04/08/2026
Happy to be part of this project dealing with such a relevant topic and exploring how to overcome it.
🧊 How Big Is the Invisible Part of the Iceberg?
On the barriers faced by parents in the international Erasmus+ community.
When my son was eight months old, I had my first opportunity to join an international Erasmus+ mobility as a trainer. Before he was born, this had been my everyday life for almost ten years – designing and facilitating international training courses within the Erasmus+ youth field.
And here's the thing: I was only able to accept that professional opportunity for one reason – the project was designed in a way that made it possible.
🤝 I was able to bring my husband with me, who looked after our son while I facilitated sessions and met with project partners.
🏠 The organisers arranged family-friendly accommodation.
🤱 My training schedule was adapted to my baby's sleeping and breastfeeding routine.
👀 From the outside, it might have looked like I was simply lucky, or exceptionally motivated. In reality, my participation was made possible by a series of invisible conditions: an adapted programme, my partner's presence, flexible arrangements, and organisers who were willing to make them happen.
💭 That experience taught me something important: not everything that limits participation is visible.
In our project, Supporting Parents' Expertise in Erasmus+, we will use the Iceberg Model approach to explore the realities faced by parents who are professionals in international youth work.
🧊 The iceberg is a powerful metaphor for structural barriers. Only a small part is visible above the water, while beneath the surface lie the beliefs, norms, expectations and systems that shape our opportunities to participate.
👁️ Above the surface, we see someone declining mobility, facilitating fewer international trainings, or gradually disappearing from the professional community.
But what lies beneath?
💶 The additional costs of travelling with a child or arranging childcare.
🤒 The uncertainty that comes with a child's health.
🌙 The most valuable networking opportunities happening after working hours – precisely when a parent's "second shift" begins.
👩👶 Social expectations that it will be the mother who stays home with the child.
💼 The constant need to prove that, even after becoming a parent, you are still just as competent and committed as before.
⚖️ These are not individual challenges. They are structural barriers.
At the same time, we cannot ignore another important fact: the youth work sector and the Erasmus+ community are predominantly made up of women. This means that the unequal distribution of caregiving responsibilities is not simply a private family matter. It affects the sector's ability to retain experienced training leaders, youth workers and leaders.
💡 For me, the Iceberg Model helps shift the conversation away from asking "Why aren't parents participating?" towards a much more important question: "What are the invisible barriers, and why are we still not ready to see them?"
I still think about that project, four years later – the first time I was able to be both a mother and a training leader at the same time. It proved to me that the problem was never my motivation or my competence. It simply took someone who was willing to look below the waterline and adapt the environment, instead of expecting me to adapt to it.
📷 Photo from my personal archive, taken on the way to an Erasmus+ project in Glasgow, 2022.
Story shared by Madara Mazjāne
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Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, European Commission or the granting authority (Agency for International Programs for Youth). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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