Faculty and staff who raise children at the College receive a range of benefits that support their families' child care needs, but find a lack of alternative options, such as backup care services, that other Ivy League universities provide. These services, which parents employed by other schools use when their child is ill or unable to attend day care, are often subsidized by the institutions.
Princeton University and Brown University both contract with Bright Horizons Family Solutions to provide employees with up to 100 hours of backup childcare per year for a co-payment of two to four dollars per hour.
To fill in child care gaps, Dartmouth professors turn to student babysitters. Many post job listings on the Student Employment Office's temporary job database, said Cindy Binzen, assistant coordinator of the Dartmouth-affiliated Child Care Project.
"What we tell people is that they can post a job through the Student Employment Office," she said. "We don't keep a list of people that do babysitting or even nanny care."
Yale University and Harvard University offer websites that connect employees with student babysitters. Dartmouth professors interviewed said they would welcome a similar service but were ambivalent about the Student Employment Office database.
"I've had more success going through students I knew who had friends who did babysitting, or who sent emails to their sororities," government professor Brendan Nyhan said. "A babysitting service would be great."
The Dartmouth College Child Care Center provides quality child care, but at a high cost. Women's and gender studies professor Douglas Moody said the center was essential for him and his wife, who also works at the College, but that tuition costs "an arm and a leg."
"We cannot do it without full-time day care or close to full-time day care, especially for our youngest son," he said. "It's rather expensive, but that's the reality of our world."
Dartmouth's child care center has a sliding fee scale that gives discounts to parents with annual incomes of up to $120,000. Monthly tuition ranges from $343 for part-time care after kindergarten for the lowest income bracket to $1,914 for infant care at the highest bracket.
The high sticker tag reflects national trends, and Moody said he would like to see child care facilities throughout the country made more affordable, potentially with taxpayer money.
The College subsidizes tuition even for parents paying at the highest level, child care services director Jeffrey Robbins said. He added that while costs vary regionally, the College's child care center is similar to other options in the area.
"Our fee scale is competitive, or lower, than comparable institutions in the area, but it's a lot of money," he said. "If you're at the bottom of the fee scale, you're stretched to meet all your expenses."
The center is the only College-subsidized option, as Dartmouth does not provide financial assistance to employees sending their children to other day cares.
Princeton provides all employees who earn less than $130,000 annually with a $5,000 credit for their first child's tuition at any day care center, and $1,000 for a second child.
Dartmouth has no similar policy, though it is one of three Ivy League universities along with Yale and the University of Pennsylvania to provide a sliding fee scale. Financial assistance policies are common across these university-affiliated day care centers.
Prospective parents at the child care center face limited openings and a long waiting list. Space limitations can pose a greater problem than price for some local families, said Nyhan, whose three children attended the College's day care.
"I would say the bigger issue with child care is that there aren't a lot of providers in the Upper Valley," he said. "The area tends to have more nursery schools, which are less flexible to the hours of working parents."
Nyhan was able to get a spot for his child after spending two years on the waiting list. Newly hired professors, however, are unlikely to be able to wait this long, he said.
Nearby child care centers include those at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the Kendal at Hanover retirement community and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.
While parents who live farther from Hanover often opt to send their children to local day care centers, affordability is an increasing concern for parents living closer to the College, Binzen said. She noted that state assistance from Vermont or New Hampshire is available for child care needs, but only to parents at the lowest end of the income scale.
"The Hanover-Norwich area is a pretty pricey area for child care," she said. "My guess is the rates have gone up as demand increases for quality child care."
Dartmouth employees have benefited from expanded parental leave policies as well as tenure policies for parenting professors. Leave policies cover birth mothers and were recently extended to fathers and adoptive parents.
"I think Dartmouth has made significant progress in this area," women's and gender studies professor Annabel Martin said. "Faculty members have a generous family leave process."
The College provides a one-course reduction in the required course load to tenure-track professors who become parents. Tenure-track faculty are also given a one-year extension in their tenure clock, or the amount of time given to professors before they are reviewed for tenure.
"It's about recognizing the work involved in caring for young children," sociology professor Denise Anthony said of the College's accomodations.
Non-faculty employees who are not union members may take paid maternity leave, with eight weeks for mothers and two weeks for partners, spouses and adoptive parents. In addition, Dartmouth reimburses employees receiving infertility treatments for up to $5,000 a year.
Though many of these College policies are beneficial, they often fail to help professors who have just become parents, Anthony said. Expectations about availability outside of work hours or the volume of published work may be unrealistic.
"Even when there are policies in place that are absolutely essential and are available to everybody, there is the cultural side to those things, the more informal demands made on employees," Anthony said. "I can't say that all of Dartmouth is doing that as well as we might hope because those things are more difficult to change."
Anthony added that staff may face additional difficulties as a result of the difference in the benefits available to them or their distance from Hanover.
Patricia Hedin, assistant director of residential life, said she was happy with the College's staff benefits plan, though she has not used its family-related benefits.
"The College has some benefits that the staff are very happy with," she said. "I don't have a complaint. I've been here for 23 years, and it's a great place to work."
Aside from College-specific policies, staff collaboration and support is essential to employees with young children, French and Italian professor Tonia Convertini said. She said she enjoys her department's openness to young children, particularly on snow days, when many professors bring children into the office.
"I think that we need to think out of the box and think of alternative ways to support each other," she said. "Dartmouth is also a network of overall compassionate, understanding people."
