disillusioned

Disillusioned commented about her concern with FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act)* in academia:

I am in a non-tenure track position and when I told my chair I wanted to take FMLA I was told that he or she didn’t think it applied to me because I’m in a non-tenured position. This was quickly followed up with, “I helped write this university’s maternity leave policy. You should have seen it before.” I qualifed for FMLA. I know the law well (as does this chair) and had already discussed it with HR.

It is very annoying when people who are in supervisory positions make statements about policies without being correct. Many employees depend solely upon these people to know and are not as well educated about the law as D is.

I am also growing disillusioned by my field. Why are we patting academia on the back for extending the tenure clock one additional year for each child (this is not policy at all universities)? Why should I have less job security over a longer period of time because I’ve chosen to become a parent? These are people that know better (they understand the mommy penalty). Academia might be a “better” fit with parenthood than other careers but I’m growing less sure of that every day.

I’m not very familiar with the extension of the tenure track, but I thought it was more of an option that something that would definitely happen. Also, I thought that it was for the year after childbirth, when one might not be as productive. The way D puts it though, it’s as if because I have two kids, even though they’ll be like 8 and 6 when I enter the job market, my tenure clock will be extended. I don’t think I’d want that - it would be unnecessary and imposes a stereotype on mothers that may not apply. Are there others out there who have more experience with this? Is it an option? Does it apply to all mothers, regardless of the age of the child(ren)? Do people see it as a good thing or a bad thing?

I am also finishing up my doctorate and am growing frustrated over having to censor myself on social networking sites on the chance that potential employers (or my current employer) stumble upon my postings. I’m jealous of my non-academia mom friends that can post an ultrasound photo as their profile photo. I’m nervous posting it anywhere on my profile even though the profile is private, excluding the profile photo and headline.

If I were you, I wouldn’t hold that part of me back. If there is an institution that, after reviewing your dissertation, teaching portfolio, etc. that would not want to hire you because you have a child, then why would you want to work for them? I think it’s best to be straight-up in the hiring process because then everyone knows what they are getting. I also do not ever hide my kids when I don’t want to. My kids are all over my facebook page, I talk about them in my blurb on my department’s website, and I definitely plan to have more and talk about them, too.

My husband has also run into problems at his non-academic job. He is taking their paid parental leave and his boss told him he didn’t think he qualified because he isn’t the primary caregiver. What is a primary caregiver? He is no more or no less the primary caregiver than me.

Again, annoying. Although I sent my husband back to work after a week - I couldn’t take it

FMLA may be law but in practice intimidation is used inside and outside of academia to discourage workers from taking it.

You should read the work of these scholars at the ABF. They found exactly what you are talking about - employers using retaliation and intimidation to discourage workers from mobilizing their rights.

* In a nutshell, FMLA provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave for employees who have worked in their firm for more than a year at a firm who has over 100 employees. The real benefit of FMLA is job security - upon return to work, an employees must be restated at the same or better position than before the leave began. And the leave is not just for pregnancy - all medical issues with someone in the immediate family are covered.

i want to make sure

Over at The Root, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites, Rebecca Walker (estranged daughter of Alice Walker) writes an interesting piece about the things that she is going to make sure her son sees and experiences. Her first instinct upon seeing a picture of the Obama’s:

Call me old-fashioned, call me a fashionista who loves to see classic couture meet the new black aesthetic, call me fashioning a blog post out of a media moment, but I ran downstairs and got my son from his room. I wanted to make sure that, even though he’s only three-and-a-half years old, he could see a new kind of Presidential family. I wanted to make sure he could see what the world looks like, circa today.

She then recounts all the things her mother made sure that she saw and experienced: having a kiss by BB King, getting Cicely Tyson’s autograph, meeting Nelson Mandela, talking to Harry Belefonte, and the list goes on. While some commenters chided her on the high-post-ness of her list, I think her point was well made. There are all sorts of things that I want to make sure my kids see, hear and experience in life.

When I was growing up, we didn’t have the money to take expensive trips or the social clout to meet famous people. But my parents made sure that once a year, they splurged to take my brother and I to a live entertainment show of our choice (mine was Janet Jackson, his was Wrestle-Mania.) My mother made sure that literature lined our walls, especially those of black authors. My father made sure that we heard all different types of music, from rock to classical to rap to jazz. Not to tout my own horn but that of my parents: to this day I think I am one of the most widely read and know more about music than most people my age who had a lot more than I did growing up. It was through books and music that I learned about greatness, much how Rebecca Walker learned about greatness through shaking greatness’s hand.

So what do I want to make sure my kids see, hear, and experience? My kids are too little to understand the significance of an Obama ticket, but they sure can hear the excitement in our voices as we talk about it. I want to make sure that my children realize that the world is bigger than them, by doing simple things that showing them the ocean this weekend. I too want to introduce them to the world through books, to make sure that they know what’s out there even if they don’t always get to see it.

What do you want to “make sure” for your kids?

yuck, gross, yuck

All three of the other members of my family are sick. And as much as I love them, I have an aversion to sick people. To top it off, I seem to be immune to any of the stuff they pick up out in the world. Which means that I am always well enough to take care of them. A few thoughts on this special role:

1. When my family gets sick, I feel this extreme compulsion to clean. As if the germs that got them sick are now spreading through my house, and I must disinfect to stop them from getting the germs all over again. And given the amount of spit-up and other bodily juices that have escaped from their bodies, it’s probably not a bad thing to do anyway.

2. Sippy cups are gross. They are incredibly hard to clean, with their little plastic suction things and holes that no dishrag can get through. When we had a diswasher back in Philly, it wasn’t so bad, but it’s impossible to get them really clean when handwashing. I suggest to all people who have children coming up to sippy-cup age to take this into account. Perhaps going straight to the regular cup is the best way to go.

3. People, esp. kids, get clingy when they are sick. I love my children with all my heart, but given my tendency to get grossed-out by sickness, I really don’t want them breathing all over me. I can just feel the germs coming over me. But they need love and comfort so I just try not to think about it.

4. This is a great product to have when you have kids, I mean pets (which we don’t have, but we love this product, so you get the point).

5. Sick kids + sick husband + end of the quarter + looming deadlines = great amount of stress. Blogging will be taking a back seat for a few days. Not that there are many people reading anyway

what would you do?

This is awesome. A breastfeeding mother and Chinese police woman, upon seeing hungry infants in the wake of the devastating earthquake, breastfed as many as nine infants who may have otherwise died if not for her.  What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? I’d like to think I’d be as generous as this police officer, especially when hungry children are involved.

From Dr. Huginkiss:

This story resonated with me on several levels. First, as a mother who breastfed both of my children, I was moved thinking about the powerful bond that has been forged between this woman and the infants she fed. Honestly, it gives me chills just thinking about it. Second, as a criminologist I was intrigued to hear Xaiojuan remark that by feeding these babies she was merely fulfilling her duty as a police officer:

“I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn’t think of it much,” she said. “It is a mother’s reaction, and a basic duty as a police officer to help.”

While she may feel this way, I wonder how many officers (male or female) would agree with her. Myself, I think what she did is pretty extraordinary, and definitely qualifies as going beyond the call of duty.

Happy Birthday To You…

I missed it yesterday, as I was traveling all day, but I wanted to wish Malcolm X a happy belated birthday. He would have been 83.

From Melissa Harris-Lacewell on The Root, an excellent black intellectual blog, on why we love Malcolm:

Malcolm displayed the capacity to learn, to grow, to discern and to change direction. It takes courage to admit that society’s approach to old subjects has grown rigid and needs to evolve and change. It is hard for leaders to admit that they have been wrong in the past. His life is a reminder that greatness is not found in arrogant self-righteousness or intellectual hubris, but in the willingness to be open to our own limitations.
…

As we stop to reconsider Malcolm X on his birthday, we should reaffirm our own commitments to creating a more just and fair world. We should express to his spirit our gratitude, not for his perfection, but for his courage and for the lessons he imparted to us, to light the way for our struggle

I think about this often as I go through my days, defending my beliefs and trying to make this a better world for my children. I try to remember my goal of self-improvement and spiritual enlightenment, even if it requires admitting I was wrong by being honest with myself and all those around me. I think of my struggles, but remembering that while there is always someone doing better than I, there is also someone doing worse. Do read the Autobiography of Malcolm X if you haven’t yet already. Reading it was one of the turning points in my life.

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.