Subtitle: Why the time I first used my “Mommy Fuel” travel mug in a work meeting felt like a tiny act of rebellion.
I have had many wonderful opportunities, experiences, and challenges on my path to, and time as, a tenure-track professor at a university. Working with colleagues who are doing truly inspiring, innovative research, working with the professional and intellectual development of graduate students, teaching and mentoring undergraduates to help them navigate the thrills and challenges of college and their career search, working with colleagues in service of improving the colleges functions, have all been part of it. I have also been utterly surprised and deeply disappointed by a myriad of ways that higher ed, in my experience, fails to provide basic policies and procedures and work cultures that facilitate smart, capable women who are mothers to be productive and successful in the wide range of work we do in the academy of to even feel welcome and belonging in the university community.
There are number of topics I hope to address at some point on this blog related to these issues, from maternity leave policies (or lack thereof) to new purportedly “women/family friendly” policies the data clearly show only expand the gap in tenure and promotion success between male and female faculty. One thing that was not on my original list of topics, but that I have increasingly been reflecting on, is the culture on the workplace and how significantly that culture alone is a major driver in the real anxiety and despair I experienced as a mom on the tenure track.
Someday I’ll talk more about it my personal motherhood experience in more detail. Suffice it to say for context here, I had 2 babies while on the tenure track (the tenure clock is roughly 6 yrs). More accurately, I had 3 miscarriages, all of which were emotionally agonizing, 2 of which were physically painful and one of which required hospitalization. The next pregnancy was accompanied by all variety of miscarriage-preventative medical interventions including multiple daily injections, weekly doctor visits for IVs of immune suppressors, weekly sonograms, etc. Miraculously, after a harrowing and long- recovering emergency C-section and time in the NICU, I had a beautiful son in 2016. I was incredibly fortunate that during that sometimes fertile window in the year or so after a successful birth, I got pregnant with my second son. Aside from the need to have a C-section due to incomplete healing from the first, that pregnancy was relatively smooth sailing and my second son was born in 2018.
I was shocked to find that my institute did not have a maternity leave policy, something I’ll explore more in a future post. I was all the more surprised that no one seemed to know this. This was first clue that this workplace had a culture that seemed utterly unaware of mothers and how we might support otherwise capable mothers who indeed experience some unique demands and challenges to balance motherhood with career.
After my first son was born, even while I was recovering medically, I was astonished by how utterly unaware my colleagues and supervisors seemed. Of course, the world walked on: the grant proposal deadlines remained as they were; the grad student dissertations needing revision continued to be written; the classes carried on. I didn’t expect those to change for me, but I was surprised by how little adjustment to expectations of my role there were. And so I did the zoom meetings and wrote grant proposals with my colicky son strapped into a kangaroo carrier between me and my keyboard in the wee hours of the night. I tried to fit the norms and expectations, and someday I’ll write more about this issue. When I started back at work after my first son was born (before my C-section was sufficiently healed) I was a bit surprised by how no one asked after me or the baby or even just said congratulations. I always thought that this was the kind of personal connection chat that happens before meetings start, and they help bond and form a sense of community and humanity amongst colleagues. But looking back, I realized, I had never been in a meeting- among MANY meetings- where I ever heard colleagues talk about or inquire after each others children. It was almost as if anyone who did have a family had to pretend they did not. Was this because acknowledging one had a family or thought about ones family implied that you had conflicts of interest that took away from a total commitment to the job? To the research? Is it because it would cloud and complicate ones identity as a professor, as a scientist? Was there less authority and command in being a research scientist and a mom or dad?
One answer, one that I will explore much more in future posts, is that indeed fewer folks at the highest ranks of academic faculty have kids. More specifically, men with kids in fact have higher success at attaining continuing appointment, promotion, and tenure than all other categories. But women with children have the lowest rates of success in advancement as articulated above. The result: many of my female colleagues are without children, particularly those in the higher ranks. This may be one part of an explanation for why there seem to be fewer “how are your kids” kind of conversation in academia than in every other place I’ve worked or participated. Maybe this is a matter of a culture that is a result of the more similar characteristics of those involved. It would not be surprising if groups with fewer parents would spent less time talking about, thinking about, or relating to parents, and particularly moms.
Maybe this is why there is no shared understanding or norms about how we can talk about pregnancy, motherhood, and career in ways that both uphold the high standards of the profession but also support capable women to continue their good work amidst the very real changes in time and effort distribution particularly during the early years of mothering babies and young children. Maybe this is what explains some of my mystifying and stressful experiences navigating motherhood and work in higher ed. One anecdote captures some of this cultural confusion about how to reckon with motherhood in this strange university world. When I was pregnant with my second son, I was in a meeting with 2 senior faculty mentors and an administrator/supervisor to discuss my performance review. My performance was apparently excellent. I also came to the meeting prepared to discuss the myriad ways I was going to keep up the productivity approaching and after the birth of my 2nd son. After my experience with work during the pregnancy and birth of my first son, I was trained to focus on how I was going to keep doing all this work as if I wasn’t in fact pregnant, giving birth, and caring for an infant. After laying out my plan anxiously hoping to convince them of my seriousness about the work and hoping they didn’t pay attention to my role as a mom, because that seemed “uncool” in this sphere, I was met with a lecture from my male mentor about how the first year of a child’s life is so developmentally important and that I should take a year “off” (whatever that means- we don’t even have maternity leave!) to be with him during that time. Note: I barley took 6 weeks off just to recover after the birth of my first son because of the lack of maternity policies and the pressure to produce or lose my job. I was a bit stunned and during the moment of silence before I responded, my female mentor retorted something to the effect of “That would be the death of her career.” I sat back and spectated as this conversation unfolded between several smart, kind, accomplished people that laid bare the kind of utter confusion we have about how we can talk to moms or expectant moms, how we can support them to be productive and effective workers with fulfilling family lives without shame, without such incredible mixed messaging.
Someday I’ll share more about how this turned out: which path did I choose? Being what my mentor deemed good mom and suffering career death? Or choosing my career and thus being a shameful mom? For now, I just wanted to start exploring this strange phenomenon I’ve observed in the culture and norms of higher ed that are not so much family-unfriendly as family-ignoring (maybe with a more than a touch of mom-unfriendliness). I think this is different than other workplaces, or at least some workplaces. Either way, I’d like to think more and talk more about how we can do better.