as most of you who are reading this probably already know, i'm on a term-long leave from teaching and have started a new research project. my blurb for the faculty newsletter went something like this:
Carrie is working on a new research project that will examine the transition to employed motherhood for women returning to paid work after the birth of their first child. US Census data indicates that over half of employed women who become first-time mothers return to work by the time their infant is three months old. The "fourth trimester" is a time of great change and adjustment for women and their families, and for many new moms this also includes the physical, emotional, social, financial and organizational challenges of integrating mothering and paid work. This interview-based ethnographic research will redress the lack of in depth, qualitative investigation into this transition and seeks to understand how employed women make child care decisions (writ large) pre-natally and whether/how they implement those decisions post-partum, as well as the meanings new moms attach to their strategies to integrate their lives as mothers and workers.
these past few weeks, i've been doing a ton of reading that has been, in equal parts, fascinating and exciting and frustrating. social science research on motherhood and mothering emphasizes the personal, relational and emotional triumphs and joys of being a mom while embedding all of these experiences in harsh political-economic realities--mothering is widely acknowledged to be the most important job in the world, but is still the least valued (to paraphrase ann crittenden). i love that this new project resonates with (and frankly, completely grew out of) my own experiences of being a mom and working for pay.*
i was recently reminded of advice from my friend sarah via another friend, lexi. sarah advises those of us who should be writing to start the day by writing something. anything. this feels like the perfect venue to share some of what i'm learning, as well as my own reactions and reflections. again, as when i started this blog, i can't promise myself that this will be a daily practice, but i know it will be a valuable one to help me process some of the stuff i've been thinking about. so here's my morning writing exercise:
yesterday i read about divorce. it was not fun. i grew up having very few friends whose parents were divorced. i always chalked it up to living in a predominately catholic neighborhood and attending parochial school through 12th grade, but now i see something i had been unable or unwilling to acknowledge.
divorce makes women and children poor.
divorce certainly can be emotionally devastating, but it's the financial part that can be the real killer. in my middle-class childhood neighborhood, most moms were at home full-time or worked part-time jobs. in many american families, it is women who are cutting back on hours or leaving work altogether because they want to provide a greater level parental care to their young children (why it is women who are overwhelmingly doing this is another massive can of worms, and i'm sure you can guess many of the reasons why). lots of the moms i knew were college-educated (that's where they met their husbands) but left their teaching or office jobs or stopped working full-time when they started having kids. a few sobering facts (paraphrased from crittenden's the price of motherhood):
-part-time workers (65% of whom are women) in the US are not entitled by law to earn as much per hour or receive proportional benefits as full-time employees, and on average earn about 40% less per hour than full-timers (p. 97).
-a survey by catalyst found that employees who reduced hours to part-time (most of whom were mothers) reported no change in their workload. 10% reported that their workload had increased (p. 97).
take home message: part-time employed moms make far less per hour of work than full-time employed dads and are expected to do just as much work, or more, in a shorter amount of time.
and as we know, neither non-employed moms nor employed moms get any compensation for the family work they do at home that allows children to be nurtured and thrive and allows husbands/dads to function as the ideal workers the marketplace demands--those who are unencumbered by domestic/family responsibilities, can work long hours, don't need to take time off to care for sick kids, etc.
but what about divorce? if the marriage ends, how are women compensated for functioning as non-ideal workers outside the home (and dramatically cutting their own earning potential in the process) in order to work more at home as primary care-giver for the child/ren and manage family responsibilities in a way that (presumably) both women and their partners think best? some more facts:
-neither a married spouse nor children have any legal claim to the other spouse's income aside from basic provisions of shelter, clothing and food for the kids (p. 111).
-no state court requires an equal standard of living for all members of a household after divorce (p. 151).
-though a survey of women indicated that 80% thought they would be able to get alimony if they divorced, only 8% are actually awarded any (p. 156).
-a 1992 survey conducted by the department of education found that only 6% of custodial (post-divorce) parents (mostly moms) expected any support from exes in paying for their children's college tuition (p. 126).
-when ann crittenden interviewed california state legislator bill morrow (R) about his opposition to that state's 1988 legislation to increase child support payments (where even high-earning dads were paying no more than $300 per month in support despite CA's high cost of living), he said, "my parents were children of the depression...they didn't have anything, and they got ahead. you don't have to be middle class to succeed. we can't guarantee that every child can be middle-class or upper-class even if dad is. that's not necessary or even desirable" (p. 174, emphasis added).
-approximately 40% of divorced moms end up living in poverty (joan williams, unbending gender, p. 115)
moms love their kids. sometimes women make decisions that greatly reduce their economic power (really, the only sort of power that matters much) both in and out of marriage to do what they think is right for their families, and especially their children.
women are smart. the moms in my neighborhood were smart. even if they didn't know that their chances of receiving any alimony or adequate child support were slim if they divorced, or that despite their college degrees that they'd likely end up poor, i am sure they sensed that their lives, at work and at home, would be radically changed if they divorced. to what extent did these women put up with ungrateful, unloving, cheating or even abusive spouses because they knew that they couldn't leave the marriage and know for certain that they, and their kids, would be able to make ends meet? i never thought to ask that question. now i do.
*it's sometimes tough to find the right words to describe women who are conventionally known as "working mothers." i was raised by a working mom who wasn't employed and was never remunerated for any of the countless hours of family work she did to care for me and support my dad. i am also a working mom, but one who does get a paycheck for her (non-caregiving) work.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
babies! babies! babies!
i know eight women who are pregnant right now. at least. maybe there are more who haven't told yet, or don't even know themselves. one grad school friend. four colleagues. one former colleague. one neighbor. one ex-boyfriend's wife.
unlike a lot of my friends, i never went through a invited-to-ten-weddings-a-year phase of my life. now, i'm definitely smack dab in the middle of the everyone-i-know-is-having-babies phase. as much as i love an open bar and passed hors d'oeuvres (i spelled that one right on the first try!), babies are more fun.
i haven't asked any of my faculty colleagues how their students have reacted to their pregnancies. i found mine to be totally ambivalent. i think female college students, understandably, look at pregnant women and think "that can't be me. that won't be me. no. no. no. no." i know that's what i would have been thinking from ages 17-21. and the guys were probably just weirded out.
unlike a lot of my friends, i never went through a invited-to-ten-weddings-a-year phase of my life. now, i'm definitely smack dab in the middle of the everyone-i-know-is-having-babies phase. as much as i love an open bar and passed hors d'oeuvres (i spelled that one right on the first try!), babies are more fun.
i haven't asked any of my faculty colleagues how their students have reacted to their pregnancies. i found mine to be totally ambivalent. i think female college students, understandably, look at pregnant women and think "that can't be me. that won't be me. no. no. no. no." i know that's what i would have been thinking from ages 17-21. and the guys were probably just weirded out.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
a somewhat troubling discovery
on the days that i need to feel most confident, i wear my most impractical shoes.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
owning our own opinions, a la lady professor
a friend who blogs recently posted about the importance of owning up to your opinions and being brave enough to take responsibility for your perspective when discussing difficult issues with people you care about (the post title is borrowed from her). this really resonated with some thoughts that have been floating around in my head lately...
this week, i had my first pre-tenure review meeting. to prepare, i had to write a narrative statement about what i've been doing for the past three years when it comes to teaching, scholarship and service to the college. one of the things they ask you to reflect on is your student evaluations. students are encouraged to write comments on the forms in addition to filling in scantron bubbles. these forms are anonymous. in general, i'm pretty pleased with how i've fared, but i had one round of evaluations that totally threw me for a loop.
i'm sure some great minds have written about how anonymity can produce vicious and harmful responses in nameless, faceless venues like online message boards and teaching evals (if you've read anything in this vein, please let me know!), but i can only speak to my experience. here's the (edited) excerpt from my narrative where i talk about this:
---
My X course evaluation scores were by far the lowest that I have received over
the past two years, and I was especially disappointed that my Rapport with Students score was so low. I was taken aback by these scores and by students written comments as I felt the class went quite well based on the fact that many students often contributed to lively in-class discussions. Clearly, students had a different perception of our classroom interactions than I did. This was my second term at X College and perhaps I got overly confident about the degree to which I could question student responses in class (especially if I had the distinct impression that they had not prepared for class). From my perspective, I was challenging them to think critically. From their perspective, I was being closed-minded and hostile to their contributions. I was thoroughly disheartened by some especially negative comments I received and, in fact, found it hard to see myself in the professor they were describing.
Most disturbing was a comment from one student that was insulting and sexually explicit. I brought this particular evaluation form to the attention of Academic Affairs through a meeting with Dean X, who has a copy of the form on file. Though I was told that I could remove this form from the evaluations on record, I have chosen to include it with all the rest in the supporting materials on file.
Though this was an isolated comment, I think it speaks to a larger and significant issue I have given much thought to since this incident. I suspect that written responses of this nature are seldom if ever received by male faculty members. My interpretation of this anonymous comment is that it was a punishment for my outspokenness and the exertion of my (misplaced, at least from this student’s perspective?) authority as a woman, especially in relation to male students. As a young, female faculty member I have found it challenging to strike a balance between being perceived as a caring person and being perceived as a competent professor * . Perhaps I have tended to put too much emphasis on the latter rather than the former. Obviously, in this section of this course, students found me too harsh and, ultimately, I failed at being either caring or competent in their eyes.
My ultimate goal as a professor is to encourage student learning. I also care deeply about my students and have developed close relationships with some of them that have continued beyond their time at X College. The obvious (it seems to me) synthesis here is caring about whether or not students are learning. I do not want to champion mediocrity in my courses by ignoring students’ lack of preparedness for class or fostering an environment where all responses are equally correct. At the same time, I do want students to feel that my classroom is a place where their input is essential and valued. In the time since this section of X course, I have paid more attention to how I respond to students in and out of class and have worked at fostering an inclusive classroom environment. In general, I think that this is reflected in my evalution scores and in student comments.
My goal in this area of my teaching is to continue to work on creating an open atmosphere in my classes where active participation is encouraged. I love it when students build on each others’ ideas in class and bring the discussion to a new and interesting place, and I want to foster these experiences through positive reinforcement.
* The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has generated interesting insights on gender in the classroom that reflect this tension between competence and caring for female faculty. Research conducted by Hall (1998--"How Big are Nonverbal Sex Differences? The Case of Smiling and Sensitivity to Nonverbal Cues." In Sex Differences and Similarities in Communication. D. J. Canary and K. Dindia, eds. pp. 155-177. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) demonstrated that students associated professors’ tendency to smile with their degree of caring for students. While students’ perceptions of male faculty members’ competence were unaffected by the amount they smiled in the classroom, they found female faculty members who smiled more (and were, therefore, perceived to be more caring) to also be less competent.
---
in general, i learned some important lessons from those negative evaluations and am a better teacher because of them. that one particularly egregious comment was probably the most challenging thing i've had to deal with, on a personal level, in my (albeit short) professional life. i felt ashamed and angry, scared and sad. i was furious that one anonymous comment, one cowardly sentence, could rattle me (an otherwise strong, smart, academic woman who understands how gendered power dynamics work) so completely. if i offended this person in the classroom, at least i did it to their face. i have no idea if the student who wrote that comment intended their words to have such a stunning effect, or if they just wrote them without much consideration for how they'd be received and forgot about them minutes later. i'll never know. did that student know that those words had power, in a lot of different ways? i'll never know. the closest i've been able to get to a rebuttal, or any kind of response, was the statement i wrote for my review. it felt good to write.
i think students should be able to anonymously evaluate their teachers, but i also know that their words, which may mean very little to them, can have lasting effects. there can be both predictable and unforseen consequences when we communicate with anonymity, when deeper motivations are unknown, when there is no accountability, when we don't have to act as members of a community (writ-large or small), and when we don't have to acknowledge that words bear power.
this week, i had my first pre-tenure review meeting. to prepare, i had to write a narrative statement about what i've been doing for the past three years when it comes to teaching, scholarship and service to the college. one of the things they ask you to reflect on is your student evaluations. students are encouraged to write comments on the forms in addition to filling in scantron bubbles. these forms are anonymous. in general, i'm pretty pleased with how i've fared, but i had one round of evaluations that totally threw me for a loop.
i'm sure some great minds have written about how anonymity can produce vicious and harmful responses in nameless, faceless venues like online message boards and teaching evals (if you've read anything in this vein, please let me know!), but i can only speak to my experience. here's the (edited) excerpt from my narrative where i talk about this:
---
My X course evaluation scores were by far the lowest that I have received over
the past two years, and I was especially disappointed that my Rapport with Students score was so low. I was taken aback by these scores and by students written comments as I felt the class went quite well based on the fact that many students often contributed to lively in-class discussions. Clearly, students had a different perception of our classroom interactions than I did. This was my second term at X College and perhaps I got overly confident about the degree to which I could question student responses in class (especially if I had the distinct impression that they had not prepared for class). From my perspective, I was challenging them to think critically. From their perspective, I was being closed-minded and hostile to their contributions. I was thoroughly disheartened by some especially negative comments I received and, in fact, found it hard to see myself in the professor they were describing.
Most disturbing was a comment from one student that was insulting and sexually explicit. I brought this particular evaluation form to the attention of Academic Affairs through a meeting with Dean X, who has a copy of the form on file. Though I was told that I could remove this form from the evaluations on record, I have chosen to include it with all the rest in the supporting materials on file.
Though this was an isolated comment, I think it speaks to a larger and significant issue I have given much thought to since this incident. I suspect that written responses of this nature are seldom if ever received by male faculty members. My interpretation of this anonymous comment is that it was a punishment for my outspokenness and the exertion of my (misplaced, at least from this student’s perspective?) authority as a woman, especially in relation to male students. As a young, female faculty member I have found it challenging to strike a balance between being perceived as a caring person and being perceived as a competent professor * . Perhaps I have tended to put too much emphasis on the latter rather than the former. Obviously, in this section of this course, students found me too harsh and, ultimately, I failed at being either caring or competent in their eyes.
My ultimate goal as a professor is to encourage student learning. I also care deeply about my students and have developed close relationships with some of them that have continued beyond their time at X College. The obvious (it seems to me) synthesis here is caring about whether or not students are learning. I do not want to champion mediocrity in my courses by ignoring students’ lack of preparedness for class or fostering an environment where all responses are equally correct. At the same time, I do want students to feel that my classroom is a place where their input is essential and valued. In the time since this section of X course, I have paid more attention to how I respond to students in and out of class and have worked at fostering an inclusive classroom environment. In general, I think that this is reflected in my evalution scores and in student comments.
My goal in this area of my teaching is to continue to work on creating an open atmosphere in my classes where active participation is encouraged. I love it when students build on each others’ ideas in class and bring the discussion to a new and interesting place, and I want to foster these experiences through positive reinforcement.
* The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has generated interesting insights on gender in the classroom that reflect this tension between competence and caring for female faculty. Research conducted by Hall (1998--"How Big are Nonverbal Sex Differences? The Case of Smiling and Sensitivity to Nonverbal Cues." In Sex Differences and Similarities in Communication. D. J. Canary and K. Dindia, eds. pp. 155-177. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) demonstrated that students associated professors’ tendency to smile with their degree of caring for students. While students’ perceptions of male faculty members’ competence were unaffected by the amount they smiled in the classroom, they found female faculty members who smiled more (and were, therefore, perceived to be more caring) to also be less competent.
---
in general, i learned some important lessons from those negative evaluations and am a better teacher because of them. that one particularly egregious comment was probably the most challenging thing i've had to deal with, on a personal level, in my (albeit short) professional life. i felt ashamed and angry, scared and sad. i was furious that one anonymous comment, one cowardly sentence, could rattle me (an otherwise strong, smart, academic woman who understands how gendered power dynamics work) so completely. if i offended this person in the classroom, at least i did it to their face. i have no idea if the student who wrote that comment intended their words to have such a stunning effect, or if they just wrote them without much consideration for how they'd be received and forgot about them minutes later. i'll never know. did that student know that those words had power, in a lot of different ways? i'll never know. the closest i've been able to get to a rebuttal, or any kind of response, was the statement i wrote for my review. it felt good to write.
i think students should be able to anonymously evaluate their teachers, but i also know that their words, which may mean very little to them, can have lasting effects. there can be both predictable and unforseen consequences when we communicate with anonymity, when deeper motivations are unknown, when there is no accountability, when we don't have to act as members of a community (writ-large or small), and when we don't have to acknowledge that words bear power.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
my favorite teaching evaluation form comment of the day
"this class was wonderful, but i am glad it is over because it was hard."
thanks. i guess.
kvetch of the day
this afternoon i ran into a student who took one of my classes last term. i was teaching two different courses, one for senior majors and one mid-level course with no prerequisites. this was only the second class she had taken in the discipline and though she was originally registered for the upper-level class, i encouraged her to wait on that one and get into my other class (which fit into her schedule) instead. it didn't make any sense to me for her to take this advanced class first when the other one was more in line with her plan of study. i signed her drop and add slips and we were good to go.
or so i thought.
several weeks later, this student came in to my colleague's office as i was leaving mine. i overheard her say, "she told me to drop her one class and join the other one. it made a lot of problems for me and i lost my scholarship." what?! i felt horrible and hated to think that i might be at fault for jeopardizing a student's financial aid. after class one day, i asked if we could talk for a minute and i brought up the conversation i had overheard--i expressed my distress, but didn't back off of my initial advice, which i felt was sound. the problem seemed to come from our antiquated, paper-based drop/add system. basically, she was dropped from my upper-level course without being added to the mid-level class, subsequently went below full-time enrollment and was declared ineligible for a federal grant. she reiterated what a problem it had been to get her tuition paid.
i was frustrated on her behalf, but was still irked that she seemed to be blaming me (at least in part) for this mix-up. i told her that i'd be happy to call the financial aid office on her behalf and see if something couldn't be done. it seemed crazy for a student to lose her scholarship over a clerical error, the simple fact that someone let her drop one class before she was added to another.
so i called. and found out that the filing error happened because she had written an incorrect course number on her add slip (her mistake, but one i probably should have caught, though faculty members sign blank drop/add slips all the time), which held it up. i also found out that the college had found supplementary funds to compensate for her lost grant and the outstanding balance she and her family had to pay was only $250. granted, in these times, i'm not saying that $250 is insignificant, but she had more or less led me to believe that thousands of dollars were at stake.
i was irritated that she had held me responsible and had painted me as the bad guy to my colleague, and maybe to other people, too. and i was a little resentful that i had taken on so much guilt about this. i spoke to her again and indicated that i had learned of some of the details that she had left out--the incorrect course number, the college's efforts to get her money back, etc. she more or less ignored all of this and again emphasized how economically difficult this whole situation was for her and her family. i felt badly about the money, but i decided to be at content with the fact that i had at least done my best to advocate for her (though under false pretenses).
fast forward to today. i'm leaving campus and spot her heading in the same direction. i slow down to say hi...
"hey X. how's it going?"
"good, thanks."
"how was your break?"
"it was really great..."
wait for it...
"...i went to key west!"
Saturday, March 7, 2009
desperately seeking rhoda
lucy and ethel. wilma and betty. florida and willona. mary and rhoda. the sitcoms i grew up watching (and i watched a lot of them) showed me all of these examples of female best friends who were also neighbors. that physical proximity often led to zany, madcap adventures. they got jobs together and stuffed their puffy hats with chocolates. they won prize money with their upside down flint rubble bubble cake. they also endured job loss and and overbearing parents and silly husbands and disappointing boyfriends and why-can't-i-be-in-the-show-ricky. they were a part of each other's daily routines.
maybe this is a totally unrealistic model of friendship, but it's also a really appealing one.
the reality is that i don't live any closer than a two-hour drive from my dearest friends. over the years i've gotten used to being relatively far away from my high school girlfriends since i don't live near the city where i grew up. i still do live in the town where i attended grad school but, not surprisingly, the wonderful friends i made during those years have spread out across the country to do research, get jobs, start families, etc. even my sisters-in-law are in different states. at this stage in my life, it seems that work should be the most obvious place to make new friends, but that's a bit complicated by my one-hour commute.
happily, our social lives have been busier than they have been in years lately. we're in a dinner club with my husband's work friends and their spouses, we've been invited into a wine tasting group through one of those couples, and we have great relationships with my departmental colleagues and their families. and i do my best to keep in close contact with my best girls from coast to coast and jump at the few and far between chances to see them in person...
but i don't have an ethel, a willona, a betty, a rhoda. i have had them, but not right now. maybe part of me thought that i'd have made all of my life's close friends by now and that i wouldn't have to work (is it work?) at making new ones. but i know that i miss having those relationships in my life. so maybe the title of this post is hyperbole--i'm not desperate. but i guess i am seeking.
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