Work vs. Family in Academia: home
Talking Points
Mac Marshall
- I want to quibble with the title for our panel since to me the word versus implies an opposition—an “either-or.” Instead I want to talk about “Work AND Family in Academia.” While I recognize that these two things are sometimes in competition for one’s time, energy and even money, the REAL issue in my view is how to COORDINATE the two—how to mesh the personal and the professional. Our feminist foremothers have taught us that “the personal is political;” the question here is: “can the personal also be professional?”
- My short answer is, yes, but let me hold forth for a few minutes with some examples, emphasizing as feminists do that the work and family issue is as much an issue for men as it is for women.
- Coordinating Education and Careers. A challenge that many of us face is that of a dual-career household and the need to maximize the educational and career opportunities of each partner to the relationship. After college I followed my wife to her first choice of a graduate school. Then when I finished graduate school back in what my friend Ivan Brady calls the Neo-Terrific, my wife Leslie and I began looking for academic jobs in two different fields (she in neurobiology). We wanted to avoid a commuter marriage, and we were each willing to compromise so long as we had interesting work. We ended up at the U. of Iowa in the fall of 1972, I with a tenure-track Asst. Professorship and she with a postdoctoral fellowship in neural control of the cardiovascular system. Jobs were relatively plentiful in those halcyon days, so our expectation was that we’d be able to return west after a couple of years in Iowa, but then the academic marketplace went into fibrillation. Long story short, MY job was turning out fine, but hers wasn’t. A little over a year into her postdoc, she quit in a fit over being treated like a lab tech instead of a colleague by the male MDs with whom she worked. Soon thereafter we had our son (the events are not related…). We continued to fish for good jobs elsewhere after Kelsey was born, but either there’d be something for me but not for her, or vice versa. We ended up staying in Iowa City and by dint of hard work and a bit of luck Leslie found first a Research Associate position in Physiology & Biophysics (kind of a glorified postdoc, infinitely renewable), and then second, a tenure-track faculty position teaching pathophysiology in the College of Nursing. Three lessons derive from this short tale: (a) One can’t always live where one might wish to; (b) Finding satisfying and remunerative work for two people is a challenge; and (c) If one hangs in there, things often work out for the best. (I might add here that NOWADAYS my university has a spousal/partner hire policy wherein it makes every possible effort to assist in locating a good job for BOTH parties. I’m not sure how widespread such policies are around the country, but if you’re interviewing and you get an offer be sure to ask!)
- Finessing Fieldwork. All of us know that fieldwork usually is a profound, life-changing process, and as such it is something we wish to experience with our partner, if we can. Anthropology is rife with stories of couples who split when the anthropologist went to the field by herself, and came home a changed woman (or man). My advisor emphasized to me the importance of having Leslie accompany me to Micronesia for this reason, but fortunately I didn’t have to twist her arm as she is a travel buff and adventurer par excellance. She set her own dissertation research on the back burner to go do fieldwork with me in Chuuk and on Namoluk; she taught school there, and became involved with anthropological fieldwork. One result of this was that over the 23 years we were married we co-authored one book, a book chapter, and six peer-reviewed journal articles based on our shared medical anthropological research. Once again, we were coordinating our careers; indeed, Leslie developed a specialty in maternal-child health that led to research grants, an edited book, and several journal articles and book chapters that she authored by herself. Our subsequent field trips to Chuuk involved joint fieldwork, and the 2 years we spent in Papua New Guinea involved coordination in the sense that we were each able to arrange research positions at IASER (and in Leslie’s case also at UPNG). Our son’s presence opened new doors in the field, and by the time he was 12 he was also contributing data to the fieldwork enterprise (following Yogi Berra, he observed a lot just by watching!).
- Institutional Demands. When my son was born in 1974 I was the only member of my department with a young child (my, how times have changed!). Some male faculty had teenaged or older children, but none of my colleagues seemed to understand or be particularly sympathetic to the special demands of parenthood. Since I was very much an actively involved co-parent (once again Leslie and I were coordinating our lives and responsibilities), this was an especially stressful time in my career. That is because it coincided with my probationary period leading up to tenure, and life became quite a juggling act to find time to write and publish, prepare lectures, change diapers (she was responsible for input—I for output…), do the shopping, and attend the always endless committee meetings. Mutual respect and love were crucial in coordinating this phase of our lives. My university has SINCE become more enlightened and now has a Family Caregiving Leave policy as a faculty and staff benefit that is payable under accrued sick leave (although, without special dispensation, it is limited to 5 days per year). While this is primarily intended to care for an ill or injured family member (e.g., a child or an aged parent) it is the case that it can also be used at the time of a birth.
- Coordinating Other Family Situations. As two working parents we needed childcare for our son, and childcare required dropping him off and picking him up, a task I performed. Once Kelsey entered kindergarten, we arranged our teaching schedules so that one or the other of us could be at home before he got home from school (we did not want to have a latch-key child); which of us did the most of this varied from semester to semester. And then Leslie’s stepfather died and her mother came to live with us in a three-generation family (something that seemed absolutely normal after the years we’d lived in Chuuk and PNG). I highly recommend this as a way for coordinating work and family for two academics! My mother-in-law did much of the cooking, was home when Kelsey arrived home from school, and took on other tasks that provided each of us more time to write and to attend to university responsibilities.
- Divorce, New Beginnings, New Patterns of Coordination. Leslie and I divorced quite some years ago now, and each of us met and married another academic. In my case it was to another anthropologist—someone in my own department, a senior scholar who had also been married for a long time to someone else. Childcare and concerns over tenure were not issues for Margery and me, but we still needed to find ways to coordinate our careers. Happily, we’ve found mutually satisfactory ways to do this, and also to accommodate visits from or to various members of my large family of orientation. As my father became ill and then recently died, family demands took precedence over work and Margery took on more than her share of household tasks to help reduce the pressure on me.
- Lessons? The main lesson, if that’s the correct word, that I think
derives from these various anecdotes and experiences is that dual-career
academic couples need to remain flexible, be in agreement about courses
of action to take (or not—e.g., when to go to the field), and be
willing to compromise, and make sure to share home and family responsibilities.
Depending on the career stage of each person, her or his partner may need
to take on more chores at home; depending on family demands from aging
parents or ill siblings, the partner may need to pick up the slack at
home so that the other can continue to function at least minimally at
work during especially stressful times. Perhaps this is another meaning
we can give to Emily Martin’s, Flexible Bodies---