Did changing work and family demands during COVID-19 (de)motivate academic parents to craft sustainable careers?

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Covid-19 has introduced many contextual changes into individuals’ work and family lives, affecting their career sustainability. Although previous studies have provided evidence for these changes, little is known about how changing contextual demands (de)motivated them to take proactive initiatives for crafting sustainable careers.

OBJECTIVE:

This study aims to explore how changing work and family demands of academic parents during Covid-19 affected their career sustainability indicators and career initiatives regarding health, happiness, and productivity.

METHODS:

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 21 academic parents during the post-lockdown period of Covid-19 in Turkey. We analyzed the qualitative data by using content analysis via MAXQDA software.

RESULTS:

Results revealed differing career sustainability experiences and initiatives regarding gender roles, career stage, and work/family demands and resources. Notably, women academics with higher contextual demands and lower contextual resources and early-career academics reported relatively adverse experiences concerning their health, happiness, and productivity. Besides, even though early-career academics faced problems with sustaining their career development, they were relatively more oriented to engage in career initiatives, such as reorganizing developmental needs, improving career skills, and seeking career support and guidance.

CONCLUSIONS:

This study sheds light on the context, time, and person aspects of sustainable careers during Covid-19. Moreover, the study represents one of the first investigations into the proactive initiatives for crafting sustainable careers during the pandemic and provides a deeper insight into the (de)motivators for career proactivity.

Keywords

Covid-19 career choice sustainable development parents work-family balance academic performance gender role qualitative research

1 Introduction

The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has led the topics of career sustainability and work-family interaction to gain attention [1, 2]. The pandemic has brought many health-related concerns and economic problems, which threatened the sustainability of organizations and individual careers [3]. During the pandemic, careers have been mostly affected by the environment of uncertainty and the blurring of the boundaries between work and family roles [4]. The unforeseen circumstances of the pandemic have brought significant changes to work-family lives, especially for employees with parental responsibilities. Previous research showed that employees with parental responsibilities were more likely to experience adverse effects on their work and family lives during the pandemic because of increased childcare and domestic demands [5 –7]. The pandemic brought excessive emotional and cognitive demands into their lives. As such, the blurred boundaries between work and family rendered employees more vulnerable to experiencing work-family interference [8]. Excessive family demands during the pandemic disturbed the work-family balance and triggered a work-family conflict [9], which threatened one’s career sustainability.

One of the adversely affected career paths, academic careers have faced pandemic-related disruptions in research and teaching activities [10, 11]. Considering that academic careers necessitate a well-crafted balance between work and family contexts, the unforeseen circumstances of the pandemic have largely disturbed this delicate balance. Academics with parental responsibilities found themselves in an unpredicted adaptation process during the pandemic. Recent research showed that most academic parents experienced overall adverse effects on their productivity and health during the pandemic [10 –13]. They had to reorganize their academic tasks, such as research projects, teaching, and supervision remotely, while simultaneously carrying out domestic responsibilities [12]. Although some academics are generally used to working from home and planning their time more flexibly, especially women academics with parental responsibilities reported that increasing work and family demands impaired their performance and well-being [14, 15]. Prior research has also shown that some academic parents poorly benefited from contextual resources to deal with increasing contextual demands during the pandemic [9, 16]. They were unable to utilize external resources (e.g., nursemaid or grandparent support for childcare) and suffered from a decrease in internal resources (e.g., personal time) [17]. Although they desperately sought work and family resources (e.g., supervisory or spousal support), they had difficulties in acquiring and benefiting from those resources, especially academic mothers [14, 16]. Even though flexibility and autonomy were essential resources for academics, the blurred boundaries between work and family diminished the benefits of these resources in dealing with contextual demands [15]. Overall, previous research has provided evidence for the experiences of academic parents during Covid-19. However, what remains underexplored is how their changing work and family demands affected their career sustainability indicators and initiatives.

Considering the increasing career demands in today’s turbulent work environment, recent perspectives have focused on what makes careers sustainable or unsustainable [2 , 19]. Stressing three key dimensions of sustainable careers (i.e., time, context, and person), Van der Heijden and De Vos [19] defined the concept as “sequences of career experiences reflected through a variety of patterns of continuity over time, thereby crossing several social spaces, characterized by individual agency, herewith providing meaning to the individual” (p. 7). The time dimension places a temporal perspective on career experiences rather than a static view. As such, employees continuously attempt to learn and adapt to changing processes within their work and non-work context [20]. Second, the context dimension explains how different stakeholders affect careers across the lifespan (e.g., family, friends, colleagues, or supervisors). This perspective underscores that employees possess specific contextual demands and resources, which shape their career decisions and behaviors. Third, the person dimension stresses the elements of agency and meaning. As such, the individuals are the central actors of their careers, and they can manage their careers’ sustainability through proactivity (e.g., taking initiatives for career opportunities). Therefore, these personal initiatives can help them build meaningful careers. Furthermore, this perspective calls attention to the indicators rather than certain outcomes. In this regard, De Vos et al. [2] suggest three groups of key indicators of sustainable careers: health (e.g., physical and psychological well-being), happiness (e.g., career success, work-family balance), and productivity (e.g., role performance, employability).

Contemporary career perspectives emphasize that individuals proactively take charge of their own careers and thus better sustain their career development [21]. From this perspective encompassing work and family domains, proactive career behaviors can help individuals better align personal needs and career goals [20]. For instance, one can reduce their workload to attain a more sustainable career [22]. Besides, previous studies have called attention to proactivity in optimizing career sustainability [2]. However, although prior studies have investigated individual proactive career initiatives [23, 24] or coping initiatives [25] during Covid-19, existing literature lacks evidence regarding the initiatives aiming to enhance career sustainability. Considering this gap in the literature, we aim to explore academics’ career initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that academic careers necessitate intense agency in career development, academics are more inclined to take proactive career initiatives to sustain their progress. Considering that, the present study attempts to explore what career initiatives academics engage in to make their careers more sustainable during the pandemic. Specifically, this study will address the following questions: What work and family contextual demands have academic parents faced during the pandemic? What work and family contextual resources have academic parents lacked or taken advantage of to cope with their contextual demands during the pandemic? How have the career sustainability indicators of academic parents changed during the pandemic? What proactive initiatives have academic parents engaged in to craft their career sustainability during the pandemic?

Overall, this study can present valuable contributions to understanding sustainable careers in terms of context, time, and person aspects. Specifically, investigating what work and family demands academic parents experienced and what resources they benefited from during the pandemic can broaden our understanding of the person-context relationship in career sustainability research. Moreover, examining how academic parents’ career experiences changed through the different periods of the Covid-19 pandemic can provide valuable insight into the time perspective of sustainable careers. Finally, exploring what proactive initiatives academic parents engaged in to improve their career sustainability indicators during the pandemic can provide an exciting opportunity to advance our knowledge of the person aspect of sustainable careers.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

To examine the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sustainability of careers, we included academics in the research by adopting the purposive sampling method [26]. Considering the initial findings in the literature that shows parental responsibilities have been one of the challenges for individuals’ work and family outcomes during the pandemic [7], we aimed to focus on the pandemic experiences of academic parents. The present study sampled 21 academic parents from five different social science departments of a state university in Turkey. Data saturation was employed for the sample size of the current study. Francis et al. [27] suggest a stopping criterion for interview studies indicating that when three further interviews have been conducted with no new ideas or themes emerging, researchers could consider this as the point of data saturation. Accordingly, after conducting 18 interviews, we found that there were no new themes emerging in the current study. The stopping criterion was tested after each of the last three consecutive interviews. These interviews did not yield new codes or themes, which confirmed that saturation was reached after 21 interviews. The sample included 11 academic mothers and 10 academic fathers. Participants consisted of 19 married and cohabiting parents currently in a heterosexual relationship. Two parents were single. The sample contained 19 dual-earner parents; five of them were both academics. We grouped participants as early-career (18–35 years old), mid-career (36–45 years old), and late-career (older than 45) [28]. Of academic parents, six were early-career, 10 were mid-career, and five were late-career. They were employed full-time in the academic ranks of lecturer (1), research assistant (6), assistant professor (2), associate professor (8), and professor (4). The participants’ age varied between 31 and 59 (an average of 41.3). They had one to three children varying in age from four months to 25 years old. Two participants were providing eldercare. Six participants suffered from Covid-19; 14 participants experienced a within-family case.

2.2 Procedure

A qualitative research design was adopted to better examine the lived experiences of academic parents during the Covid-19 pandemic. Academic parents were invited to participate in semi-structured in-depth interviews and speak about family and academic responsibilities and career experiences. In the Turkey context, full and partial lockdown measures were taken between March 2020 and May 2021. During the lockdown periods, face-to-face teaching activities were suspended in all educational institutions and replaced by remote teaching. Considering that the individuals under the ambiguous and stressful pandemic circumstances might not describe their experiences in a healthy and reliable way [29], we aimed to conduct interviews during the post-lockdown period of the pandemic when people’s work and family lives were partially normalized. We assumed that such an approach could better explore academics’ lived experiences during the pandemic. Therefore, we conducted the interviews in February and March 2022. The interviews were carried out in Turkish and face-to-face; only two academics requested to participate in online interviews.

The interview sessions were conducted in academics’ offices in the faculty, lasted between 23 and 56 minutes, and were audio-recorded. Before conducting the interview, we informed the participants about the purpose of the research and explained the interview process. All participants provided verbal consent for their interviews to be audio-recorded. We also assured them that the data would be kept confidential and assessed anonymously, and their answers would be used only for academic purposes. In the interview process, we first asked about the demographics, then asked 10 questions and follow-ups about their changing contextual demands and resources, career sustainability indicators, and career initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic (See Appendix). The question set was designed by the authors of this study, analyzing the key dimensions and indicators of career sustainability established by De Vos et al. [2] and reviewing the prior qualitative studies focused on the pandemic-related experiences of academic parents [12 , 15].

2.3 Analysis

The interview data were analyzed using content analysis to extract the patterns of the pandemic-related experiences of academic parents. Following the main steps of the content analysis [30], we first transcribed the interviews verbatim. Second, we read the interview transcriptions on a line-by-line basis and identified initial codes using MAXQDA software. In this vein, we conducted an iterative and collaborative process until reaching a consensus. For enhancing accuracy, an independent researcher reviewed randomly selected two interviews. After refining the generated codes, we concluded a consolidated set of codes sharing similar ideas, subjects, or relationships and reduced the codes into the sub and main patterns. Following this, the researchers identified the most illustrative quotes and translated them into English. An independent researcher reviewed and confirmed the meaning accuracy of translated quotes. Finally, we presented the quotes by using numerical pseudonyms and gave limited identifying information in quotes (e.g., parental role and academic title) to ensure the confidentiality of the participants.

3 Results

The results were categorized into five main patterns: changes in family demands, changes in work demands, changes in work and family resources, changes in career sustainability indicators, and initiatives for crafting sustainable careers. Besides, 19 sub-patterns emerged from the data of the current study.

3.1 Changes in work and family demands during the pandemic

3.1.1 Family demands

Academic parents in this study were first asked about the changes in their family demands and responsibilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most academics indicated that they had experienced a significant increase in their family demands during the pandemic. Childcare demands, household demands, family health, family relations, and eldercare demands were the revealed sub-patterns of the change in family demands. Firstly, academics mentioned the changes in childcare demands, which differed by the number and age of the children and the need for educational support. Specifically, academic parents with two or more children reported relatively high childcare demands during the pandemic than single-child parents. Besides, eight participants had a newborn baby during or just before the pandemic. Taking care of a newborn baby substantially increased their family demands. Parents having school-age children also reported a significant increase in childcare demands, mainly due to homeschooling and helping them adapt to the change. Similarly, Participant-5 states as follows:

“Because the children weren’t able to go to school, we had to take on the role of teachers at home during the pandemic and helped with their studies.... Besides, their social activities became quite limited, so we tried to create activities to entertain them at home.... As parents, we knew that if we psychologically let ourselves go, the children would be much worse. So, we took care to keep our own and children’s morale as high as possible.” (Associate Professor, Father).

Regarding the changes in household demands, academic parents stated that they spent relatively more time on household chores such as cleaning, cooking, and shopping during the pandemic. Because some parents lacked nursemaid, housemaid, and grandparent support during the lockdown, they had to spare more time for childcare and domestic chores. On the other hand, most academic mothers indicated that they were the primary actor in childcare and household chores in the pre-pandemic period, and their family demands substantially increased with the pandemic. Moreover, the number of academic mothers primarily responsible for domestic chores and childcare noticeably increased during the pandemic. However, no academic fathers primarily undertook childcare and household chores before, during, or after the pandemic. Few parents were equally sharing the domestic workload before the pandemic, and they continued sharing the family workload during the pandemic. Although some parents started splitting the family workload during the lockdown, only a few continued in the post-lockdown period.

Academic parents also reported that their health-related family demands increased, such as increasing hygiene measures, increasing concerns about catching and carrying the virus into the family, or experiencing Covid-19 cases within the family. Moreover, some parents indicated that due to spending more time with family members at home, relational problems between children or spouses sometimes occurred, which brought an increase in emotional demands. Although eldercare was not among the indicators of increased family demands for most, two academics reported that they provided distance help for elders during the pandemic, such as fulfilling the needs of shopping, cleaning, and cooking.

3.1.2 Work demands

As for work demands, we asked academics whether there have been any changes in their academic responsibilities and workload during the pandemic. They mentioned the changes in research, teaching, supervisory, and administrative demands. Specifically, academic parents illustrated initial work-related adversities during the pandemic and specific gains after the adaptation period. Academics reported that although their teaching and supervisory workload did not change quantitatively, adaptation to remote working took initial cognitive effort. Besides, they indicated that online lessons were not as efficient as face-to-face lessons before the pandemic. Some academics reported that due to students’ reduced concentration and participation during the online lessons, they had to put extra effort into motivating them. Furthermore, academics generally referred to changes in research demands and increased use of virtual channels for research projects. However, when compared to the pre-pandemic, some academics indicated that their time allocated for research tasks decreased substantially, especially the ones with relatively high parental demands; they indicated lacking time and energy for research. Similarly, Participant-1 states:

“During the pandemic, even though my workload did not change broadly, my routine workload started to become heavy as my work productivity decreased due to working at home.” (Research Assistant, Father)

In addition, whereas some academics were satisfied with the online meetings with their research team or supervisors/students to discuss the research projects, some indicated that lack of coordination caused delays or problems with the research. Moreover, some academics stated that they found long-sought time to focus on previously suspended research projects at home. Besides, academics who have administrative roles indicated that their coordination- and planning-related work demands unpredictably increased, and that caused growing complexity and additional workload. Changing plans due to the positive Covid-19 cases in the department was one of the causes of increasing coordination demands.

3.2 Changes in work and family resources during the pandemic

As for work and family social resources, we first asked academics whether their organization, supervisor, and colleagues held a supportive attitude towards their family life and academic career during the pandemic. Most academics indicated that the university management set flexible working hours and shifts in line with the government-level directions. However, although academics were satisfied with those structural arrangements, they stated that their university’s initiatives for their family lives and academic careers were quite unsatisfactory. Furthermore, academics’ expectations from the university management differed by career stage. As such, due to having greater autonomy and flexibility, mid- and late-career academics’ expectations from the management regarding work procedures were quite limited. They were mostly organizing their teaching program and research tasks with their own initiatives. However, early-career academics having relatively limited autonomy experienced uncertainty about the research and work procedures and desperately needed guidance and support. They also indicated that even though they appreciated flexible working, they were not provided the career support they actually needed. Additionally, academics indicated that after the pandemic restrictions were partially removed and they backed into office, they were distressed about catching the virus from the office environment. Accordingly, they limited their social conversations with other colleagues as possible. They also indicated that colleague support was quite poor because everyone focused on their own problems. As Participant-9 states:

“Neither my manager nor my colleagues had any extra initiative in terms of support. Everyone had their own problems.... Sometimes common troubles were discussed between friends in online meetings, but no one was in a position to help anyone else. ... The fact is that we all had the same big problem, but the ways of experiencing the problem differed from one another.” (Lecturer, Mother)

Furthermore, we asked academic parents whether their family members held a supportive attitude toward their work and academic career during the pandemic. Academics reported that they were trying to flexibly undertake childcare when one of the spouses needed time for their work tasks. This sympathetic approach was most prevalent in parents who are both academics; they were accommodating each other’s working from home. However, academic mothers indicated that they received limited support from their husbands who are working in the private sector and have highly variable work schedules. In addition, some parents stated their children showed a sympathetic manner toward their academic responsibilities at home by providing a silent environment for online lessons. Furthermore, most academics stated that their family was used to their academic lifestyle. Hence, their family members showed understanding and empathy toward their academic studies during the pandemic. As Participant-14 states:

“My children are so used to their mothers sitting in a corner working on their own studies on the computer. It had become very ordinary for them to be working while I was at home. ... During the pandemic, when my academic workload increased, they were helping me focus on my tasks, and they were taking care of themselves. ... I felt lucky to have seen such an understanding from my husband and children.” (Assistant Professor, Mother)

Overall, academic parents reported that they benefited from the social family resources (e.g., spousal support, work-supportive family, children’s understanding manner), while they were not able to draw a significant advantage from the social work resources, and especially career support was mostly limited. In addition, academic parents’ social family resources contributed to within- and between-domain positive outcomes. For example, spending happy time with family members helped some participants optimize their psychological well-being at home and reduce work-related stress.

3.3 Changes in career sustainability indicators during the pandemic

We investigated the experiences of academic parents’ career sustainability indicators regarding health (i.e., psychological and physical health), happiness (i.e., work-family balance satisfaction), and productivity (i.e., academic performance and career development). First, we asked academics whether they faced any psychological and physical health problems during the pandemic. In terms of psychological health, most academics reported that they experienced increased stress and anxiety due to the environment of uncertainty during the pandemic. Especially the initial shocking days of the pandemic and the first lockdown were the periods in which participants faced increasing problems with their psychological health. For the family context, the mentioned causes for the increased stress and exhaustion were mainly concerns about the health of the family members, increasing childcare demands (e.g., caring for newborn babies, homeschooling, lacking nursemaid and grandparent support), increasing household chores (e.g., cleaning, cooking and planning meals, shopping and delivery problems, lacking housemaid support), and relational problems between family members. Specifically, some academic mothers indicated that their increasing family demands and effort for coordinating work and family during the lockdown caused psychological fatigue. However, academic fathers rarely mentioned psychological adversities due to excessive family demands or coordinating work and family. Moreover, most academics reported that they had experienced work-related stress or fatigue because of adaptation problems with remote working and online teaching, difficulties in coordinating academic tasks, delays or problems with research projects, and lack of a suitable workspace and time at home. Besides, some academics stated that they were joining too many online meetings in some weeks, and that created relational fatigue. Being virtually accessible at any time and incessant e-mail traffic about the research projects made them feel psychologically disturbed. Regarding physical health, academic parents reported that they mainly suffered from general fatigue and physical inactivity at home. They stated that their screen time increased, which resulted in neck/back aches and vision disorders. Specifically, some academic mothers indicated that they experienced physiological fatigue and lack of sleep due to organizing childcare, household chores, and academic tasks. Though academic parents mostly indicated putting on weight, especially some academic mothers stated that they lost weight during the lockdown primarily due to increasing domestic demands. Besides, academic parents who suffered from Covid-19 stated that they had severe symptoms in the first week and were influenced both physically and psychologically. Participant-13 shares their experiences as follows:

“During the lockdown period, I had to constantly steal from my sleep and my own existence.... I had routine chores at home, and I also had to take care of the children. Besides, when responsibilities such as online lessons, exams, and assignments accumulated, I could hardly spare any time for my research. This reflected on me both as fatigue and stress.” (Associate Professor, Mother)

On the other hand, academics referring to positive experiences of the pandemic mainly stated that they were quickly able to adapt to working from home. Besides, not wasting time commuting to work helped them better manage their energy and time to focus on their research. Notably, these academics mostly had low childcare and household demands, and their families were used to them working at home. Therefore, they were more easily able to plan their time and create a silent workspace at home that could help their adaptation to remote work. Although the pandemic’s undesirable consequences were prominent, some academic parents also noted that spending more time with their families made them feel happy. They had opportunities to observe their children’s development more closely. Likewise, Participant-6 shares their experiences as follows:

“There has been a substantial increase in our family responsibilities (during the pandemic), especially in terms of taking care of children, but this did not bother me. On the contrary, I think that the pandemic period had a positive effect on our family.... As working parents, we realized that we could not spend enough time with our children before the pandemic because of our busy work schedules. ... The pandemic allowed us to spend more time with our family and understand each other better. I also had the opportunity to monitor my children’s development more closely.” (Assistant Professor, Father)

Furthermore, we asked academics whether they were satisfied with the time they allocated to their academic tasks and family life during the pandemic. Academic parents indicated that the boundaries between work and family blurred, and they mostly prioritized their family needs due to being at home. Although academic fathers stated that their family demands increased, most of them were able to allocate time for their academic tasks and were satisfied with their work-family balance. However, most academic mothers reported having difficulties balancing work and family during the pandemic. Their increasing family demands limited the time and energy that could be spared for academic tasks. Participant-9 shares their experience regarding difficulties in balancing work and family as follows:

“Honestly, I wasn’t satisfied with the time I spared either for my family or for my academic studies. While working on my academic tasks, I was also thinking of family responsibilities and children. On the other hand, when spending time with the family, I couldn’t stop thinking of my incomplete (academic) tasks.... As I mentioned, the boundaries were quite blurred. Coordinating work and family became a challenging issue.” (Lecturer, Mother)

In addition, we asked academics whether the pandemic affected their academic performance in terms of teaching and research activities. Most academic parents reported limited changes in their teaching performance. After the initial adaptation process to online teaching, they were able to continue the lessons more comfortably. As for research performance, results mainly differed by career stage and gender. For late-career academic parents, even though their productivity and time allocated for research projects decreased, they stated that this situation did not seriously disturb them. However, especially early-career academic mothers observed a significant decrease in their research performance and had difficulties in their research processes. Although academic fathers were mostly satisfied with their research and publishing performance, early- and mid-career academic mothers mostly reported that their family demands and the difficulties in coordinating work and family affected their productivity, which caused additional stress and career anxiety. Likewise, Participant-9 explains:

“Due to family responsibilities, my working productivity at home dropped significantly during the lockdown. This situation caused a feeling of failure and inadequacy, as well as career anxiety.... As you know, academia has a competitive environment in itself. In such an environment, no matter how hard I tried as a mother, the feeling of inadequacy in my performance created excessive stress on me.” (Lecturer, Mother)

Finally, we asked academics whether they had any concerns or problems with their career development during the pandemic. Academic parents’ career-related experiences mainly differed by career stages. Most mid- and late-career tenured academics reported that they experienced limited problems with their careers. Although they had problems with short-term career goals (e.g., book or research projects), they were not as anxious about not reaching those goals as early-career academics were. However, due to their tenure-track employment, the pandemic-related problems in the research processes led early-career academics to experience increasing career anxiety. Some early-career academics indicated that they mostly lacked career support and training, which made them vulnerable to facing problems that could make their careers unsustainable.

3.4 Initiatives for crafting sustainable careers

Considering the adverse effects of the pandemic concerning career sustainability indicators of health, happiness, and productivity, academics were also asked about their proactive initiatives for optimizing these indicators. Overall, academics mentioned initiatives for optimizing psychological and physical health, work-family balance, academic performance, and sustaining career development. As for individual initiatives to deal with pandemic-related adversities to their health, academic parents reported that they planned routines and family activities at home and spared time for hobbies. In addition, academic parents indicated that they allocated time for physical exercise at home to optimize their well-being. Some academic mothers also indicated that they started practicing meditation techniques. However, some academic mothers were already busy with their academic work out of household chores and childcare. Therefore, they reported that they were not even able to find time for themselves, let alone start new hobbies or physical exercise. Some of them stated that they sought psychological support and counseling during the pandemic. Regarding the initiatives for balancing work and family, academics indicated that they planned daily routines, engaged in active time management, attempted to create a workspace at home, and sought spousal support. Some academics indicated that creating and following a daily schedule while spending time with children at home was quite challenging. They were sometimes asking for spouses to take care of the children so that they could create time for their academic tasks. Academic parents who had children aged between 1–5 stated that they attempted to plan their time according to their children. As such, they were working on the academic tasks when the children were asleep, especially at night. On the other hand, academic parents who had relatively lower parental demands stated that they were able to plan and follow daily or weekly routines more flexibly. As for the initiatives for optimizing academic performance and productivity, academics indicated that they planned daily/weekly work routines, refocused the previously suspended research projects, sought a suitable workspace at home, and attempted to get feedback and advice for current research tasks. Besides, some academics stated that they adapted to using new technologies, which also helped them optimize their academic performance. Although academics illustrated such initiatives, the ones with higher family demands were less likely to engage in initiatives optimizing their productivity. Additionally, academic parents whose childcare demands were relatively low indicated that they were able to spare time for research tasks; thus, they sustained their publication performance during the lockdown periods. Besides, academics in the earlier career stages were more likely to take research-oriented initiatives to meet the performance criteria set by the university. As for career development initiatives, academics mainly took personal initiatives such as reorganizing academic tasks and projects, seeking career support and guidance, learning new research methods or techniques, improving teaching and research skills, and participating in online conferences and webinars. Notably, early-career academics were relatively more oriented to take initiatives to sustain their tenure-track career progress. Besides, for some of them, such career initiatives were critically important for sustaining their careers. Likewise, Participant-18 shares their experiences as follows:

“Due to the status of my employment contract, I have had concerns about my career.... I was supposed to complete my doctoral research, but the pandemic changed all my plans. I fell behind in most of my plans.... Now, I plan to spend extra time in the office by allocating an extra budget for the nursemaid and complete the missing parts of my research.... I will have to make compromises in my family life for my career. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.” (Research Assistant, Mother)

In addition, most academics indicated that their initiatives for seeking new networks were quite limited during the pandemic. They mostly attempted to ask their supervisors or colleagues in their current network for career advice via online conversations. Yet, the interaction quality was relatively poor and superficial for most. Besides, some reported that although they took initiatives to gain new networks and asked for research collaborations, the results were unsatisfactory. As Participant-3 explains:

“There were researchers that I wanted to consult, especially for my doctoral research. I contacted them via e-mail but couldn’t receive any useful feedback. ... Although some responded positively, they did not want to spend much time. ... I guess everyone just wanted to focus on themselves during the pandemic.” (Research Assistant, Mother)

4 Discussion

This qualitative study attempts to explore how academic parents’ changing work/family demands during Covid-19 influenced their career sustainability indicators and career initiatives, thereby contributing to the understanding of context, time, and person aspects of sustainable careers. First, regarding the context aspect, we examined what work/family demands and resources academic parents experienced during Covid-19. Results revealed that academic parents experienced a substantial change in their work and family demands. Their family demands considerably increased primarily due to rising childcare and household responsibilities, while their existing work demands started to become heavy mainly due to changing work context. These findings support the previous studies investigating pandemic-related changes in working parents’ and academics’ lives [5 , 16]. Besides, results illustrated differentiating profiles by gender roles and career stages. Findings showed that most academic parents already had a gendered division of domestic labor, which involves academic mothers being the primary actor to cope with domestic workload rather than academic fathers. During Covid-19, this unequal sharing of family workload led to disadvantageous consequences for women academics’ career sustainability. Academic mothers whose family demands excessively increased during the pandemic experienced more frequent psychological distress and exhaustion rather than academic fathers. Our findings are consistent with recent studies that illustrate how pandemic circumstances exacerbated existing gender inequality, which involves academic mothers experiencing reduced productivity and well-being [14 –16]. In addition, results revealed that tenure-track early- and mid-career academics had relatively high work demands when compared to tenured mid- and late-career academics. During the pandemic, tenure-track academics were the ones who experienced relatively more difficulties in coping with existing academic work demands. Moreover, problems with adapting to changing work context introduced by the pandemic considerably reduced their productivity. This result broadly supports the work of De Gruyter [29], which enlightens the pandemic experiences of academics in different career stages. On the other hand, in accordance with previous investigations [12], results showed that Covid-19 also introduced specific gains and opportunities for academic parents, such as reducing commute time, strengthening family ties, and learning new digital tools that can develop career skills. However, the ones who benefited from these opportunities were mostly academic parents with relatively lower family demands. Besides, having considerable flexibility and autonomy in work procedures were valuable resources for academic parents to deal with contextual demands. However, in line with previous studies, academic mothers [15] and early-career academics [29] hardly benefited from these resources because of perceived gender roles and career path dependency. Additionally, spousal support became one of the most sought contextual resources during the pandemic. As illustrated by prior studies [14], spousal support and an understanding manner within the family represented a valuable contextual resource for academic parents. Overall, these findings might provide valuable evidence for understanding the person-context relationship in career sustainability research.

Second, as for the time aspect, the current study examined how academic parents’ career experiences changed through the time during the Covid-19 pandemic and differed by career stages. Results broadly showed that academics faced an initial shock and adaptation process at the beginning of the pandemic. This period required higher psychological, physical, and cognitive effort in work and family domains for academic parents. The initial and further effort required through the pandemic largely differed by perceived gender roles, career stages, and contextual demands and resources. Specifically, most academic mothers were already in a position that could make their careers unsustainable due to perceived unequal gender roles in the pre-pandemic. On top of that, the pandemic introduced many additional challenges to their careers, which significantly undermined their productivity and health during the lockdown. Consistent with these results, previous research demonstrated that academic mothers remained behind in terms of research and publication performance and struggled with difficulties through the pandemic [14, 16]. After the lockdown restrictions were partially removed and people turned back to previous routines, most academics started to reach pre-pandemic performance levels. However, academic mothers had to deal with the performance criteria that they had already fallen behind. That might adversely affect their future career goals and career sustainability during the pandemic. As emphasized by the previous studies [12], that might lead us to understand the importance of family-supportive work culture and rethink the performance evaluation criteria of parents set by the university policies. In addition, our perspective encompassing career stages can also enlighten the time aspect of sustainable careers. In line with the previous studies [29], findings show differing career experiences by career stages during Covid-19. Especially, the career experiences of early- and mid-career academics following tenure-track broadly differed from late- and mid-career tenured academics. Tenure-track academics faced difficulties in meeting career expectations and thus had to take more initiatives for sustaining their career development than tenured academics. Accordingly, results might imply that the desire to reach tenure-track career goals and perceived career anxiety motivated academics in the earlier career stages to take more career initiatives during the pandemic.

Third, as to the person aspect, this study provides evidence for how career sustainability indicators of academic parents changed during the pandemic and what career initiatives they developed to optimize their career sustainability. Although previous studies examining academics’ pandemic experiences have provided evidence for changing indicators of health [11 , 31], happiness [9, 15], and productivity [10 , 29], there remains a lack of evidence on how these indicators shape academics’ career sustainability. Adopting a broader perspective, we attempted to contribute to the current understanding of how career sustainability indicators of academic parents changed during the pandemic. Findings illustrated that academics faced problems with their psychological and physical health, work-family balance, and academic performance and productivity. Moreover, academic parents’ experiences regarding career sustainability indicators and their career initiatives largely differed by perceived gender roles, career stages, and contextual demands and resources. Specifically, academic mothers with a gendered division of domestic labor and relatively high family demands were the most adversely affected group regarding health, happiness, and productivity indicators. Besides, rather than mid- and late-career academics, early-careers encountered adverse experiences regarding career development and productivity indicators more frequently, which could undermine their future career expectations. Moreover, being an early-career academic mother was a double whammy such that they had to struggle with both increasing family demands and difficulties with their career development.

Table 1
Development of codes and patterns

Codes Sub-patterns Main patterns

Homeschooling Childcare demands Changes in family demands

Caring for a newborn baby

Lacking nursemaid support

Lacking grandparent support

Children’s adaptation to change

Increased time for cleaning and cooking Household demands

Lacking housemaid support

Problems with shopping

Increased hygiene measures Family health

Catching and carrying the virus into the family

Covid-19 cases within the family

Spending more time with family Family relations

Relational problems between family members

Distance help for elders Eldercare demands

Shopping, cleaning, and cooking for elders

Adaptation to remote systems

Adaptation to online teaching and supervisory Teaching and supervisory demands Changes in work demands

Decreased teaching quality in online

Efforts required to motivate students

Lack of face-to-face interaction

Increased use of virtual channels for research Research demands

Lacking time and energy for research

Delays or problems with the research projects

Time to focus on previously suspended research

Reduced commute time

Increased administrative workload Administrative demands

Increased need for coordination and planning

Flexible work schedule Work social resources Changes in work and family contextual resources

Lacking supervisor support

Lacking career support

Lacking psychological support

Spousal support Family social resources

Flexible sharing of domestic workload

Sympathetic manner from family members

Having more time with children

Stress caused by the uncertainty environment Psychological health Changes in career sustainability indicators

Concerns about family members’ health

Childcare and household chores-related fatigue

Stress caused by family relations

Effort to coordinate work and family

Stress caused by adaptation problems

Stress and fatigue caused by academic tasks

Relational fatigue caused by online meetings

General fatigue and physical inactivity Physical health

Increasing screen time and visual disorders

Neck and back ache

Lack of sleep

Body weight change

Suffering from Covid-19

Prioritizing family needs Work-family balance satisfaction

Lacking time and energy for academic tasks

Blurring boundaries between work and family

Effort for adaptation to remote working Academic performance

Adaptation to online teaching processes

Changes in publishing productivity

Difficulties/opportunities in research processes

Difficulties in coordinating work and family

Feeling of inadequacy

Lacking career support and training Career development

Problems with sustaining research projects

Increasing career anxiety

Delays in reaching career goals

Problems with tenure-track employment

Planning family activities at home Initiatives for optimizing individual health Initiatives for crafting sustainable careers

Sparing time for hobbies

Doing physical exercise

Practicing meditation

Seeking psychological counseling

Creating a workspace at home Initiatives for balancing work and family

Planning routines and time management

Childcare-centered time scheduling

Seeking spousal help for spare time for work tasks Initiatives for optimizing academic performance

Seeking a suitable workspace

Seeking feedback and advice

Planning work routines at home

Refocusing research projects

Adaptation to new technologies

Reorganizing research tasks and projects Initiatives for sustaining career development

Seeking career support and guidance

Improving teaching and research skills

Participating in online conferences and webinars

Learning new technologies, methods, and techniques

Establishing and maintaining academic networks

Codes	Sub-patterns	Main patterns
Homeschooling	Childcare demands	Changes in family demands
Caring for a newborn baby
Lacking nursemaid support
Lacking grandparent support
Children’s adaptation to change
Increased time for cleaning and cooking	Household demands
Lacking housemaid support
Problems with shopping
Increased hygiene measures	Family health
Catching and carrying the virus into the family
Covid-19 cases within the family
Spending more time with family	Family relations
Relational problems between family members
Distance help for elders	Eldercare demands
Shopping, cleaning, and cooking for elders
Adaptation to remote systems
Adaptation to online teaching and supervisory	Teaching and supervisory demands	Changes in work demands
Decreased teaching quality in online
Efforts required to motivate students
Lack of face-to-face interaction
Increased use of virtual channels for research	Research demands
Lacking time and energy for research
Delays or problems with the research projects
Time to focus on previously suspended research
Reduced commute time
Increased administrative workload	Administrative demands
Increased need for coordination and planning
Flexible work schedule	Work social resources	Changes in work and family contextual resources
Lacking supervisor support
Lacking career support
Lacking psychological support
Spousal support	Family social resources
Flexible sharing of domestic workload
Sympathetic manner from family members
Having more time with children
Stress caused by the uncertainty environment	Psychological health	Changes in career sustainability indicators
Concerns about family members’ health
Childcare and household chores-related fatigue
Stress caused by family relations
Effort to coordinate work and family
Stress caused by adaptation problems
Stress and fatigue caused by academic tasks
Relational fatigue caused by online meetings
General fatigue and physical inactivity	Physical health
Increasing screen time and visual disorders
Neck and back ache
Lack of sleep
Body weight change
Suffering from Covid-19
Prioritizing family needs	Work-family balance satisfaction
Lacking time and energy for academic tasks
Blurring boundaries between work and family
Effort for adaptation to remote working	Academic performance
Adaptation to online teaching processes
Changes in publishing productivity
Difficulties/opportunities in research processes
Difficulties in coordinating work and family
Feeling of inadequacy
Lacking career support and training	Career development
Problems with sustaining research projects
Increasing career anxiety
Delays in reaching career goals
Problems with tenure-track employment
Planning family activities at home	Initiatives for optimizing individual health	Initiatives for crafting sustainable careers
Sparing time for hobbies
Doing physical exercise
Practicing meditation
Seeking psychological counseling
Creating a workspace at home	Initiatives for balancing work and family
Planning routines and time management
Childcare-centered time scheduling
Seeking spousal help for spare time for work tasks	Initiatives for optimizing academic performance
Seeking a suitable workspace
Seeking feedback and advice
Planning work routines at home
Refocusing research projects
Adaptation to new technologies
Reorganizing research tasks and projects	Initiatives for sustaining career development
Seeking career support and guidance
Improving teaching and research skills
Participating in online conferences and webinars
Learning new technologies, methods, and techniques
Establishing and maintaining academic networks

Furthermore, we attempted to provide insight into what proactive career initiatives academics engaged in during the pandemic. Although prior research has provided evidence for the pandemic-related changes in academic parents’ work/family demands and career consequences [9 , 15], the understanding of what proactive initiatives they had taken to craft sustainable careers is still lacking. Besides, even though some investigations have presented evidence for career self-management or proactive coping initiatives to optimize health and career outcomes during Covid-19 [23 –25], up to now, far too little attention has been paid to individual proactive initiatives. Therefore, the findings of this study can provide a substantial contribution to the understanding of academic parents’ health-oriented, work-family balance-oriented, productivity-oriented, and career development-oriented proactive initiatives. Results showed that academics engaged in various proactive initiatives to optimize their career sustainability, such as seeking contextual resources, utilizing family relational resources, rearranging family and work tasks, adopting time management, or improving career skills and competencies. Yet, these initiatives widely differed by perceived contextual demands/resources, gender roles, and career stages. As such, although academics with less parental demands benefited from these initiatives, the ones with higher parental demands had limited opportunities to take such initiatives. Specifically, in families having a gendered division of domestic labor, academic mothers’ initiatives were quite limited when compared to the fathers. One of the most preferred initiatives that helped academic parents optimize their work-family balance and well-being was seeking spousal support. That is probably because the only resources that could be utilized were internal resources such as a supportive manner between family members. For the parents, who are both academics, this behavioral initiative was prevalent. In addition, academics in the earlier career stages were more oriented to take initiatives for their academic performance and career development. They sought career resources like a supervisor or colleague support to optimize their performance. However, they could not find the support they expected from their supervisors or other researchers. This might imply that after experiencing such a shocking event, academics in the later career stages with supervisory roles might have focused on their own well-being and reduced their workload. Besides, increasing family demands might have prevented them from allocating time for academic tasks and providing career support for other academics [29]. Moreover, academics’ additional network initiatives were quite limited during the pandemic; they could hardly maintain their current network. Even though some early-career academics sought career support via virtual channels, they were hardly satisfied with the quality of interaction. Still, to sustain their career development, early-career academics endeavored to work on their research projects and undertook additional tasks to develop their career skills and employability. Besides, they had serious concerns about finding another job when considering their current career competencies and the difficulties of finding academic job positions. Taken together, to reduce potential inequalities between career stages, practitioners should be aware of how early-career academics’ career development process was adversely affected during the pandemic. Therefore, they can better establish pandemic policies and practices that can introduce sustainable career development opportunities for academics possessing different career needs.

4.1 Limitations and directions for future research

This study also has several limitations. First, while adopting a qualitative design allowed us to present academic parents’ pandemic experiences and career sustainability initiatives in detail, it also included a relatively small sample size. Future research could also use quantitative methods to investigate the relationship between contextual determinants and career sustainability indicators and reach a greater sample size. Besides, adopting a mixed-method design may provide a better understanding by consolidating the results of both methodologies. Second, considering that the data were collected from academic parents in the Turkish context, results regarding family demands and career initiatives might be shaped by cultural characteristics (e.g., gendered division of domestic labor). Therefore, further investigations presenting a cross-cultural analysis of changing career sustainability indicators and initiatives can also provide a comprehensive perspective [20]. Third, considering that flexibility and autonomy are inherent elements in academic careers, proactive career initiatives are more common in academics. Exploring career proactivity ignited by the pandemic in various occupational groups may enlighten our understanding of sustainable career development [32]. In addition, further investigations may also provide better insight by examining career crafting initiatives toward enhancing person-career fit and career sustainability [33]. Understanding the role of family-supportive work culture on individuals’ career development initiatives might also enhance our understanding of sustainable careers. Finally, an in-depth analysis of the pandemic experiences of disadvantaged groups such as academic mothers and early-career academics may be a potential avenue for further investigations. This kind of analysis can shed light on the inequalities in the post-pandemic world.

5 Conclusion

This study aimed to explore how changing work and family demands during Covid-19 influenced academic parents’ career sustainability indicators and (de)motivated them to craft sustainable careers. Overall, results demonstrated that academic parents’ career sustainability indicators (i.e., health, happiness, and productivity) and career initiatives largely differed by gender roles, career stages, and work/family demands and resources. Women and early-career academics and those with high family demands and low contextual resources have been disadvantaged groups that faced difficulties in sustaining their career development. Academics mainly sought contextual resources and attempted to optimize their physical and psychological well-being, work-family balance, and productivity. Notably, early-career academics have taken more initiatives to craft sustainable careers than academics in later career stages. Taken together, this study sheds new light on the aspects of context, time, and person of sustainable careers. Moreover, the study represents one of the first investigations to explore academics’ proactive career initiatives regarding sustainable health, happiness, and productivity indicators during the pandemic.

Ethical approval

Approval for this study was obtained from Gebze Technical University Human Research Ethics Committee, dated 22/12/2021 (Decision Number: 2021/32-07).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We express our sincere gratitude to the participants who generously shared their lived experiences during the pandemic, thereby making invaluable contributions to the research.

Funding

The authors received no funding.

Appendix: Interview questions

1. Considering before the pandemic, have there been any changes in your family responsibilities during the pandemic?

2. Have your family responsibilities made you feel stressed or exhausted during the pandemic? What kind of responsibilities particularly made you feel that way?

3. Considering before the pandemic, have there been any changes in your academic responsibilities during the pandemic?

4. Have your academic responsibilities made you feel stressed or exhausted during the pandemic? What kind of responsibilities particularly made you feel that way?

5. Have your organization, supervisor, and colleagues held a supportive attitude towards your family life and academic career during the pandemic?

6. Have your family members held a supportive attitude towards your work and academic career during the pandemic?

7. Have you experienced any psychological and physical health problems during the pandemic? Have you taken any new initiatives to protect your well-being?

8. Have you been satisfied with the time you allocated to your academic tasks and family life during the pandemic? Have you taken any new initiatives to manage your work-family balance?

9. Has the pandemic affected your academic performance in terms of teaching and research activities? Have you taken any new initiatives to improve your academic performance?

10. Have you had any concerns or problems with your career during the pandemic? Have you taken new initiatives that can contribute to your career development during the pandemic?

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