What if Child Care Were as Standard as Coffee at Conferences?

I almost gave a conference talk while holding my baby. It was a moment so absurd that if it were a plot point in a movie, I would have called it sloppy writing. “This is just too obvious,” I would have laughed. “That kind of bad timing would never happen in real life.” But, I guess that’s the thing about real life: even the best-laid plans can fall apart. I had been invited to speak at <a href="http://scotlandcss.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">ScotlandCSS</a> about the technical details of implementing CSS Grid on The New York Times’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/watching" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Watching</a> app. This wouldn’t be my first time traveling to a tech conference as a speaker, but it would be the first time as a primary caregiver. I felt confident traveling alone, but completely overwhelmed by the extra logistics of bringing an 8-month-old along. I couldn’t leave her at home, but even though the conference had child care, I had no idea how to manage bringing her and still do my job as a speaker. <a href="https://open.nytimes.com/what-if-child-care-were-as-standard-as-coffee-at-tech-conferences-568c5fba028e">Website</a>