Comments on: Tenure and Toddlers

By: Claire

Claire — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 19:34:31 +0000

I worry a lot about the children vs academic career thing, although for me the issue is hopefully many years off. I don’t agree that people without children should be made to work more. That should never be an option.

By: harry

harry — Thu, 27 Nov 2003 20:34:43 +0000

Daniel, I need to get this right. If I emphasize the ‘suddenly’ haven’t I got the economics right? I meant that statically we’d be giving people more than was required to get them to reproduce (since they’d already had as many as they would have had under the previous regime). Isn’t that a rent? (You probably know I defer to you on these questions, so I’m not arguing just asking). Obviously, there would be dynamic effects of the policy too, and the rent would evaporate (for some, but not all—some people’s choices about how many kids to have will be unaffected by the material incentives because they either like having them so much, or dislike having them so much). But I also wanted to make the point that individual firms (or universities) are not repsonsible for solutions to any of this—the government is, and should regulate all firms accordingly.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Thu, 27 Nov 2003 08:03:07 +0000

Single childless’s point is important — having children is a choice we make (at least it is for most academics), and rarely for purely public good-type reasons (even though children are a public good, people tend to produce them for private good reasons). We choose when and whether to have children under given budget constraints, and it suddenly transfering reseources from the childless to the parents just gives them somethng like a consumer rent Harry mate, you got the economics right here then fluffed the conclusion. If babies are public goods produced for private good reasons (ie, if they have positive externalities, and they do), then subsidising them is not a “consumer rent”; it’s compensation to parents for having more babies than they would choose to have in isolation.

By: debbi

debbi — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 22:48:18 +0000

I’d like to dive in on just a tiny part of this discussion, the part where people begin noticing the slide from “stay at home parent” and “stay at home mother” and then ask why that slide is happening. Before I had my son I would have been right there, saying “hang on, why this assumption?” And then I nursed a newborn. Round the clock. Every two hours or so. For months. Luckily for me, I was in law school at the time and could take him everywhere with me. Okay, not the library, but I took him everywhere else until he started chasing the professors’ shoelaces. This flexibility was especially lucky for me, as the pump and I failed to “bond.” My body could very well tell the difference between my lovely, cuddly son and a machine. Now I’m at work full time and my son hangs out with his dad. When our little guy is in school his father will start working again. But my point is that for me it wouldn’t have been physically possible to be separate for eight hours a day throughout the first year of my son’s life. We need to figure out better ways to make it possible for families to integrate work and child raising. But there are some physical imperatives that need to be accomodated, particularly in the first year of a child’s life.

By: harry

harry — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 14:36:33 +0000

If Arlie Hochshild is right about THE Second Shift then more men having wives with careers shouldn’t make much differnece, Eszter—men now have wives who go out to work AND take care of everything at home (one of the reasons things are so hard for women academics with children). Single childless’s point is important—having children is a choice we make (at least it is for most academics), and rarely for purely public good-type reasons (even though children are a public good, people tend to produce them for private good reasons). We choose when and whether to have children under given budget constraints, and it suddenly transfering reseources from the childless to the parents just gives them somethng like a consumer rent. This is one of many reasons why things are so difficult. Any work-place centered measures targetted to parents penalises the childless and reduces the incentives for women to get men to do more child-rearing and domestic work and for men to take it up. The fundamental problem is NOT in my view with the structure of the workplace but with 1) the structure of the economy (high production; low leisure) and 2) the fact that men don’t do an equal share of domestic, including child-rearing, labour (which is, I think, Kieran’s point). Dealing with these is hard and I’m not optimistic about work-place based solutions. Nor, I have to say, am I that enthused about the commercialisation of child-rearing, which is the preferred feminist solution, but which, ina sexist world, may well increase the inequality of child-rearing between the sexes (women do almost all the commericalised child-care) and also plays into the ‘Work is Rewarding, Childrearing Isn’t’ view that a) is false and b)is not what we want to be telling men.

By: a single childless ABD

a single childless ABD — Wed, 26 Nov 2003 02:51:30 +0000

I love kids, and am all for family-friendly policies at colleges and universities (and everywhere), even if it means fewer benefits for me, personally. But surely you can’t seriously suggest that the childless should “pick up the slack” for their colleagues with children. I would love to be married, but never found the right guy; I would love to have kids; and I envy my friends who are happily married with children. And while I’m very supportive of them, both in terms of moral and child care support, I get just a little bit tired of the constant whining of how they can’t have it all. Oh no, one of my friends says, I have this beautiful little baby and so I’ve gotten a whole year behind on my dissertation. Well, I don’t have it all either.

By: eszter

eszter — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 22:03:46 +0000

I should probably clarify my earlier comment to note that there may be a change in how things look as more and more of the fathers of young children are likely to be in dual-career couples. I suspect men with kids used to have higher tenure rates because they had stay-at-home partners taking care of everything. This could be in decline, but I don’t have the figures.

By: eszter

eszter — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 21:47:33 +0000

Kate’s suggestion that profs without kids should teach more doesn’t address the gendered aspect of the problem at all. I can’t find the citation, but I recall figures that women with children have the lowest tenure rates while men with children have the highest tenure rates. So this is not simply about having kids, it’s about women having kids. So if you were to reduce the teaching load of both men and women with kids then it may lead to additional advantages of men with kids over everyone else.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 19:22:14 +0000

InvisibleAdjunct—I think you’ve missed my point. Here’s a bit more context. According to the census bureau, the percentage of women aged 40-44 without children is (or, was a couple of years ago) 19%. I can’t find ready statistics for the %age of men at the same age without children. I’m guessing that it is similar. If that’s accurate (a big and uncertain assumption), what do we see? That the percentage of tenured men with children is much lower than we see in the broader population. Perhaps that has something to do with the preferences of tenured men? If tenured men are less likely than other men to have children, and if tenured women are much more likely to marry tenured men than tenured men are to marry tenured women, then what would we expect? It seems to me there’s something about academic life generally that makes one unlikely to have children, and that the more academics there are in a household, the less likely that there will be children in that household.

By: reuben

reuben — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 17:35:42 +0000

oops – signoff, not salutation.

By: reuben

reuben — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 17:34:09 +0000

“academic genes”? What did I inherit from my mom? Waitressness? But your great salutation lets you off the hook, I think.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 15:20:29 +0000

(I had to put my toddler in front of the TV, so that I could post this comment.) I think it’s clear that a huge problem exists for women with kids in academia. But what is to be done about it? Kate suggests that those without children should compensate. While I agree, this does lead to much resentment by the childless. The Invisible Adjunct and others have advocated for a different line of workers at universities. One with more respect and higher salaries than adjuncts, but with less responsibility and pay than a full time tenure track professor. I would love such a position. With two kids and a husband with a career, I couldn’t handle a tenure track position right now. But I could manage a position with a little less responsibility and one that would enable me to transition into a tenure track job in a few years.

By: Jennie

Jennie — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 09:32:47 +0000

In my department (Psychology), women make up 75% of undergraduate admissions and 10% of professors. That’s an appalling drop-out rate in my view. Of the professorial female staff, a considerable proportion have remained childless. I do have children, and have had the opportunity to experience what it is like trying to ascend the career ladder as a mother. The simple fact is, I do not have as much time available for research as my male or childless female colleagues. That necessarily impacts on my competitiveness. As another poster said, the intense desire to spend time with their children seems to be more common in women than men, and so this inequality of available time between fathers and mothers is not likely to go away soon. I have an idea for how to level the playing field for parents (particularly women) but it is likely to be met with derision, particularly by the childless. I’m going to say it anyway because I feel defiant at the moment. My view is that academia should recognise that passing on academic genes (via babies) is just as important for keeping the discipline going as passing on knowledge (via teaching and publications). Parents should therefore be able to trade off parenting input against teaching responsibilities. In short, if you don’t have any children you should have to do more teaching. Kate (ducking and running)

By: Matt McIrvin

Matt McIrvin — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:39:14 +0000

This has always bothered me, too. Even if there is some biological tendency that makes women on average better at, or more inclined toward, staying home and raising children than men, it doesn’t follow that this is going to be the temperamentally optimal choice for every couple; and it seems as if economic and social forces too often make the choice for them on the side of daddy-as-breadwinner. I’d like to at least see some more acknowledgement that this assumption is being made and some attempt at justification for it, instead of the unspoken slippage that so often happens in editorials and social-analysis articles from “parent at home” to “mother at home” as if this were the only viable possibility.

By: Invisible Adjunct

Invisible Adjunct — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 03:09:07 +0000

“Perhaps this means that male academics are more often in households with those who prefer children, while female academics are more often in households with those who prefer not to have children:” Perhaps. But I think not very likely. According to the report cited by Kieran, 61 percent of tenured males in the social sciences and humanities have children, while only 38 percent of tenured females are similarly childed. Unless there are some major difference in the tastes, habits, goals and aspirations of tenured males relative to tenured females (and if there are, why hasn’t anybody noticed them?), it is extremely unlikely that this glaring discrepancy can be reduced to a matter of “preference.” And what is “preference,” anyway? I’m sure we’d all prefer three squares a day with indoor plumbing. Some of us get to take this “preference” for granted, while others never have the chance to realize this “preference.”