Invisible Adjunct

"you stop talking as though motherhood represented some kind of hobby or holiday"

Where does she do this?

The big problem with her piece (something you note in passing) is her talk of "rights." Asserting that "time for friends, family, exercise, healthy diets, and spiritual growth" somehow already belong to us, but are unjustly withheld, casts the issue as one of fairness, which entails notions of hierarchy, and shifts responsibility away from those affected onto administrators with unfair expectations, or a conservative school culture. In fact, as we all recognize, the problem is societal. So, "rights talk" is Wells' own ironic circumscribing move, focusing too much on the particulars of her own situation, missing what's at stake.

I actually think Well's fundemental mistake is thinking that this won't happen to her outside the academy. I've worked in and out of academia, and any job can take over your life if you let it - those work/life boundaries are something that you have to firmly set yourself. No boss will stop you from overworking yourself, and it's often much harder to deny a request from the person who promotes you than it is to set firm rules with students about when and when not you are available.

I am somewhat sympathetic to her not-well-concealed envy of the motherhood alibi. To women without children, extended motherhood leave can look quite a bit like a socially-approved holiday from the daily grind. My neighborhood is full of well-groomed thirtish professional-looking women sipping Starbucks next to their strollers at 11am, 1pm. I certainly have many days when I would rather care for a baby instead of my boss, who can act like a baby. Do I know that motherhood is the hardest job there is? Yup. Am I aware that 'women's work' is devalued by our society? Yup. Do I have moments of envy for those women with $150 haircuts and $400 strollers whose act of career sacrifice for their child look to the unwary observer like a extended holiday? Yup again.

"Do I have moments of envy for those women with $150 haircuts and $400 strollers whose act of career sacrifice for their child look to the unwary observer like a extended holiday?"

As a mother with a rather (as in, very much) less expensive haircut and stroller, I guess I have moments where I envy them too. And motherhood probably isn't the hardest job for these women, because they have lots of paid help: cleaning ladies, for example, and even nannies (yes, even though home full-time, some of these mother still have nannies). But to say this is really to say, I have moments when I envy the ease and privilege of extreme affluence. Given that most mothers do not live this way, why make this about motherhood?

I think Wells makes her comment (which is only made in passing and which is not the point of her article ) b/c she lives in a society and culture which discusses constantly the problems which young mothers face, esp. when they are also attempting to have a career (open any newspaper, turn on the tv, read contemp lit etc. and you'll see that there is a constant discussion of the problems career moms face---this doesn't mean these issues have been resolved and that career moms don't have terrific difficulties but when you see your society discussing the issues which are paramount in your daily life it is a help). I think Wells made the comment b/c she has been made to feel less for not having children and b/c she never sees her problem/situation discussed in the public sphere. There is, in fact, no sympathy in our society for single people (all the jokes abt people who can't commit and people who have personality issues) and there is even less sympathy for people who do marry and decide not to have children. Wells' comments undoubtedly come from that context.

IA: "But to say this is really to say, I have moments when I envy the ease and privilege of extreme affluence. Given that most mothers do not live this way, why make this about motherhood?"

But I think this is her peer group. Only the affluent can afford to have one parent leave the workforce for several years without experiencing severe financial hardship. (Being able to also afford a nanny would certainly qualify you as extremely affluent.)

Wells tells us that she is affluent enough to not work without an enormous financial sacrifice. This is what allows her to quit her job with no prospect of other immediate employment. Her partner makes a good income. So here she is, affluent enough to leave a job she hates, with no near prospects for employment, but without a higher calling to socially sanction her decision.

I think that Wells is extremely burned out, and has a difficult time saying no to extra work that has caused her state. While it's true that workers without children are often asked to cover for coworkers with children - come in to the office on Xmas, work over the weekend, pull the needed alnighter to meet the deadline - this problem isn't nearly as systemic in academia, certainly not enough to justify her burnout. If she is trying to blame an unjust burden on single people in academia as a cause of her burnout, I suspect that blame is misplaced.

"(which is only made in passing and which is not the point of her article)"

As I read it, not only in passing. The paragraph I quote is followed by two more on the same theme.

"you'll see that there is a constant discussion of the problems career moms face"

It's true there much discussion (and even more moralizing and sermonizing) on this theme. I think a good deal of it is of the "feminism has failed; women should give it up and go home" variety. And most of it is concerned not so much with the problems/challenges/aspirations of career mothers as with the possible meaning and significance of the very existence of career mothers. Which is to say, the privileged position of "mother" in cultural discussions about the current and future state of society (eg, does mother in the workplace mean we're all going to hell in a handbasket?) should not be misinterpreted as conferring actual privileges on actual mothers.

I don't get why she had to bring up women with kids in her article. I totally agreed with her up until then. I do think that academia and the workplace in general demands too much of everyone today. Why did she have to turn on women academics with kids?

As someone who is home with the kids most of the time, let me just say for the record that I'm not getting all the health and exercise that Wells describes.

The only exercise I get is picking up my son from nursery school, lifting my large baby up four flights of stairs, and putting away toys for the fiftieth time that day. I'm not doing pilates in a gym with a liter of water. And a healthy diet? Ha! I started the day off with half a pot of coffee and a couple of Mallowmars. Time with friends? Oh, sure. I haven't been to a movie in a year.

The column is bizarre. Who edits these things at the Chronicle, anyway? She's obviously burned out (see Matilde, above), and casting about for someone, anyone, to blame for the mess she's in.

"I've seen male faculty members at my college receive tenure with very weak service records, but I know of no woman at my institution who has ever considered not doing the required service..."

The second part has no logical connection to the first. If it's possible to get tenure w/o service at this particular college, then maybe the women *should* consider saying no to some things.

If secretaries are on hand to help with administrative things, freeing faculty to give their students the "personal touch," then why *shouldn't* the women delegate as much as the men?

And an impossibly heavy teaching load hardly equates to doing your best for your students, which is what she seems to want us to think.

It sounds like Wells never even tried to stand up for herself. But, now, for heaven's sake, she has tenure! What's to stop her saying "No," these days, even if she couldn't before? I think she's fallen out of love with her work -- her *real* work (her teaching, her scholarship) but she can't face up to the fact, so she's blaming it all on unreasonable service expectations. What will she blame when the next career sucks her dry?

And one more thing: "it's not necessarily easier being childless." In what way, precisely?

Freed of job pressures, Wells is settling down to a comfy, stay-at-home, explore-your-potential, follow-your-dreams existence. Good for her. But what were the "pressures" that made life so difficult before? Were they any different from the pressures we all face at work? I'm not saying childless grown-ups *don't* face extracurricular pressure -- whether it's taking care of parents, siblings, partners, spouses, roomates, or any number of other serious, time-consuming concerns. But Wells doesn't have any specific pressures to tell us about; she's just disaffected.

When I get home to my kids (yes, by 6pm, most of the time, thanks to an early start and a supportive department), I run a spirit-draining three-hour gauntlet of squalling, mucky neediness (with the occasional, extraordinary moment of pride and satisfaction thrown in, I grant you -- the kind that does, indeed, make it all worthwhile). But all that comes before I can settle down to anything approaching a healthy dinner or, goodness knows, "spiritual growth."

And yet, I love my job and I love my work (and I love my kids), and that makes slogging through all of it OK. I'm trying to teach my toddlers not to blame someone else when they've made a mistake. The four year old is beginning to get it. I wonder when Wells will.

What I take to be one of the main points of Wells' article is that she is disappointed by the difference in attitude towards women faculty with children and those without. I think it is fairly common to hear things like "sure, she cannot stay at the meeting past 5, she has to pick up the kids", "of course she cannot be in the office to finish that paper in the evenings, she has a family to take care of". It is acceptable for women with children to not put in as many hours at work as men do, but not for women who are childless. More in general, it should be OK for people, men or women, to spend time on something that will enhance their quality of life, without people doubting their "drive" or their dedication to science or teaching. Even after getting tenure, it can be difficult to ignore a work environment that thinks you are a "slacker". And I certainly don't consider being a mother a hobby, or an excuse to lead a life of leisure, but it can be frustrating to have to be at another early morning committee meeting or be available for students with evening office hours because other women have to take their children to school, or make them dinner, especially when you're told that "you will be given the same consideration once you have kids". What if you never do? You would still enjoy having regular dinners at home with your husband, your friends, your family, which could maybe lead to not burning out, as Wells obviously has.

Women aren't the only ones who struggle with this, nor are academics.

http://www.kevin-walzer.com/pivot/entry.php?uid=standard-91

"...I will talk more loudly and more often of the need of everyone...for a sane and balanced life."

Unfortunately my experience is that this is not a need of everyone. There seems to be plenty of people who don't mind insane and unbalanced lives, especially if it means a shot at tenure. Some of them even seem to be enjoying themselves.

I'm always amused by the longueurs of professional women--when faculty members here complain about 8:00AM meetings, or say they have to drive their children to school, I ask them when their secretarial staff arrive at work. I'm not suggesting that everyone should have the same lack of control of their own time as do the clerical staff; but I wonder why more academics aren't working toward giving all workers the same control of one's time as they have. The Chronicle article didn't discuss the built-in down times of the academic cycle, no matter what horrible overwork the author was submitting herself to, her campus isn't open 52 weeks a year, or even 50....

"But do the articles by mothers who leave the academy really "neglect the larger issue of the enormous space that work fills in all our lives"? What silly women those mothers must be! Talk about missing the forest for the trees. But I rather doubt they are so silly as all that."

The article doesn't mention articles BY mothers who leave; it mentions articles ABOUT mothers who leave. What difference does it make? Well, it suggests that your response to Wells-- as though she had said that academic mothers were silly idiots incapable of a big-picture analysis of work, and had declared that motherhood is a walk in the park compared to the demands of a job that exceeds reasonable boundaries-- is a response to a fantasy, or at least a response to something other than this article.