motherhood penalty, take 2

Thanks to Fer, New Soc Prof, Olderwoman, ORJ, Char and Carly for their great comments on the previous post. This is part of the reason I started this blog - I wanted to have these important conversations. Many of my thoughts are tied into what they said, so I’ll try to incorporate them all together.

As mentioned by NSP, OW, and ORJ, I do think that academia is a better place to be a mommy than most other places. In a prior life, I worked on Wall Street, and being a mommy was really not possible, at least not the type of mommy I wanted to be. It was one of the reasons I got out early. Young professionals mothers, a few years older than I, were told that their promotion track and salary and bonus would be frozen as long as their home responsibilities interfered with their work life. In banking, with children, it is almost impossible for that not to happen as the norms are 9 - 9 days. But this only seemed to apply to women, not men.

In academia, I see a huge differences, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to become a professor - the lifestyle. But, like Fer says, I do think that it’s more difficult to be a mommy in academia* than a childless woman OR a daddy. The biggest issue, it seems, is that you have the constraints on your time, which can hamper making connections and building networks. A professor asked me the other day if I’d like to be involved in a project over the summer that would take at least one full day from my weekend every weekend. As much as I’d love to be involved, I had to turn it down due to my family responsibilities. Now there are two issues with this - one, does that make me look less committed to my work (an argument made as to why mommies are disadvantaged, like ABC commenter said) and two, this professor is also a daddy - how is he negotiating the time away from his kids to do this work on the weekends?

Char says it should be the same constraints on daddies as mommies, but as Carly said, it’s not. The article showed that men actually receive an advantage from being daddies. Correll argues that role of a daddy and that of a committed competent worker are very much in line, while that of a mother and a committed competent worker are not congruent. In banking, being a daddy was not a big deal at all - while I saw at least 4 women be put on the frozen track, I saw countless others become daddies without the same consequence. Men were congratulated on providing for their growing families by staying late at work - incidentally, because many of them were avoiding their responsibilities at home!

Personally, I definitely feel the pressure to perform above and beyond my peers to prove that being a mommy does not make me less committed or competent, although many assume that it will. I had a professor say to me this weekend that I must be happy that the summer is coming so that I could “catch up.” This same professor told me that I should consider a week a successful one if I haven’t had to make too many excuses about turning in stuff late. This is all because I’m a mother to two small children - the expectation is that I am struggling, when in fact, I am not.

But of course, motherhood also intersects with race and class, so my anecdotal experience of feeling the need to be twice as good to get half as much respect may also come from my experiences being black and working-class. So it’s even more sobering to know that motherhood, in and of itself, has become yet another marker of low-status.

* actual citation, in case not able to access the link: Ward, Kelly and Lisa Wolf-Wendel. 2007. “Academic Motherhood: Managing Complex Roles in Research Institutions.” The Review of Higher Education 27: 233-257. 

motherhood penalty?

For those mothers in academia, do you/did you perceive a motherhood penalty either in graduate school or on the job market? I just heard the author of this paper speak this week, and what was presented painted a bleak picture. While this paper had already pointed out a wage penalty for mothers, the argument put forth has been critiqued from a number of angles - differences in human capital, selection bias, etc. But now we know - according to experimental and audit data - that mothers, although equally qualified to non-mothers, are less likely to be hired, less likely to be judged as competent, and receive less pay when hired. As summed up by this commenter on the ABC site:

I love this article, and from the comments, it’s really shows the sense of entitlement working mothers feel towards their employers. I personally am glad Moms are feeling a job bias, there’s a good reason for it. I work as a computer programmer, and most of my co-workers are male. In the few instances I’ve had to work on a project with a working mother, it never fails that she’s unwilling to put in the hours needed. I worked with a woman who refused to work past 6, even if the rest of her male co-workers were working until at least 11 and forget about weekend work, she wouldn’t even answer her phone on the weekends, and was unapologetic that she was off on ‘mommy duty’ when the rest of the team was stuck in the office every weekend for a month. Her priorities where her kids, and was unapologetic that she was dumping all her work on her male co-workers. Of course, when she was let go, she claimed discrimination. There’s a reason so many companies don’t even want to hire American programmers, too many Americans have no work ethic compared to all the Asian immigrants who are desperate to come here and work 15 hour days without complaining. Luckily I now work at a company where overtime is required and so far no working mommies have applied, what a surprise.

(Not sure where the Americans vs. Asians come into the argument…)

But the evidence of discrimination with experimental and audit data, not the actual experiences of real mothers, and not mothers in academia. So my question is, for mothers in academia, what has been your experience as a mother? Many of you became mothers after already being in academia - how did things change? I’m asking because I’ve only been a mother in graduate school - I don’t know what the non-mother experience is like to compare to the mother experience. But I have some ideas…I’ll wait to post them until after I’ve heard from you.

sandcastles

There are kids in the backyard with their mothers making sandcastles and just playing in the sun on this beautiful day. I wish I could do that with my kids today. How I cannot wait for the summer!

priorities

Whether you have kids or not, I think it’s really important to have your priorities straight. I’m thinking about this because there are a lot of things I want to do, but don’t possibly have the time to do them all. All of them are important, and I hope at one time or another during my life I will be able to have all of them at the top (or near the top) of my list. But right now, on May 4, 2008, during the 28th year of my life, here is where my priorities lay:

1. My kids. They are the most important thing to me. Everything I do is about them in one way or another. I think about them constantly and feel so delicious when it’s obvious that they are thinking about me. “Thank you, Mommy!” or calling my name when it’s time to get up fills me with such a sense of importance. I go to school for them - I want to be the best I can in my studies so that I have choices when I get out of here, so that I can go somewhere that will be good for my family.

2. My husband. A very close second to my kids, but I really should make him number 1. Why? Because I think one of the best gifts I can give to my kids is to demonstrate what love looks and feels like. I can affirm their existence by them knowing that they were made out of love. Loving their father is also loving half of them, and him loving me is loving the other half of them. Knowing that your family is stable is SO important, as it gives you a sense of stability and groundedness, knowing that there is a place to come back to when the rest of the world has not been what you wanted it to be. So I need to work more on our relationship but it’s really hard when your children’s basic needs are still your obligation, when they can’t dress or bathe or feed themselves, time for relationship building is scarce.

3. My studies. This should be farther down the list, after my health and well-being. But it’s hard to move it farther down when the expectation of being “smart” has been such a large part of your self-concept. I have a hard time managing expectations of myself; for example, I’ve spent several hours looking for a data set for an assignment when my professor already told me I could use my current data set, although my variable of interest in the old data set is not quite right for the assignment. But instead of settling for “good enough” I feel this need to be better than that. I tell myself that being better than “good enough” is what will make me a superior scholar, but I don’t know if that is true. Being over-ambitious sometimes brings more pain than joy, but I am so unwilling to accept my limitations to the point that I sometimes deny that I have limitations at all.

4. My health. Right now, I’m just trying to maintain both my physical and mental well-being. I’m not doing bad - my weight is higher than it’s ever been non-pregnant, but it’s still in a healthy range. The issue if more about how I feel - sluggish and run-down. My body aches - I toss and turn all night because one side of my body will hurt and I have to turn over until the other side hurts and back and forth all night. I don’t think I am getting a satisfying night’s rest. My hubby thinks that it’s because I’m still breastfeeding the baby at night, but even when I sleep in the bed alone I have the same issues. I’ve taken some Tylenol today, hoping that it will make me feel better, but so far, no dice. As far as diet goes, I’m just taking it one meal at a time, trying to make good choices. I’ve stocked my house with healthy foods, so there really is not much junk to munch on. I teach a yoga class once a week, but  haven’t in the  past two weeks due to forces outside of my control. I did just get a new bike on Thursday, so hopefully that little bit of exercise a day will help.

There are other things that should be a priority, but there really isn’t much time. Like volunteering, going to church, spending time with family and friends. But if I had to ask myself what things have to be first, none of those things have to be before the four things I mentioned, because without those things I think I would lose a big part of who I am - a mother, a wife, a student, and simply a living, breathing human being. I can’t drop the ball on those things.

Respect the Will of the Voters

Hat/tip to ADT:

Dear Friend,

Some leaders in the Democratic Party are playing with fire. They think that they can betray the will of millions of voters–and choose Hillary Clinton as the nominee, regardless of whether or not she is the choice of the voters. We can’t let this happen. It would be the largest disenfranchisement in modern history, and it would mean the Democratic Party giving their stamp of approval to a clear and consistent pattern of race-baiting by the Clinton campaign.

If we make our voices heard, we can stop it. Please join us in signing an open letter to leaders in the Democratic Party — DNC Chair Howard Dean, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and all super delegates — demanding that they reject an outcome that involves trampling voting rights and legitimizing the politics of division and fear:

http://www.colorofchange.org/dems/?id=2315-231446

By the time the last vote is cast on June 3rd under the rules of the Democratic Party, it’s unlikely Hillary Clinton will beat Barack Obama among voters. But there’s a chance that super delegates will hand Clinton the nomination anyway.

This would be a shocking attack on democracy, and it would destroy the Democratic party’s credibility on protecting the right to vote. Black people have a long history of fighting against voter suppression, and now the Democratic Party will be the enemy in that fight. As bad as that would be, there’s another reason that a coup by party insiders would threaten racial progress.

Senator Clinton’s plan to have super delegates hand her the nomination doesn’t make sense without a parallel strategy — she has to stoke enough division and race-based fear among Democratic voters to convince super delegates that white voters will not vote for Senator Obama in the general election. One of Clinton’s key arguments to super delegates is that America won’t elect a Black man, and therefore she’s the better choice for Democrats to beat John McCain. While she makes that argument in private to super delegates, in public Clinton’s campaign and her surrogates are doing everything they can to damage Barack Obama by ginning up fear and division and playing to the worst instincts of our society. It’s an insult to Black people and all Americans, Obama and Clinton supporters alike.

The pattern has been clear and consistent to some party leaders. Last week, according to the Washington Post, James Clyburn — who as House Majority Whip remains neutral and is the highest ranking Black member of Congress — accused the Clintons of marginalizing Black voters. Referring to this strategy in another interview, Clyburn said that “Nothing in this campaign has been by accident.”

Congressman Clyburn warned that “black people are incensed” over the divisiveness of the Clinton strategy and that it threatens an irreparable breach between Black people and the Democratic Party. He’s right. And if super delegates hand Clinton a victory despite her defeat among voters, they will be condoning and rewarding that strategy.

Some party leaders have expressed strong concern about super delegates overruling voters. But as a whole, super delegates have not made it clear that they will respect the will of voters. Today, we want to send a clear, unequivocal message to super delegates and other party leaders: Reject the idea that the nomination can be won with a strategy that preys on racism, sows division, and disenfranchises millions of voters.

Please join us: http://www.colorofchange.org/dems/?id=2315-231446

Thanks.

good night

I am so tired. That’s why I have been pretty lazy about blogging. The weekend was exhausting, although informative, and I made several contacts with graduate students and faculty from other universities. But it’s so hard to recover from being out of town. I had several assignments due during the week and a presentation to make tomorrow, so I haven’t even had time to unpack my suitcases. I did manage to go food shopping and celebrate my husband’s birthday, but I am keeping Starbucks in business and driving my family nuts with my moodiness because I am so freakin’ tired.

And that reminds me - I got sucked into taking a sleep survey this evening. I figured it was good karma in case I ever wanted to put out a survey for my own work. But I learned a lot about surveys in the process of taking it.

1. You should always tell someone how long the survey should take and then you should stick to that. I asked the woman, and she said she was going to go really fast to get through it. It took a half hour. That was not what I expected.

2. As a result, the questions at the end were not getting my full attention. I was really annoyed. So don’t make the surveys too long.

3. You probably shouldn’t answer the questions for the respondent based on what you think you know about this person. One of the questions was about stress, and she told me that she was going to say that yes, I’ve experienced a extremely stressful event in the past year because of the birth of my daughter.
I wasn’t allowed to answer the question myself. I actually didn’t consider the birth to be as stressful as afterwards, but I didn’t get the chance to say that. Is this a reason why surveys shouldn’t be trusted?

That’s it. I’m going to bed. Good night y’all.

wandering, day #2: race and the room

Race and the Room:

The conference takes place in a small auditorium with a balcony seating area. The first thing I immediately notice is the racial segregation of the room - it seems that most of the minority scholars are sitting in the balcony section, while the bottom section is holding mostly white men (older white men at that - it was like a sea of gray hair.) It is not very strict, as a well known white sociologist is sitting right next to me on the top row, and a white foreign sociologist is next to him. And, I think a big part of the segregation is that mostly students are sitting on the top, and perhaps most of the students present are racial and ethnic minorities.

Related to the segregation: a panel was presented on culture and entertainment, and one of the panelists presented a paper on hip-hop. The paper was very interesting, although the presenter, a non-black male, used the N-word when quoting some of the aspiring rappers he was studying. Every time he said it, in the slangish linguistic patterns of these young black males, in the halting patter of someone trying to speak in the black vernacular who is not used to speaking that way, it made my skin crawl.

Related to the old white men: I had a question for the panel, and was sitting in the very front row of the balcony. Time and time again, I raised my hand, only to be ignored each time in favor of a white man. It seemed that the moderator was making a special effort not to call on me, because by the time it was time for the forth question, the white man sitting next to me also raised his hand. He and the moderator were from the same university, and he then called on him by name. There was almost a riot in the balcony, for questioning was finished after his question. At least 15 people sitting in the balcony approached me during the rest of the day to discuss the blatant racial and gender issue that was going on.

wandering thoughts

I am currently in the Northeast for an academic conference. I’m not sure if what I will do in the future exactly fits with the theme of the conference, since it sounds pretty gritty and hard-core, but I love the method and the substance, so I trust that it will be an insightful and rewarding weekend. But as I travel more and more these days, things keep happening all the time that I just want to comment on them:

1. Men take up a lot of space that is not their’s to take. If I am sitting, let’s say in the window seat, on an airplane next to a man, who is in the middle seat, he seems to think that his knees, feet, and arms are entitled to extra space outside of the seat he paid for. I’ve had to say “excuse me” to insert my foot right up to the boundaries of my space just so he won’t take it. This has happened on several flights and at a concert I went to recently too. And they always have the nerve to look like I’m ignant for claiming my space.

2. The airport is extremely small. It reminded me how city-fied I am. My first instinct when I got off the plane was to call my hubby and say, “Yo, this airport is so small!”

3. US Air will never receive any of my money ever again. Last time I flew with them, earlier this month, they lost my luggage on the way to Philly, and I missed my connecting flight on the way back, having to spend the night in Vegas before getting home. This time, my luggage was lost again. I am supposed to attend this conference tomorrow, and I don’t even have a toothbrush or any toothpaste to rub on my teeth. And the guy at the ticket counter had the nerve to ask me if I had been through the claims process before so he wouldn’t have to waste his breath talking me through the process. This should not be something that happens to people multiple times. No more money from me. Next time we fly Southwest.

That’s all for now. Until tomorrow…

cultural contradictions of motherhood and choice

So at this lunch I attended where we talked about motherhood, one of the male participants made this statement about his wife (again, paraphrasing):

I would like nothing more than to be at home all day, being a kept man, but my wife wanted to stay at home with our children. It was totally her choice.

While I am not privy to the inner workings of this particular relationship, I am wondering for how many women is the decision to stay at home or to work truly a choice. For there are competing cultural logics out there, at least for middle-class women. [For working class and poor women, the choice often revolves around money, as in "Can I afford day care, so I can work?" or "Can I afford not to work, so I can stay home with my kids?"]

These logics are pretty simple. One says that a woman’s place is in the home. Another says that as individualistic Americans, everyone should be selfish and do things in their own best interests. Another says that women should sacrifice everything for their children. The first logic has pretty much been debunked by most of society, but the other two truly present a puzzle. Sharon Hays, in “The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood,” does a good job in discussing these competing logics if you want more than my spin on it.

Attachment parenting is all the buzz now. Read Sears, and they will tell you that to be a good mother, you must be there. “Being there” means just that - physically being up in your kid’s face 24/7. Children need the constant presence of their mothers in order to feel safe and secure in the world. Many books urge you to not put your child in day care at least until their second birthday, and then many others say not to do it at all. As for your sanity, your well-being — that has to wait. Children will only be children for a short amount of time and you will be sorry if you miss it .

On the other hand, try to get a job after being out of the job market for several years to “be there” for your kids. Motherwork is not seen as legitimate work with transferable skills to other occupations - studies show that being a mother actually carries a penalty on the job market. The individualistic logic in America is to always be working at your craft, behaving like a rational actor, maximizing your utility - in other words, being selfish. Penalizing a woman for motherwork says that caring activities, where someone else’s needs are put in front of your own, is not valuable in the society.

So then how does a woman truly choose given these competing logics? To me, choice denotes equal alternatives. It’s kinda like how Chris Rock says we shouldn’t praise men who take care of their kids, as if it’s a choice - taking care of your kids is what you’re supposed to do, according to the dominant way of thinking. So when it comes to choice in motherhood, is there really a choice? The competing logics tell you very clearly what you are supposed to do, so depending on which logic most appeals to you, you then do what you are supposed to do.

So much is made about educated middle-class women “opting-out,” as if it were a choice. The link is to Stone, a sociologist who wrote a book about it. Am I the only one who thinks that it isn’t such a choice when the logic of attachment parenting is so strong, especially for the middle class? When class privilege makes the competitive logic less persuasive over decisions? Do middle-class women truly feel like they have a choice, at least one that they can feel good about? The little blurb about the book says this:

They have been unsuccessful in their efforts to find flexibility or… because they found themselves marginalized and stigmatized, negatively reinforced for trying to hold onto their careers after becoming mothers.

So this is my point - it is really such a choice when the social pressures are so strongly pushing that way?

I’m rambling here, as my thoughts are not well spelled out here. Feel free to ignore everything I just wrote.

making it work

Last week I attended a brown-bag series at the education school about graduate school and parenthood. Although I’m not in the ed school, I thought it would be nice to get to know some other parents who are also juggling/balancing the grad school thing. The round-table discussion was also billed as a “thinking about parenthood” information session for childless students. Faculty were invited, so there was about a 60/40 split of students and faculty, respectively. There were a lot of things that came out of this meeting that I think are blog-worthy, so this week I’ll be taking each topic in turn. First up:

Making the Decision vs. Making the Decision Work

Only one non-parent showed up for the meeting, so while there was a a little bit of advice about making that decision, it was mostly about making the decision work. Which was probably best anyway. There is so much consternation amongst graduate students about when the best time to start a family is. I’ve heard it everywhere along the grad student - tenure continuum: wait until after classes are done, no, wait until you’ve defended your proposal, no, wait until you’ve landed your first position, no, wait until after you’ve gotten tenure. I remember a professor back in my freshman year of college saying,

There’s never a good time to get married or have children. Just do it.

I followed his advice.

Now that’s not to say that life will not be 10 times as hectic depending on your timing for having kids as compared to some other timing. I was in grad school last year as well, and going from one child to two children is much more difficult than I thought it would be. Living away from extended family is much more difficult than I thought it would be. Maintaining my relationship with my husband is much more difficult than I thought it would be. But it’s all doable.

Do Not Quit

One of the faculty members said (paraphrase),

The keys to making it work is to make a commitment to yourself that you will not quit. Anything.

Sometimes you’ll need to stall - I deferred grad school when I got pregnant with my first child, but there was no doubt in my mind that I was going the following year. I’m holding off on the second part of my joint program for another year because my kids still need so much from me physically, but there is no doubt that I’ll be there in another year’s time. Although it’s hard for me to truly imagine this whole process being over, I know that I am going to do it, all of it, no matter what. When having kids, a husband, and advanced degrees stop being a choice, in your mind, getting on with what has to be done get easier. My yoga teacher in Philly told me the same thing, when I was hemming and hawing about whether I even wanted to go to school or if I wanted more to teach yoga or do something more holistic. While her personal feelings seemed to said more with teaching yoga, she told me that what I needed to do was make a decision and go on with it. Looking back and wondering “what if” only leads to suffering and is totally unproductive.

The Juggling Act

Another faculty member said (paraphrase, not a direct quote),

“If you think about the juggling metaphor for balancing life and work, some of the balls you juggle are made of crystal, while others are made of rubber. The crystal balls - your children’s physical and mental health and safety, your relationship with your partner - can never be dropped, or if they are, they must be very carefully put back together. The rubber balls - work deadlines, weekend work, etc. - we can be a little more cavalier with as they will bounce right back up, if you give it a little time.”

Although I don’t like it - I want all my balls in the air, at the same time - I am going to need to start doing this, and suggest that those thinking of having families and going to school think about this too. Before kids, I tried my hardest to be perfect, turning things in early, reading every last sentence, never taking shortcuts. But once I had my kids, striving for perfection is futile because you’ll never get there, and your kids remind you of this everyday. During the first four weeks of my daughter’s life, she cried and cried and cried, and nothing you did soothed her. Efforts to be perfect for this child were doomed to fail, so you just stopped trying. You let her know that you were there, by holding her or singing to her, but after that you let go of the expectation that something you could do would make things better. When she stopped crying, everyone took a nap until the next episode and we kept it moving. I was happier that way, and happiness felt so much better than trying to be perfect.

Now, the same applies - if I’m tired, and my kids are asleep, and I have a plan for getting stuff done, I go to bed. My son was hospitalized for several days last year near the beginning of the semester, and I missed several deadlines. But those balls bounced up so quickly, I hardly remember any fall out from them. But my baby’s crystal ball was cracked, and I had to work hard at getting that back together. Along the same line, the faculty suggested making a list of things to get done during the week, and prioritize it. Stick to the list unless a crystal ball item comes up - if it ain’t about your kids’ mental, physical health and safety or your partnership (which I will devote a whole ‘nother post to) then let it go.

Biological Imperative

People have to have children in order to repopulate the world. Of course not everyone does, but if it’s an urge you have, it’s totally warranted by biology. On the other hand, people do not have to get PhDs. Honestly, I chose this career partly because of the flexibility it lends to doing the biological job quite nicely. Is it hard - sure, but what worth having in life isn’t difficult to come by? So, make the decision, and then strategize about making the decision work. It made me sad that there was only non-parent at the discussion - as much as it’s on people’s minds, why wouldn’t they want to hear the real deal from the horses’ mouth’s?

Some other thoughts to be addressed this week:

Cultural contradictions of motherhood and choice

Being a good spouse, being a good parent

Reluctance to admit resentment