Merit Hietanen is a gender and protection expert with over ten years of experience in the humanitarian and development sectors, working for organisations such as UNRWA, UN Women, and the International Rescue Committee in Gaza, Jordan, cross-border Syria, Cameroon, and Myanmar. Most recently, she has been advising the Finnish Foreign Ministry on their co-chairpersonship of the Good Humanitarian Donorship Initiative. Merit has specialised in issues around women's protection, gender equality, and gender-based violence and also has experience in humanitarian coordination, WASH programming and communications. Merit is passionate about humanitarian sector reform and finding local solutions to issues of gender equality, including in her home country, Finland, where she is the vice president of the Feminist Association Union.

Introduction

PART I

The humanitarian workplace and what it does to parents

1 The work culture in a humanitarian workplace

2 Why is change necessary and how do we get there?

PART II

For the ones thinking about having children

3 Making a decision about having children

4 Childless not by choice and how to get out of it

PART III

Life of a parent in the aid sector

5 Mothers who work on national contracts

6 LGBTQIA+ parents

7 Single mothers

8 Trailing spouses or unemployed aid workers

¿9 Fathers

10 The humanitarian nannies: the dependency of aid parents on domestic staff

PART IV

A sector in change: where do we go next?

11 What have policies given us?

12 Making humanitarian contexts more compatible with parenthood

13 Parental leave: where are we and where should we go?

14 Office hours and flexible working arrangements: what needs to change?

Epilogue