TR gets at this in the first post linked above, when she writes, “Furthermore, Cold War heterosexual parenting was articulated as service to the state, supported by an elaborate series of tax deductions, workplace benefits and enhanced public education designed to help (white) families become and remain middle-class. “Benefits” are part of that structure, even though we have come to think of them as something we are owed, separate from salary, because we so depend on them to remain middle class.”

Lance–I hear you. I’m at a uni at which the faculty and staff have the same (modest) benefit to bestow on (nuclear) family members. I’m not sure about domestic partners.

but this one specifically affects both (1) profs who are parents and (2) teaching. I teach at a public university, but I know if I taught at most private ones (other than the very cushy elites that pay profs top dollah) I would — if I had kids, which I don’t — NEVER be able to send my own kids to my own workplace on my own probable salary.

And, you know, that probably would affect how I felt about all the time I devote to students. At a public uni, it’s great; you really do feel like a servant of the people. That’s a great feeling, and pretty different (I’m guessing) from feeling like a servant of the gentry.

This class imbalance is less acutely visible to non-parents; the difference in relative privilege is not as directly comparable across a 20-something versus a 50-something lifestyle (and, obvy, everyone in this scenario enjoys tons of privilege). but comparing the options of your own 18 year old child to those of the 18 year old young people you teach and finding them wanting probably does generate some bad juju. I’m not saying a tuition benefit is the best answer to this situation, but short of ¡The Revolution! I think it might be doing some useful patchwork in terms of faculty-student relations, and this might explain some of the “you’ll pry it out of my cold dead hands” reaction TR is seeing.

Following on Lance’s comment re staff, is it not standard for tuition benefit to apply to them (as well as their family members) as well? It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t, and if not, that’s shockingly unfair as well.

onebad: let’s not get sucked into debates over one word. We’ve had them here at this blog–”breeder” and “tool,” just to give two examples–and they’re not that interesting to me because they don’t require engagement with the larger points of an issue. It’s easy to argue about because everyone can have an opinion as to whether one word is a “bad” word or not, whether or not they’ve read the post or have given any thought at all to the larger issues at stake, so a lot of people get really invested in arguing about one word–and the larger issue gets lost.

I agree with you that TR’s use of the word “own” is provocative–but my guess is that she’s trying to make a point about the ways in which her colleagues defending the current tuition benefit imagine their relationship with their children. You’re free not to like it, of course, but I think she chose to use that word in the service of making a larger point, which is that heterosexualists who are parents frequently use their children as a pretext for making grand moral arguments that maybe aren’t all that grand or moral. (I don’t want to put words in her mouth, and I could be wrong about this, but that’s how I took it.)

Works OK — I’d prefer it were a sliding scale (the less you make the less you pay) but at least everyone is entitled.

Would I be willing to fight for this? Yes, absolutely. But do I think of it as a hetero-normative feature of the campus? Nope.

I find talking about ‘owning’ children (TR’s phrase, not yours) really, really crass. People /= objects.