Striding along the Mommy Track
Being a new mother and a new professor need not be mutually exclusive. Two young faculty members tell how they prosper as new mothers in their pre-tenure years
by Marlis Schweitzer and Jenn Stephenson
Marlis Schweitzer holds an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. She enjoys her morning walks with Marcus and always looks forward to his arrival at her office (with daddy) in the afternoon.
Jenn Stephenson is an assistant professor of drama at Queen's University. She is now on maternity leave with twins Benjamin and Sarah. Jessica, age four, attends the Queen's Daycare Centre.
At first glance it would appear that academia is one of the best professional environments for bearing and raising children, with its flexible work hours, lengthy breaks between terms, and access to recreational facilities and daycare on campus. Child-friendly policies at Canadian universities provide paid parental leave, teaching relief and added time before tenure review. Yet, female academics have the highest rate of childlessness among professionals, at 43 percent.
What is it, then, about the academy that discourages motherhood? In her new book Parenting and Professing, Rachel Hile Bassett argues that it's the "attitudes entrenched in the academic culture" that pit the role of the successful single-minded academic against that of the totally devoted mother.
For female academics, the biologically productive years often collide with the professionally productive years en route to the doctorate and tenure. So those who do decide to have children can't totally avoid the entrenched attitudes discussed by Dr. Bassett. Professors who are new mothers often practise "discrimination avoidance" to minimize intrusions on their professional activities or "hiding the baby" (a phrase coined in the foreword to the book) in an effort to render their status as mothers invisible.
As two pre-tenure mothers of "early babies" - born within three years of the PhD - the challenge as we see it is to stop practising acts of self-censorship and instead rehabilitate the Mommy Track, to prove that being a mother and being a professor need not be mutually exclusive - far from it. One way to begin is through storytelling, a process, writes Dr. Bassett, that "can provide a deeper context, a sociological imagination that sees the political in the personal, the communal in the private." In the interests of reshaping academic culture in some small way and bringing the baby out of hiding, here are our stories:
Research
Marlis: My experience dealing with the pressure and desire to get my postpartum body back into its pre-baby shape last summer directly influenced my research interests. Preparing a class on the history of the American magazine, I became especially aware of celebrity tabloid magazines' current obsession with pregnancy - their constant speculation about who might be pregnant, round-the-clock coverage of stars' "baby bumps," and breathless accounts of celebs' abilities to lose their baby weight. I became fascinated and repulsed by tabloid coverage of Britney Spears, Heidi Klum, Angelina Jolie and others, and started wondering what this predatory surveillance of the pregnant body reveals about our current historical moment. I soon realized that I not only had the workings of an article but that my interest in pregnant celebrities related directly to my ongoing research on the historical development of the cult of celebrity in my field of theatre studies. My postpartum body changed the way I view the world and in the process reshaped my short- and long-term research goals in exciting new ways.
Conferences
Jenn: At the most recent conference I attended I was six months pregnant with twins and as big as a house. No sleek maternity suit was going to disguise my condition. My paper was concerned with the fecundity of words to create life in fictional worlds. In the play I discussed, characters usurp the author's traditional power to create their own characters and dramatic worlds. One theme that I teased out showed a connection between the act of world creation through storytelling and recurring images of abortion and infanticide in the stories themselves. Without a doubt, this line of analysis was a direct product of my own maternal situation, prompting me to see the action of the play in this particular and fruitful way. Thinking back to the delivery of that paper, I can hardly compass the added effect of my own performance, my blooming physical presence complementing and complicating the spoken words.
Marlis: Marcus is a well-travelled baby. By four and a half months, he had attended not one, not two, but three academic conferences (with daddy thankfully in tow). When I was pregnant I was determined not to let anything stop me from continuing to live a full academic life and so blithely agreed to present papers at conferences in October and November (Marcus was born in July). There were a few bumps along the way, but I realized that in bringing Marcus to the conferences, I had given myself the perfect ice breaker. My husband Dan and I joke that Marcus is my "wing baby" - while I'm usually nervous about meeting new people, this was not a problem with my flirty little boy. He'd grin at people who would inevitably stop to chat about work and parenting. For one mom I met, seeing us was a relief because it gave her an opportunity to express her anxiety at having left her one-year-old at home for the first time. Having a baby then has helped me overcome my conference nerves - opening new professional doors.
Teaching
Jenn: A short scene. (I am sitting on the floor of the bathroom holding a doll named Georgiana while my daughter aged two-and-a-half goes pee.)
Jess: Mommy, hold Georgiana up so she can see me pee.
Me: (playing along) You're such a big girl now. When Georgiana grows up, she will go pee on the toilet just like you.
Jess: (disdainfully) Mommy, Georgiana isn't real. She's made of plastic.
When we read Coleridge in my dramatic theory seminar, I tell this story as a key illustration of the arbitrary and shifting nature of audience belief - one moment I am agreeably immersed in the fictional world where Georgiana is real and the next I am thrust back to the actual world where Georgiana is only a doll. This perceptual oscillation experienced by the audience is central to my work on the phenomenology of metatheatricality. I have been given a perfect, elegant, if scatological, example by my child. It is a gift.
Marlis: Teaching contemporary drama last year in my second trimester, I became increasingly aware of how many canonical works revolve around the desire for, fear of, and frustration with children, for example, Hedda Gabler, The Rez Sisters, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. As my pregnant body emerged before my students' eyes, these themes became even more present to me and I devoted several classes and an exam question to the topic. Self-indulgent? Perhaps. But I also saw it as an opportunity to critically examine a subject that is often ignored or dismissed in an academic setting.
The Job Interview
Jenn: Rule #1: You may not be asked about your family situation.
Rule #2: Don't out yourself as a mother or potential mother.
The department head phoned to arrange the schedule for my campus visit. He asked if there were any facilities I would like to tour. There was a pause as I cast around for ideas. "Like the daycare," he suggested. There was another pause, this one more charged as we both realized that this was a forbidden topic. "One of your referees told us that you have a toddler," he confessed. I can guess what happened. A well-meaning letter-writer cited the fact that I wrote the whole dissertation during the first 15 months of my daughter's life as a testament to my efficiency and determination to complete tasks. Flattering, yes; politically wise, perhaps not. On the day of the visit, the department head did escort me to the university daycare, where he was greeted warmly by a caregiver who recognized him as the father of Amy - now 17 years old. This encounter was the seed of my positive impression of this department and this university as somewhere I can thrive.
Student Relations
Jenn: In the spring, students come into my office to talk through end-of-term stresses which sometimes have nothing to do with my own courses. Last spring, one student was listing her various and overwhelming commitments when she experienced an epiphany. What she needs to complete her film assignment is my daughter. And so, Jessica in her pyjamas is the title character in a student short film called While She Sleeps. The film follows a young single mother who works nights, leaving her small daughter sleeping alone in the locked apartment. As a drama professor, I was fascinated to watch Jessica negotiate the world of pretend and try to remember to call the actress "Mommy." As a mother, I was unexpectedly moved by the film, reminded how fortunate I am to have a career that enables me to both work and care for my child.
Marlis: Because we live five minutes from campus I often run into my students when I'm out with Marcus. Most often, these are brief cooing encounters, but at times they become impromptu office hours. On one occasion, a random meeting with a student led to an in-depth discussion about her research project - interestingly, she felt guilty for taking up my time with Marcus, while I was actually quite happy to play mommy and professor at the same time. Although in my pre-baby days I was reluctant to share personal details with students (my young-prof nerves dictated a strict separation of public and private), now I feel that it's an important part of my relationship with them, personally and professionally. This is especially true with female students. I like that they get a chance to see the other side of my life, and hope that by having a prof who is also a mother and actively involved with research and teaching and her family, they will realize that they too can find a way to balance both in the future.
Conclusion
This is not to say that academic motherhood is all sunshine and roses. Nevertheless, we think that being a new professor-new parent is not just something to survive, but that it enriches our experience, making us more efficient, more perceptive and more engaged - qualities that benefit the whole academy.
Further reading
Women in the Canadian academic tundra: Challenging the chill, edited by Elena Hannah, Linda Paul and Swani Vethmany-Globus, 2002, McGill-Queen's University Press.
The madwoman in the academy: 43 women boldly take on the Ivory Tower, edited by Deborah Keahey and Deborah Schnitzer, 2003, University of Calgary Press.
The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter, by Katherine Ellison, 2005, Basic Books, New York.
