Initiative

Pregnancy in the lab

Nature (2022)

No matter your career stage, pregnancy in the lab raises complex questions — and definitive answers are hard to come by. In conversation with members of Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC), we share our experience, discuss research into the challenges and move the conversation to the support needed by people who are pregnant. We conclude that community is critical to improve experiences.

It’s a question we are asked as mentors, and it’s a question many of us have asked ourselves: how can I combine pregnancy and parenthood with my lab research and career? The questions proliferate from there and unless we know people who have been there before, answers can be hard to find. Today, supramolecular researchers have a network of people to turn to through WISC, but in 2014 that was not the case, as Anna Slater explains: “I was a pregnant postdoctoral research associate with a rapidly ending contract, and it felt like I was the first person to ask what happened next.” At that time university guidance was for permanent members of staff and advice on risks was generic. Pregnancy and parenthood still seemed the ‘elephant in the laboratory’.