MrDr and I have no (human) children. We're content with that. We may NEVER have children.
Although I'm considering having one in self-defense.
For one thing, my mother is fully preoccupied with grandchildren. There are 3 (as my sisters are hell-bent on a yearly knock-up), and even though Mom sees them DAILY and me only TWICE A YEAR, she is incapable of carrying on a conversation with me that doesn't involve talking about those damn babies. And, god forbid, I call when the babies are visiting. 2 minutes, tops, is all I get. And most of that is spent telling me what the babies are doing. Dont get me wrong, i really like my nieces and nephew. But I'm the oldest, most important, clearly most interesting of her 6 children--and Im getting completely ignored over here...
The second reason I'm considering the self-defense baby is work-related. As of this Fall, I am the only member of my department without children, AND, the only untenured woman not currently pregnant. Hows that for a freakin' coincidence. I can get over feeling like an outsider (esp since I'm in such good company) but I CANT get over the expectation that everyone seems to have that I will take care of so many little tasks that The Preggers or the PWKs (people with kids) refuse to do. For example, Chair asked me to meet with a recruit on Friday because The Preggers were unavailable due to their impending birthings, and the PWKs were unavailable because of a school closing. ARGH. (Thank god I'll be out of town myself on Fri). Oh, and there was the whole screwing-over-of-DrKaren's schedule when one of the Preggers decided that she was too preg to teach at all this semester.. and DrKaren had to take over one of her supervisory duties as a result (I negotiated a course release for Spring, but still). And the fact that I had to do that 8am shift of Open House on a Sunday because the PWKs had "child care issues." Everyone goes on and on about how "family friendly" our department is... . I guess that only counts if you are a family with children... not a "childless couple."
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13 comments:
You and me both. The PWK seem to get priority scheduling. Two years ago I got to teach all night classes because I "don't have a family."
My mom is pretending that her godchildren are grandchildren, so things are working out fine on that front. At least for now.
OH.....I am SO with you on this. You know that I feel your pain. Your post struck such a nerve that I had to go and post about it myself.
Oh, by the way hon, I'm pregnant.
Kidding!!! Hahahahahahaha
I would be seriously disgruntled if this were going on in my dept. Seriously.
Fortunately of the 2 with young kiddies one (a female! with 2 under the age of 3!) has her life totally under control with child care and such and entirely pulls her weight. I mean, she can't do really early morning meetings (not that I mind that) or very late in the afternoon, but I play scheduling games myself (just because I do. Ha! For my own convenience). The other (male) is reclusive and hard to schedule but I'm not sure why. I also think it may catch up with him.
At my previous dept when we were hiring someone mentioned offering the male with kids candidate more b/c he has a family to support. Ummm, no. That was his choice. He gets the same as everyone else who starts out fresh-green-from-school. (Thanks to a senior female fac for standing up on that one!)
... offering the male with kids candidate more b/c he has a family to support. Ummm, no. That was his choice...Amen, profgrrrrl! Know what this reminds me of?...LOL...Those signs in the parking lots of grocery stores now for "Parking with Children." No damn way! I'll probably get hate mail for this, but Mr.CheekyProf always takes that spot if it's open. He, like you, makes the point that it's a choice to have kids, not something which grants one privileges over someone without kids. He claims if anyone ever questions him he'll counter with "Hey, I'm overweight. It's just as hard for me to walk from the back of the aisle as it is for you." And, of course, when/if someone should say that it's his own doing that he's overweight, he'll launch into the "so is having children" point.
The whole thing is still pretty subtle at this point, but I’m watching it carefully. I, too, have been teaching night courses that PWC won't take. Its a good thing I actually prefer a night class each semester.
Profgrrrl, your story about the offer reminded me of a convo we had in a fac mtg last fall.. one of the current Preggers (who had a 1 yr old at the time) argued that our post-tenure evaluation and Merit policies should take into consideration whether or not individuals have had children. The whole room erupted. "Its your CHOICE to have kids," "it isnt fair to REWARD people for having kids over those who do not," etc. And although most of this was from individuals who are far too old to have any more children, and clearly wouldnt benefit (and may actually be hurt by such a policy change as our merit-receivers are competitively selected every year)from such a change, I was grateful to hear their protests. A few of the PWCs were v. quiet during the convo. A few argued that it is comparable to the "stop your tenure clock when you have a baby" rule.
Speaking of which..... can't I stop mine for adopting a special needs puppy?!
I've seen 'em all... "with infants," and "expectant moms," and "with children." Good work CheekyProf and MrCheeky... I'm going to start taking those spots at the drugstore, the drycleaner, wherever I see them!
It definitely is unfair when parents get to rearrange things that other people don't. I mean, parenting shouldn't make up for incompetence! (like with Cheeky Prof's nice but not very good chair.) And if parents get some kind of leeway in terms of their scheduling ("I can't teach nights"), they should make up for it in other ways ("I'll run the brown bag lunch series" or whatever). And maybe it's worth reminding departments of this...
My only concern with this kind of discussion, though, is that women are sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't. I don't think women (or men) should get special treatment for being parents, but I also haven't known any who've gotten any. (Which makes me lucky in comparison to the stories y'all are telling, definitely!) But I also think that it's important that academia (along with the rest of the world, but that's another issue) figures out a way for people to have an academic career AND a family life that is equitable for all involved. (And all not just those with kids, of course.)
I mean, having kids is a choice (and increased raises b/c you have a family?? NO WAY!!), but it's also a choice that the majority of people make and the burden of which tends to fall more heavily on women, which is frequently incompatible with women succeeding in their careers...so what do we do with that?
But it's funny - I have no problem with someone stopping the tenure clock to have kids. That's no skin off my nose, it's not like they're going to spend that extra year sitting around eating bonbons or winning the Pulitzer and making the rest of us look bad, come tenure review time. But the whole "We need higher pay raises" - that's just ridiculous!
Unpopular though it will make me, I am going to disagree with the "Mom & Kids Parking Space" thing, because I think it's a nice humane way of recognizing that at any given point, some percentage of the population is hauling around diaper bags, strollers, and recalcitrant toddlers and that some help with that is nice. But I also haven't lived anywhere where, for instance, those spaces are taking away from my ability to find a parking space (if I had, I might feel more strongly about it). I mean, is it going to kill me to walk across the parking lot? No. Do I want to haul toddlers and diaper bags etc. across a parking lot? Hell no!
Thought I was working toward some grand conclusion here but clearly lost it if I was...but anyway. Sorry to be the party pooper...
(Oh, and I'm anti-kids for myself, so someday I probably will be dealing with making up for pregnant/child-caring colleagues since I'll be the only one available...so who knows if I'll change my tune...)
New Kid, I agree with you that women deal with the brunt of childcare and that work culture still hasn't really caught up to where it should be. There was a great article in the NYTimes a couple of years ago these very issues we're discussing (maybe I'll try and upload it onto my site).
I am all for stopping the tenure clock (and at my school we can do that for various family care issues, not just pregnancy). I think workplace childcare facilities should be commonplace. That would solve a lot of problems for everyone involved. I don't want women to get screwed at work because they're women.
My problem with much of this stems from the practice (to what extent it's intentional, I don't know) of privileging one person's life choices over another's. The person who doesn't have kids shouldn't get stuck with the shitty schedule. The person with kids shouldn't get more money or evaluated differently for tenure when she/he does go up. I'll use my dept. as an example. My chair has kids. Fine. If there's a Sat. morning open house, he can't attend because there's always some kid event. Well, why is that kid event any more important than, say, showing my dog in a dog show? Or any more important than my colleague's plan to have a yard sale that day? Those things are equally important to us as attending the soccer game is to the Chair, but every day in all sorts of workplaces decisions are made about situations like these based on the idea that somehow the child event is of more value than the other events.
It's like with the parking thing....LOL...I agree that it's a nice thing but it just irks Mr.Cheeky and me! Why then don't we also have "senior citizen parking" (although I have seen that one place), "parking for people who are returning bottles," etc. etc. etc. To me, it's part of our culture's growing privileging of kids and mothers with kids, and it may sound corny or mean or any other number or things, but I just can't do that. Does that make me a selfish person? Maybe, and maybe I’d change my tune, too, if we had kids. But part of the reason we don’t want to have kids is we don’t want to become those people!
Like most of you (CheekyProf most recently), I also support measures that help keep individuals (women in particular) from losing out career-wise should they choose to have children. I definitely do NOT support any actions that might impose unfair consequences on PWKs simply because they have children, and do wish that more steps would be taken by Admin, etc., to make having children and an academic (or any) career possible for more women. If this were the case, maybe more of us would consider having children (this isnt my particular deal-breaker, but it may be for others). However, like CheekyProf and others, I object wholeheartedly to measures that punish individuals without children, or minimize the importance of family or life outside of the workplace for individuals without children. Therein lies the difference.
I agree completely about not punishing those that are childless in favor of those who are parents, and about valuing other forms of family equally - I don't mean to suggest otherwise. I especially think that there needs to be recognition (and accomodation) of all forms/varieties of family life. I guess all I really meant to say is that sometimes the need to change work conditions to enable women and men to participate equally is going to be connected to policies that will impact PWKs. Given the way our society structures work, there are going to be some things that people who are parents will not be able to do (there does have to be someone to look after an infant 24 hours a day).
This is not necessarily to suggest that PWKs need to pick up anyone's "slack;" basically I agree with someone (Cheeky Prof? sorry, I looked at a lot of blogs in a short period of time) who said what we really need is more state-sponsored child care. Definitely!
And I guess this connects over to the other discussions about kids b/c it is infuriating when someone uses their kids as a reason not to be able to do X, but then engages in the "I'll just let my kid run rampant through the restaurant/coffee shop/grocery store and you can deal with it, b/c everyone loves my kid, right?" kind of parenting. I mean, if you're going to parent, then PARENT. Then I'm a lot more willing to work around your family needs (the colleagues I know who are parents, really PARENT. And take my own family issues into account. It's gotta go both ways).
Hook-
No, you're right, it is not about children per se. It is about something much larger. It is about a relatively recent move in our society toward an extremely child-centric culture. This lends itself to at least 2 separate problems (the ones discussed here and at my blog). One, all must step softly so as not to let little Sue/Johnny know that the world is not all roses and lollipops (otherwise known as, “treat my as the center of the universe”). Many believe this is directly leading to the rude, self-centered children and young adults we all encounter so frequently today (click here for an example). And two, the increasing number of adults who do not have children (largely by choice although some who simply cannot) who are being made to alter their lives and make concessions for other people's children. It is a blatant privileging of one person’s choice over another, a privileging of one definition of family over another.
Someone wrote a comment on my blog that illustrates the former point better than I can here at the moment. But essentially, children are not the problem; they are merely the symptom, if you will, or the vehicle through which a much larger problem is manifesting. The real problem is the parents and, of course, ourselves for creating and maintaining a society that encourages this behavior/worldview (which, of course, ties directly back in to the first point above).
I find this discussion interesting. I am a single parent and I have never used this an excuse for scheduling/exceptions/wiggling out of work. I work in a department filled with folks near retirement age who look to me to have the energy and the time to do things like recruit, teach overloads, and take on extensive committee work. All while I do research and advise a student run lab facility. Luckily I have tenure so I don't have to worry about that. I just need to figure out how to add a couple of more hours to each day.
I think it is a double standard to do a schedule according to people's family needs. What about the needs of the students?
Well... a few things:
1. I disagree that having children is a straight-up, black and white, clear cut choice. We are animals and reproducing is part of our biological imperative. Like eating. Sure, we choose what/when/where/how to eat. We could choose not to eat. But you'd be hard-pressed to insist that eating is entirely choice-based. As animals, there are underlying physiological drives that make reproduction more than a black and white choice.
Now, this argument is not to insist that little to no choice is involved, but rather to include a continuum in the perspectives.
2. Children are not pets. I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings, but speaking from a larger perspective, little Johny's needs are more important than Ruff's dog show. People are valued more than pets. This is why a person is charged with murder for killing a child and is accused of committing cruelty to animals for killing a dog. Though you may love your dog dearly, he is not have as much potential for value to society as does little Johny.
3. Respect begets respect. If you expect me to raise my child to be well mannered so that she or he will not disturb your latte when I have the audacity to bring him or her into the coffee shop when I grab a cup of joe, do have the decency to be polite enough to leave me the close parking space so that I can manage to carry my assorted children and packages to and from my vehicle with ease.
If you would like to be treated with respect (and have your "choice" respected), then demonstrate respect for others and their choices. Vindictively grabbing a parking spot to act out your resentment of a larger societal issue does not solve the problem. But it does foster resentment and bitterness, thus creating further distance between those who do and do not "choose" to propagate the species.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
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