hey,
i think it can be a good idea depending on how it happens. First, I am not concerned with the safety of your child. YOu probably know if he can survive or not and the risks involved with the environment. I think it is good as a supplement to your sons development and interests. However what you are doing is potentially harmful for your childs development and identity. You are disallowing him the chance you form relationships with his peers. In addition to that danger you are influencing what his ideas will be about his own interests as far as career go and his own pursuits. Make sure you don’t push your dreams on your son

I too have spent many field seasons in the north away from my family. Its not great, but I can understand the NSF position too. I have heard many horror stories from colleagues around the world about bringing children to the field - everthing from road accidents to kidnapping by bandits. Like it or not, field work is hazardous and probably not the best place for a kid. I worry enough about my adult field crews when it can take a week or ten days to get a flight into a field camp.
When I worked in the Canadian arctic a number of us considered bringing our small children into the field, along with someone to help look after them, only to find that the charter plane would not take anyone under age 12 out to a remote camp. You don’t say how old your son is, but perhaps when he is older?
I do hope that one day I will be able to bring my daughter into the field, but I don’t believe that NSF funds should be directed towards bringing children into the field - if and when I bring my daughter, it will be at my own expense.

Thanks for the comments. I totally agree with you in terms of it not being my goal to turn my son into a global change scientist. However, the scientific method is a great approach to any profession, and even in the worst case I think my turning him into a scientist is a lot better than turning him into a head-in-the-sand jesus freak like many americans do with their kids. But I was confused about your comment about the harm I would be doing to him. There’s two choices here: 1) I take him with me for a few weeks to months in some of the most spectacular and pritine areas of the world to learn the impacts of society on the landscape or 2) I’m away from him for weeks to months while he sits in day care watching Barney or Thomas the Train. In my mind this is a no-brainer (#1…). Do you disagree?

Genevieve,
I havent heard many horror stories in my circles, but I am thinking about starting a network of scientist/parents so that we can all learn from each other’s mistakes/experiences in this regard. From my perspective, while there are certainly some new challenges to overcome, it’s just one of many in the field. And while having a 2 year old may slow me down a little, I consider that slow down a better solution than changing careers. (Though I have often thought about selling used cars…). I also would be happy to pay for his expenses, the main issue is that in a lot of remote locations there are very few options for logistics and NSF often has these tied up. That is, if it were simply a matter of paying for a seat in a helicopter, it would be no problem, but for me to ferry a new helicopter in from 500 miles away just for this seat because the NSF has the only local helicopter tied up in a 3 month contract makes this essentially impossible. I can say that we spent 3 weeks with our son backpacking into a glacier in ANWR in Alaska last year, where he turned 1, and it was a great experience for all of us. We certainly had our share of surprises, but we were well-prepared and had our string of backup plans ready. It’s not for everyone, and its also not for every one of my trips, but I think it should be an option that can be rationally discussed by professionals with appropriate expertise rather than by laywers and bureaucrats simply afraid of bad press.-Matt

In an earlier post Matt, you talked about our forced reliance on infrastructure. That the fabric of our lives is the cause of global warming and that we must alter that fabric if we need to change. I see this as another place where this manifests. Even though the NSF people know and respect you, their system doesn’t support an wholistic way of living - in this case bringing children into the field. So while individuals may support this, the institution/infrastructure of their/our lives doesn’t. The way you live, or are trying to live runs counter to the current way the world is set up and it’s difficult for people, even those who appear to be trying to change the world for the better. Your way of thinking (to my mind anyway) is the way forward, but it appears that you’ve hit against the edge of the current thinking.

I never thought of it like that, but I like that angle and might use it in a proposal – that as scientists we need not only to be pointing out the problems, but changing the structure of science so that’s its not part of the problem and that keeping the family work unit together is a step towards that end.

Two quotes come to mind from Scott Nearing regarding coming up against the edge you mention – ‘Stay one step ahead of the crowd and they’ll treat you as their leader, get two steps ahead and they may lynch you’ and “Fidelity to truth butters no parsnips”. His being fired for his ‘radical’ economic ideas (things like you cant have rich people without also having poor people) in the early 20th century is what directly led to the formation of the tenure system for professors in the US, so that they could get as far ahead of the crowd as they wanted without fearing for their well being. I guess deep behind the scenes in my brain I’ve long thought that this is still a compromise that ultimately still works against you, and that the best way to ensure your own freedom of thought is to control your own tenure through as much self-reliance as possible. If there is one common theme or ‘conspiracy theory’ that unites all businesses (including their investors and employees) and the governments they largely control, it’s “keep the people coming back for more” and decreasing their ability to be self-reliant as much as possible. So a ‘wholistic’ approach is necessary in combating this, because you quickly realize that the individual well-being of nearly the ‘whole’ population around you is dependent on you being dependent on them in some way, and simple things like using compact fluorescent bulbs are a just smoke screen giving the illusion of more self-reliance and may actually make the real problem harder to solve because it makes the symptoms less obvious.