There are so many books to read about motherhood - even books about balancing parenthood and worklife. But I have found nothing about how to balance parenting and academic life. So I join Jaime here to continue this important conversation, and thank her for taking up this work.
About me: I am going into my fifth untenured year at a major RII institution in California and I have one 15 month-old child.
Here are the top five challenges I have faced since pregnancy:
1. I am (I'm pretty sure) the youngest professor in my school, and I am the youngest prof on the tenure track. Other untenured profs in my school have had children, but this year alone three have left for different reasons. I am one of two untenured professors with a small child (like less than 2 years). I have lots of support from different places, but no role models for how to do what I'm doing. And my administration is learning as it goes.
2. Most of my role models in academe either do not have children or have grown children. So even the people I look to for guidance cannot help me, really. They either got tenure after their kids were off to school or they never had children. What I have learned since my son was born is that unless you have a child of your own you cannot - despite loads of perfectly well intentioned empathy - really understand.
3. I sustained a wrist injury during my son's delivery that forced me to take a year off the tenure clock in addition to maternity leave. This I'm sure resulted in waning confidence in my abilities, even though I managed (with a lot of help) still to publish during that time.
4. Gone are the days when I could write for 8-hour stretches whenever I wanted. Now I have to write when my son is asleep, and given that he's a fitful sleeper anyway and has been since birth, I am exhausted and stretched very thin. We have considered hiring help for me to establish a "writing day" this fall but given the economy and that we live in a very expensive city halfway on a faculty member's salary, things are tight and I am forced to be creative with my time and resources. This has put stress on my relationships and has forced me to choose at many points between sleep and publication.
5. To my family and friends it often looks like I don't work a full-time job because I am not in an office somewhere five days a week, 8 hours per day. But I do work full time, even if some of that time is spent at home. Thus, I don't get as much sympathy from my family or assistance from my husband because it looks like I have time on my side, when in actuality I don't. If I do my job well it cannot fit into a 40-hour week, ever.
Do any of these challenges resonate with you, reader? I look forward to engaging on these and other points.
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4 comments:
I am not an academic parent. I am untenured (going up in September). But I do want to comment on the issue of role models. I feel fortunate to have a few wonderful mentors who were untenured and parents, but they were few. Most of the academic women I knew and who mentored me were either childless or never talked about being a mother. The message was pretty clear to me that to be an academic and a mother was incongruent--and further, to be single starting your academic career was pretty much the way you would continue to live your life (Mason and Goulden's research reinforced that and completely disheartened me when I heard them present at an academic conference). It was certainly my choice not to have children (and I am lucky to be able to have choice), but given my current status, now having found a partner, as more of a research outlier, my age and family history make it daunting to consider anything other than fostering and adoption. And even those choices were not modeled or discussed much, if at all, during my doctoral work or my career.
I'm a bit of an interloper on this blog because I am not a parent and will likely only be a godparent or aunt to the children of my wonderful friends and family, but I am deeply committed to creating an academy where these challenges are no longer issues, either due to a forward-looking leadership or activist faculty. My research is related to these topics and I am thrilled that Jaime has started this blog to create a forum and community to discuss academic parenthood.
There are so many provocative statements in your post that it is difficult to just pick a few to discuss. Since I am moving to a more expensive city in exactly 6 days, the comment that sticks out for me concerns the economy of being an academic parent. I started to think that we should "do the math."
Average tenure-track faculty salary in the social sciences is approximately $57,000 per year. The average cost of full-time day care is $900 per month while full-time care in your home is over $2,000 a month. Here is my rudimentary math:
Salary 57,000
Day Care 10,800 (for 12 months)
Nanny 24,000 (for 12 months)
Taxes 11,400 (20% for state/federal)
________________________
34,800 remaining with day care
21,600 remaining with nanny
The cost remaining does not reflect child care for more than one child, medical insurance, prescriptions, etc. I would never give up my career because I love what I do, I have worked very hard to have the privilege to be in a tenure-track job, I have student loans to pay off, and I went to college for a decade. But, I have to take notice of the fact that we need higher salaries or child care assistance.
I am very fortunate because I have family members who help watch my son for the days each week I am on campus. If I needed child care, I would be forced to either 1) sell our home and rent an apartment or 2) leave my current post and enter the private sector. So yes, to your point Jaime, we junior faculty need assistance or a salary hike. My university does offer onsite child care that can be deducted from pretax income, but it's not available to any child under 2 1/2 years of age. And it's still pricey.
I was reading insidehighered this morning and I came across a finding in a study that made me pause.
"About one third of those in the study as a whole reported earning money from non-university sources, with an average for those earning such funds being $12,651."
Hmm, the extra income does seem to coincide with the increasing cost of child care. I question whether or not academics need to find additional ways to suppliment their income to pay for child care. What are the implications on tenure and promotion?
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