Comments on: Dr. Mommie Dearest

By: This blog is overrated. :: Resting on Their Laurels

This blog is overrated. :: Resting on Their Laurels — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:11:31 +0000

[...] Higher Ed’s “Mama PhD” blog, a recent and somewhat dubious addition to the site, today stirs up vaccination fears and expounds on the dangers of “sodium [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:44:21 +0000

Hi, DV–thanks for stopping by to comment. I skimmed the article–it’s interesting that they already have 10 years to tenure, and then can lengthen that by 2 years per child! I guess that’s humane–but who wants to be in limbo 10, 12, or 14 years wondering if you’ll be tenured? It seems indisputable that junior faculty at Yale will be highly employable elsewhere…

Most of the women academics I know have just 1 child. A few have 2. None have 3 or more. One of my friends who has two children told me that her feminist colleagues were really supportive with her first pregnancy and child, but then when she got pregnant again before tenure review, many of them turned on her, and asked her, “What the hell are you doing? Don’t you want to get tenure here?” The implication was that one child was OK, but two children was a commitment to a lifestyle other than being a tenureable or tenured faculty member. (This is not a problem I think with feminism, I should note, but with the commitment to careerism that is expected just about everywhere in our profession, even if you’re at a “directional” school with a 3-3 or 4-4-4 load!)

By: DV

DV — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:03:28 +0000

Here's more fuel for the discussion. I finally found this article that I read some time ago on women in academia and parenting. It is skewed towards one university, but asks what I think is an equally challenging question - does parenting hinder an academic career? (I was particularly impressed with the adjustments the University was making to the tenure-clock for women and men who became parents.)

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:39:51 +0000

Dear Libby, thanks for stopping by and commenting. I have really enjoyed Jaschick’s stories–they are reported from a feminist viewpoint, indeed. (Actually, the fact that they’re written at all suggests clear signs of feminist intelligence!)

Thanks for your corrections on the 3-in-1 science blog. I actually like Lisa Belkin–I listen to her XM radio program when I can, and think she’s been to some extent unfairly pegged as a backlash leader. Her “Opting Out” story got so much play because it fit the New York Times’ extremely conservative narrative about women, which is that they should be segregated from the public sphere and in the Times’ pages. Her show does a lot of stories about equity for women in the workplace, something that the mainstream media covers almost not at all (and, perhaps she does so much of it in her radio program because it’s something that she probably can’t sell to the New York Times!)

By: Libby

Libby — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:38:19 +0000

Thanks for the link. I can’t speak for either IHE or the contributors to Mama, PhD, so I won’t, though I’m glad someone noted that UD is also a woman. I’d love to see more discussion of work/family issues at IHE, which has (in my experience) 1) been very open to unsolicited articles and 2) has in fact been making sure a lot of family-life balance issues are covered by Scott Jaschik–suggesting that perhaps the topic isn’t quite ghettoized, even if you think the bloggers themselves are. It might also be worth pointing out that it’s 4/7 bloggers (since the editors aren’t blogging), or actually 3/5 blogs (since the 3 scientists write as a team) that are being written by folks within the academy. I imagine that one reason there aren’t more is that blogging is still not taken very seriously by many academics and not everyone is willing to get out there. But I think I will feel like Lisa Belkin defending why she’s writing in the Style section of the NYT if I go any further. I’m enjoying–and learning from–the discussion, and would welcome suggestions for future topics to take up.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:30:18 +0000

I think if a parent is in a place in life where they feel satisfied and fulfilled, they are likely to be a better parent than if their own needs aren’t being met. If a parent finds fulfillment in a domestic role, that’s great for them; but many of us enjoy the challenges and rewards of a career, and are better parents than we would be if we didn’t have a career in our lives. I don’t have natural affinities for caring for young children as the teachers at our preschool do, and am happy to send our four year old off to them, who frankly do a better job of teaching him what he should know at this age than I could. We try and have meals together as a family and have quality time in the evening, but sometimes our quality time is less than an hour a day. I’m not proud of that — there certainly are _some_ trade-offs made between career intensity and time available for parenting — but hardly think our son is under-parented.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:18:05 +0000

Sis–if I tell you, I’ll have to let you in on my incredibly sophisticated secret for finding pictures!

Go to images.google.com. Type “really ugly baby” and and search, and you’ll see it on the first or second screen. (I just tried it again–you can go to onlyweird.com to see it.) This is the Historiann way!

It’s amazing how images are pretty much labeled the way anyone else would label them.

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:46:50 +0000

OMG that art piece is _amazing_! Who did it and where did you find it?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:56:09 +0000

KC–good points. The blog is new, so perhaps they’ll address the broader question of family care rather than just child care and focusing on the nuclear family. I haven’t done an exhaustive read of every blog entry, but so far the “balance” is between academic work (or one’s intellectual interests, if not in the paid workforce) and children.

By: Knitting Clio

Knitting Clio — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:51:01 +0000

I think the notion of “having it all” was a product of 1980s postfeminism — i.e. focusing on individual success (or lack thereof) rather than changing the social structures that confine women to certain stereotypical roles.

There’s nothing wrong with blogging about work/family issues, but I wish they would recognize that there are various different types of families and issues — including caring for elderly parents or partners with serious illnesses, or various extended family members. Academia was set up on the model of the husband with a wife at home to take care of everything while he led the life on an intellectual. Not many people have that anymore, at least not many I know.