It sounds like the work/family dilemma is particularly acute in science.
Although, for me, working 60 hours week after week would in and of itself be a huge deterrent to doing that kind of work, with or without children. But you probably don't feel that way.
Hey,
We have a friend who is professor at a small Catholic college and they are super family friendly (of course). She can take the baby to the office and gets excellent maternity. No research though, just teaching.
this topic has been weighing heavily on me lately too, like in your case The Husband is exciting about his academic career path and I can't wait to be out of this place (though it isn't only about the family/work balance, but i can't help wonder if i would feel different about it if there was at least one other woman in my lab).
I feel like I was always told (and believed) growing up that I could be a mom and a full time career woman and I'm starting to wonder how exactly that works. This is pathetic but I'm now sad when I have to leave for work and leave my kittens at home, how do you do it with a kid?
We have so many friends who are physics PhD couples, and in all cases the woman is currently at home with the kids while the guy is working, am I destined for that also?
I guess for now my plan is to try a few years of the high powered career woman track and see, maybe I won't like it anyway and then I can stay home part time with my kid and not feel like I'm missing out. We were talking last night about what it would feel like to become school teachers, but could I get over feeling like I had wasted my time getting a PhD if all I am going to do is teach high school? Maybe community college would be a good alternative?
Oh, and at the small liberal arts college I went to there were two geology professors (married) who shared one position. I think it worked out well for them, of course they both worked a bit more than part time but the pay was good enough and they had more time.
At the same time, I have never once heard a young man in my class say 'I don't know if I could have children and tenure.'
I don't know if I could have children and tenure.
I'm currently on track for a academic/government research career with no required teaching and an unlikely shot at tenure. My wife also "leaked" and has a stable job with regular hours, a good salary and future options for part time work.
Could tenured faculty life be possible for us? Perhaps, but, at least for now, it's not worth the negatives. I do really think things will change in academia, for the same reasons changes happened elsewhere. Campuses want the best and brightest. More and more of the best and brightest are realizing that the benefits of an academic lifestyle are available elsewhere without many of negatives of academic life. At some point, campuses will realize they need to remove those negatives or lose the people they need to make a college or university run.
Thanks Jenny. I wanted to write about this for a long time and still haven't. Maybe because I don't even know what I want. I don't like giving up... anything. But I'm afraid that won't be possible. So for now I"ll just see what time brings.
Jenny,
Like in law and in politics, there will come a time when vendors and clients demand to know where the women are in partnership/tenure track faculty/elected positions.
Basically at some point, in order to get research dollars, or donations from alumni, universities will have to get serious about hiring women and keeping them to get the dough. (Some law firms are now being dumped by large corporations because they don't have enough women as partners. What do the alumni at your university think?)
It's not about morals, it's about cold hard cash. Maybe some anonymous emails to prominent alumni and reporters are in order?
Aurelia,
The difference between academics and law firms can companies is the source of their money. Research grants are usually done on a lab-by-lab basis and strongly based on the quality of the proposal. It's illogical to penalize individual labs because of bad department policies.
For the most part, schools are better now than when alumni attended so there's little bad PR that can be given to alumni and have a large effect.
Probably the only major funding lever that could affect this woudl be departmental or training grants that do things like provide salaries for multiple grad students. I'm fairly sure diversity is a factor in these grants, but perhaps it could be made a more significant factor.
I still hold that the strongest incentive is the desire to employ the best people. If you cut out anyone who wants the type of work/life balance that exists for many other jobs your search pool for quality applicants shirks greatly. Losing the best people means losing prestige and losing grant money and donations and that hits the bottom line.
I have a baby and an academic job. I stay at home and do child care two days a week. As a father I think it's an excellent choice, but as an academic I'm shooting myself in the foot. Sure it's a gendered issue, but it's parents who need to fight over it, not just mothers.
The individual decisions are made by PI's and they need to be too concerned about loosing good employees to penalize parents.
... Of course loosing -fathers- from science should actually improve the gender balance... =)
It feels like you have looked into my brain and written exactly how I feel about this. I've made the decision not to pursue a research career after grad school but it still feels like it was a decision I was pushed into by the realization that I cannot have the standard academic career and be the kind of mother I want to be.
And, niobe, I have repeatedly said to my mother (who never went to college), "I went to college and grad school because I didn't want to have to work 60 hours a week just to make ends meet, but now I'm expected to work 60 hours a week just to succeed in my career. What's wrong with this picture? Why did I spend all the time on education if the end result is the same?" I don't want to work 60 hours a week, period.
BSCI: I should have specified, I have never heard a man in an academic job say that.
I think a large problem is that the "desire to employ the best people" doesn't win out. There are so many very qualified applicants that one doesn't necessarily have a shortage of good science professors just because women drop out. (Or men, or anyone wanting a life). That is: it's not market-driven.
Aurelia: I won't give money to my college because they did such awful things to the female profs in my department! And I'm writing them a strongly worded letter right now.
The training-grant conditions is one of the things the Bias & Barriers speaker mentioned as a good way to effect change. Write your congresspeople!
Sara, I have heard of a few positions like that. Alas that there are not more.
K: wonderful! You can be one of the sane professorial contingent and work for change from the inside!
Oh, and Niobe: yes, I dream of a 9 to 5 job. Literally. It's rough on lots of people. The science doesn't make up for it.
I have been feeling this strongly lately, and recently voiced it to my partner. But it's not a firm decision in my mind yet. Thank you for putting it clearly and usefully for me; it made me think about points I haven't considered yet.
Thanks for this post. My wife and I are MD/PhD students and she has a very good shot at starting up her own lab at an R1 University. I am not so keen on setting up a lab, and would like to use my training in some other way that might permit me to work from home sometimes. As such, I hope to learn from the struggles that (mostly) women in academia are engaged in.
"At the same time, I have never once heard a young man in my class say 'I don't know if I could have children and tenure."
I (a man) was telling a friend this just a few days ago. Of course, I don't mean to minimize the extra physical demands on women or the extra societal expectations/demands on them when it comes to raising children. I just wanted to say that it is a concern for some men as well. My father is a doctor and was simply not around when I was growing up. I didn't really get to know him until I was in grad school a few years after my parents divorced (something that came in no small part from his job). I love my father and think he's an good person doing good in the world, but I don't want to be the type of father he was and just don't see the way to do that and to be a professor at a strong-research university. Which leave me a bit stuck at the moment...
Thomas and Colst: Exactly. This system benefits no-one who has other responsibilities or wants to be a human/ have a family/ do anything else ever, and especially not men who don't want to play the game- not set up for that either!
I think that young men can *have* children and get tenure. They can't necessarily have a satisfying and engaged family life and have children and get tenure. But women often simply don't get tenure because of the physical demands of taking time off, added to the extra price for, say, picking up the kids from daycare ('She's not serious about her work.')
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