Charlie McTernan
BIO
Group leader in supramolecular chemistry at the Francis Crick Institute (UK). Father of two.
“Starting my family and my group at the same time has been a challenge, but watching both grow and mature (in different ways), is a delight, and keeps me pushing through.”
I’m a Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, a biomedical research institute in London. My wife is a civil servant and also based in London. We’ve been together since university, moving (at different times) to Manchester for my PhD and my wife’s teacher training, then to Cambridge for my postdoc and my wife to work in education outreach. When I was looking for independent positions, one of our key criteria was a city where my wife could also continue her career, as our move to Cambridge hadn’t been great for this. I was lucky enough to land a principal investigator (PI) position in London. Both our families are based in London, which is also the centre of the civil service, so we’ve managed to find a location that works for our family. Although the London commutes make things a little harder!
I started my group in 2021, and we had our first child a year later in 2022, then our second in 2023. I was able to take seven months of parental leave between our children, which has been amazing. I took time off immediately after they arrived so we could bond as a family, which is also practically very useful. I then took a second period of leave at the end of their first year, when my wife returned to work and before they started nursery. This is something I greatly valued and would advocate for – it allowed us to rebalance responsibilities, both in terms of caring and the wider household, but also for our children to view me as a primary carer, which can be a challenge as the working parent. Having solo time when they were a bit older allowed me to really get to know them, to bond with them, and to enjoy more relaxed time, with better sleep!
Balancing a growing group with young children has been challenging. When my son was born, he needed to spend time in the NICU, and the first few months were hard. I was completely cut off from my group for 8 weeks. I was very lucky to be able to depend on a postdoc willing and able to take on management of the group and training of PhD students during this time. But the loss of momentum, and the changes made in my absence, took a long time to build back – without a PI to advocate, groups can be seen as easy targets for space grabs and other detrimental changes.
One of the most significant, and ubiquitous, challenges of having a young family is simply the time demands. My wife and I have arranged childcare to both work 37 hours per week, but academia is a job that struggles to fit in a normal week. We use a nursery for three days a week, and are fortunate that my institution helps with childcare costs. As we live in the same city as our parents, we have a grandparent day for the children, then work a split day on Fridays. One of the hardest things is adapting when things go wrong – a child being ill and off nursery for a month – as there isn’t a lot of slack.
Academia can be a difficult place to be a parent – the workloads are high, and without a manager to balance work, or cover when I am on leave, taking time off can simply feel like digging a hole for later down the line. When I got back from my first parental leave, the first message I got at 0800 on my first day back, was a senior Professor haranguing me for not having marked an exam script, which had been set and sat in my absence. Spending my first day marking 100 scripts, rather than building up my group, wasn’t ideal. But it reflects some of the challenges of academia: outdated expectations, lack of cover and replacement during leave, and a lack of joined up workflows that could delegate responsibilities.
This being said, I think academia can have real advantages. As a PI, my time is my own to a greater degree, so it is much easier for me to take a day off with the kids when they are ill, or when childcare falls through. Conferences can provide a great opportunity to dovetail travel with family at the end, in new and exciting places. A lot of my work can be done from home, which is essential for enabling nursery pick up and collection, split days, and cover days – although working late nights to catch up is never ideal.
Overall, starting my family and my group at the same time has been a challenge, but watching both grow and mature (in different ways), is a delight, and keeps me pushing through.