no role models

so, this morning i gave a little presentation on my research to my colleagues at university x (my alma mater) where i currently have an office for the duration of my leave from teaching, which opened up into a conversation about family/work balance. here's some of what i said:

Few employed mothers can maintain ideal worker status (unfettered by family responsibilities, able to work a more-than-full-time week) and few, understandably, want to do so when this means seeing their kindergartner for just one waking hour per work day. As much as the ideal worker norm further punishes mothers by pushing them into low-paying, part-time pink-collar jobs and leaves 40% of them and their children in poverty if they divorce their ideal worker husbands who get to take their ideal worker wage with them, this norm isn’t great for men, either. Okay, it is great for men who want to work 80 hours a week while their spouses raise the kids and manage all of the household work, but there are penalties for men who want to play an active role at home or share the second shift equally with their partners. Like women, men who take time off after the birth of a child or negotiate for a more flexible work schedule to meet family obligations may be branded as “not serious” about their job, overlooked for promotions and relegated to less desirable assignments upon their return to work.

Of course, the ideal worker norm makes any kind of care-giving a challenge, not just parenting. Taking care of an aging parent or an ill partner doesn’t fit into this model, either. Farther down on the ladder of selfless care (or perhaps on another ladder entirely), is the nevertheless crucially important issue or caring for ourselves. Can we make adequate time to be and do something more than our work? Or, as in my somewhat flip question for academics—Can we live a life of the mind and still make room for twice-a-week Pilates? Or maintain meaningful friendships? Or be active in spiritual, neighborhood or service communities? Or paint, run, square dance, or read for leisure? We all know you can knit at meetings, so I’ve left that one off the list.

My new project on mothering and work is, not surprisingly, hugely influenced by my own experiences as a tenure-track junior faculty member and the mother of a delightful two-year old daughter. Anthropologists make their careers by listening to other peoples’ stories, and this is where I’d like to open up the conversation to all of you and invite you to talk about your experiences of trying to find balance between academic work and care work—for others or yourself. A few questions: What have your challenges been? Have you had any role models in this capacity? What, if anything, should institutions like the University X do about this?

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i followed-up on the question people weren't addressing--do you have any role models for a good integration of work with family and other involvements?

dead silence.

one junior faculty member weighed in to say that he has departmental colleagues with young children who do more than a minimum of work, but certainly aren't working 70 hour weeks (as he admitted to doing himself). these colleagues are labeled "dead wood" by others in the department. he said that he admired their commitment to their families and implied that they were probably happier and more well-adjusted than the workaholic professors he knows, but he also made it clear that others saw them as free-riders and less-than-committed to their work. in the hierarchy of academic insults, those jabs are pretty high on the list.

no one else had anything to say. the best we could do in a room of 12 or so faculty members was a cautionary tale.

i was pretty, okay totally, disheartened by this. at the small college where i teach, i have colleagues who pull all-nighters to grade and are uber-accessible to their students (note that the bulk of work i'm talking about here comes from teaching demands, not scholarship) but i also have colleagues who put reasonable restrictions on hours worked per week, even during the most labor-intensive weeks of teaching, and have involved family and non-campus community lives. last year, three female faculty colleagues (2 pre-tenure, 1 tenured) at my college each gave birth to their third child. this may not seem particularly out of place, but a recent chronicle of higher education article talks about the "more-than-two" taboo for female faculty (i think you need a subscription to view it--it's from the june 30, 2009 issue). if enough female professors continue to have babies and expect workplace policies and procedures to adjust to this norm, i think we will see change. i feel lucky to have friends and colleagues who are role models in this capacity. i hope that they see me in this way, too.