. Win-win!!’ he wrote.
His tweet went viral, earning over 117,000 likes, plus plenty of comments.
Many commenters applauded him, with one writing, ‘It takes a village!’ and another saying, ‘This is amazing!’
Others, however, said that while the gesture was kind, the US should have parental leave laws and childcare systems in place that would render this kindness unnecessary.
Littleton told GMA that he didn’t intent to ‘create this large discussion about the challenges mothers face in the workplace’ when he tweeted, but he is glad that it happened, ‘because we need to be solving these issues, both in academia and on a broader level as well.’
Meanwhile, Cunningham is grateful to have the crib as ‘backup’ until Katie starts daycare in the fall.
Cunningham said it’s ‘great’ and ‘useful’ as a backup plan, or when she is stopping by the lab for an errand
Littleton tweeted a photo of the crib, which earned praise on social media — but also prompted a discussion about parental leave and childcare in the US
‘There’s the solid, focused six to eight hours of work that you wouldn’t want to bring a baby in for, but then there’s the lab errands that you do here and there and that’s when it’s really useful,’ she explained.
‘I can put Katie down and just go do something quick and I can see her and talk to her and she can nap in there. It’s great.’
But she agreed with those who said that parental leave and childcare need to be better handled in the US, noting that it often falls on women to make tough choices — and ends up pushing them out of certain career paths.
‘What Troy has done is like a little warm spot in a mess of unaffordable child care and inadequate parental leave in our country,” she added.
‘I didn’t know anyone who’d had a baby in grad school,’ she said. ‘Having to make that choice is driving a lot of women out of science. I honestly felt like I was bushwhacking, but I really wanted a child.’
She continued: ‘I think it’s really easy to look at the systemic challenges facing parents and moms in our country … and kind of throw up your hands and be like, “Well it’s huge. I can’t fix that.”
‘But then these sort of local ways that people in positions of power can protect parents against the systemic things, like what Troy’s been doing in creating a really supportive and inclusive lab, I think that does make a really big difference and it’s great to have an example of that.’