Measures to promote the compatibility of family and career

The wish to have children during the period when scientists are in the process of attaining their scientific qualifications is a major issue and challenge in the working environment. Therefore, several measures to promote the compatibility of family and career have been established during recent years. Firstly, the University of Göttingen has recently established a Family service (office) responsible for the publication and update of an information brochure "Wegweiser für Eltern an Niedersächsischen Hochschulen", with a special appendix for the University of Göttingen, as the first port-of-call for information. It assembles a wide variety of facts concerning institutional support during parenthood, including information on family-allowances, addresses for legal advice, child care services and much more. Secondly, within a feasibility study carried out at the University of Göttingen the need for child care facilities has been identified. The study provides details of the cooperation already existing with several child care facilities located near the University. For national standards, childcare opportunities at the University of Göttingen, at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and within the City of Göttingen are more available compared to larger cities and metropolitan areas. However, the CRC is aware of a general need for additional child care covering time slots off-time the opening hours of the child care facilities (e.g. due to seminars and guest speakers in the late afternoon). Therefore, we plan to support young parents among the CRC researches (independent of gender) by:

• providing home offices for PhD students and Postdocs with children to allow them to be more flexible in time.
• organize individual child care in collaboration with the "Tagespflegebörse Göttingen" in cases such as conferences or lab work abroad, during holidays, where regular child care facilities are closed or unexpected sickness or familiar problems.