Last week was a difficult one in my family, as all of us got hit with a bug that is going around. I suspect that my daughter brought it home from school, and she was the first to be hit, followed closely by me. My husband eventually got it, but only on the weekend, when it conveniently would not conflict with any “billable hours” in his practice. I managed to re-arrange my teaching so I could grab a few hours of rest, and was doubly lucky because I multitasked by taking care of my daughter at the same time. I managed to have her asleep upstairs with me downstairs with a box of tissues, typing away at the computer, writing last week’s column between sneezes. But, as I said, I was very lucky, since I could re-arrange my schedule easily to get a few hours of needed rest. Not everyone can do that, and, certainly, not every mother employed outside the home, inside or outside of academia, can count on being sick at the same time their child is sick. The whole experience reminds me of an article by Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe from last February.

In that article, Ellen Goodman said that the economy is close to reaching the point where there are actually an equal number of female employees as male ones. This is the parity that we have worked years for, but it doesn’t feel so good, after all, since it came at the expense of males as they were laid off in the recession. Some sectors, which include academia, have been hit relatively less hard, and, since they tend to employ more women, have tilted the ratio towards women employees.

With more women employees, we can only assume that it will be those sectors that will be hit hardest as the current flu season descends on us and sets off our cell phones ringing to tell us to please pick up our sick children. And how will academia handle this? Can we rely on the fact that most of these women will be sick the same days as their children? Most likely, we cannot, and so this sector with more than the average number women in it will be hit even harder than others by the progressing flu season.

As well as the “sick time” worked out last week, in that column I typed between sneezes and coughs, I once again made a very public math mistake. This time, it was probably one that very few people caught, although I was taken to task by one professor in the comments to my entry. I made mistakes in explaining how adjustments for leap years are made in computing changes in days of the week that dates fall upon. Of course, it is the leap years that are divisible by 100 that are skipped, unless they are also divisible by 400, in which case they are kept. This all helps to make sure the calendar year comes very close to the actual number of days the Earth revolves around the sun each year. I wanted to make corrections clear, and to admit my mistake. As my students would say, “my bad.”

Just as I was beating myself up for the mistake, in a way that only a woman in a male dominated field can do, I realized that the actual story was not in the mistake, but in the circumstances that led me to make the mistake in the first place, since I was sick as I wrote it. This all brings us back to the question of what to do when your child gets sick. If my daughter’s school calls me, I need to hope that it is in the part of a day that I have blocked off for research, and that I have work that is transportable that can come home with me when I pick her up. If not, I am in a difficult situation. However, I must admit that this is still a better situation than most women employed outside of the home face when they get that call from their child’s school.

By the way, THANK YOU to everyone who sent in suggestions about maternity leave policies. I will summarize them soon.

Maybe it’s because it was just Halloween, but, for some reason, zombies seem to have surrounded me recently.

My fourteen year-old daughter Katie wanted to go see Zombieland weekend before last. I voted for Amelia, thinking that would provide her with a more positive role model — “She just got into a plane and decided to fly it!” But a need for good humor, Katie’s desire for sleep, and her brother’s educational crisis won out over both choices.

As I was deplaning from my Chicago flight, I received a phone call from one of my son’s teachers. Much to our surprise, my ex-husband and I discovered that our sixteen year-old son, Nick, was in danger of not passing one of his Honors courses. The teacher encouraged us to drop him back to a non-Honors section, for fear that a failure would remain on his permanent record. This teacher also got us access to an online grading system that many public high schools use—Edline. Edline allows parents and students to monitor tests, homework assignments, and review materials throughout the grading period. On Edline we discovered that Nick was not doing well in several other classes, had neglected to complete about half of all of his homework assignments, but had earned an "A" in Movie Analysis—a fact for which I commended him. (My Phd is in Cinema Studies).

Some angst and family discussions ensued as we tried to decipher what it meant that our son’s grades fluctuated between A’s (test scores) and F’s (no homework completed). We thought that Nick had been doing his homework, and he claims that he thought he was completing it as well, but he admitted to not writing anything down in his planner and spending too much time on Facebook at home.

Was our son just another teenage zombie loaded with hormones? Or was something else going on?

Besides Facebook overuse, Nick admitted to having some concentration issues in his classes, which seem to go beyond simple hormonal exhaustion. I understand concentration issues more intimately now after my own traumatic brain injury (TBI) a few years ago, but Nick’s revelation means that his Dad and I are now working with him to improve his focus, find a learning behavior specialist, and develop better time management skills. We are also banning Facebook indefinitely (but not the heavy metal band Nick plays in), and avoiding the pharmaceutical industry for as long as we can. We recognize that Ritalin may have certain curative effects, but Nick, his Dad and I are trying other strategies first. We worry about the possibility of labeling Nick with a learning disability, since we understand that disabilities cover a wide spectrum of issues and no one diagnosis covers everything.

Crises like this make me really miss not working in the same city as my kids. At least crises bring our family together emotionally, if not geographically…

My daughter seems to have mastered the art of writing her assignments down and turning them in on time, and is waging a (largely) successful battle with her own hormonal spurts. Katie mastered flying a single engine plane with her grandfather at age thirteen. I thought that seeing Amelia would be a natural for her, but, unfortunately, Amelia Earhart seems to fall into that category of ‘that’s good for me’, instead of ‘that’s fun!’ Zombies, werewolves and vampires are, by far, the preferred character studies for teens.

And also for college students, it seems. I took great pleasure in reading about the ‘invasion’ of the University of Florida by student zombies after an employee with a sense of humor posted a “zombie response” on the university’s disaster preparedness site. A student theatre group took the message seriously, donned zombie makeup and costumes, and really simulated the disaster. The university site recommends that one should not describe zombies as “undead” since "'undead’ clearly connotes deficiency; specifically the absence of both life and death. Hence, we suggest here the term ‘life impaired' to recognize the difficulties imposed on a former person by zombie behavior spectrum disorder (ZBSD) but without suggesting the former person is somehow 'deficient' as a result of the infection."

With my own TBI, I have been forced to acknowledge some mental limitations that I now have — spatial directions and concentration are at the top of my list — and I deal with them every day. In just this past week, Nick has managed to buckle down, study hard and pull his grades up. (And he OK’d this column before publication.) He even wants to stay in his Honors courses. We will keep working hard with Nick to develop better learning and concentration strategies that he can take with him to college and beyond.

Particularly since Nick may be interested in attending a Florida university, we don’t want to send our son to college feeling like the stars of our favorite Halloween film did. As one character mournfully suggested: “We’re all orphans in Zombieland.”

One recent morning while I was getting dressed, my four-year-old daughter had some advice for me: “Mama, I want you to eat and eat. I want you to always eat lots of healthy food because then you won’t get skinny”. Where was this conversation going? Was this about body image? I have a good appetite most of the time, I’m not particularly thin, and my weight hasn’t changed much recently, so I didn’t think I’d given her any cause for concern. (Of course I immediately thought her comment had to do with something about my body—talk about body image issues!). Further probing revealed the source of her concerns: “I don’t want you to get skinny and stop eating because then you’ll die, just like Bobby did.” Bobby was one of our elderly cats (our first babies) who, in the past two years, we watched succumb to kidney disease within months of each other. Their appetites diminished, they grew thinner and thinner, and then they stopped eating and drinking altogether. Interestingly my daughter has now come to associate thinness with death. I think that my daughter’s reminder to me to eat was just her way of dealing with normal childhood fears about the death of a parent.

I was relieved that my daughter’s comment reflected an early understanding that healthy eating is important for life, and that not eating is unhealthy. Although I know that my son is not immune to body image issues, I’ve been particularly conscious about having my daughter overhear any discussions about dieting or the need to lose weight. I don’t want her to develop the fears of food that I witnessed in my teenage and college years. My girlhood was no different from that of many women. I was bombarded with discussions about dieting in the media, among friends, and in my own family. How often would I hear at family gatherings: You look great! You’ve lost so much weight! And then there were the whispers: She’s really put on the pounds! After my freshman year of college my grandmother looked at me with a frown and said, “You’re looking very hippy.” I don’t think she was referring to my Hindu print wrap-around skirt, long hair, and sandals.

In college, eating disorders were pervasive, and there was no end to the obsession with weight loss and calorie counting. Someone read that ice cream cones (just the cone) were low in calories, so sugar cones become the snack of choice among women in my dorm. We’d raid the ice cream bar in the dining hall after dinner, and walk out with stacks of cones to get us through a night of studying. Then someone pointed out that the calorie count listed in the book was for wafer cones, not the sugar cones we’d been consuming by the dozen. There was panic over the number of extra calories that had been unwittingly consumed. At this point I rebelled. I simply enjoyed food too much and preferred chocolate to Styrofoam-flavored cones, pork chops to iceberg lettuce salads. Instead of calorie-count books, I read about nutrition and escaped the conversations about dieting and number of calories burned from exercising to the Jane Fonda work-out tape.

I can’t say I’ve completely accepted my own body, and the desire to easily shed a few pounds is always there. But I keep these thoughts to myself and focus on exercise for fun and health rather than weight loss. And it’s especially important that our children see that my husband and I both enjoy cooking and eating tasty food. We try to follow Michael Pollan’s guidelines from In Defense of Food, especially his advice to sit down to meals together and eat only things my great-grandmother would recognize as food. After trick-or-treating we read together the labels on candy my kids received and had them decide what seemed most like “food” and was therefore worth eating (not much!).

Distorted views about food, dieting, and body image are pervasive even among health professionals, especially with current, often legitimate, concerns about childhood obesity. A friend of mine with two daughters told me about a nutritionist who was invited to speak to her daughter’s second grade class about healthy eating. Her advice to the children was not to eat certain foods because they would get fat. One look at the children in that classroom would have told her that obesity was probably not an issue for them. In what may have been a desire to simplify eating guidelines, she missed an opportunity to focus on nutritional content of foods.

In a world where my children see wasp-waisted, busty Disney characters as heroines and movie stars with rail-thin bodies, it’s a challenge to counter those images of beauty. At home we try to disassociate food and body shape, and instead model an appreciation for healthy, tasty food and active living. But I think we may have our work cut out for us.

I learned a few days ago that one of my high school teachers, Otis Benson Davis, died last week. O.B., as we all called him (only behind his back - -to his face he was, of course, Mr. Davis), graduated from Kent School in 1942 and returned to teach there full time in 1949. He retired from active teaching only a few years ago, in 2006.

I graduated from Kent 36 years after O.B. did. He was my AP English teacher, my senior year; he was also the English department chair, and his influence was pervasive in the department. He was the co-author of the textbook we used for AP English, The Idea of Man (now out of print), and he was the teacher who introduced me to Hamlet, King Lear, and Oedipus as well as Out of the Silent Planet and Point of No Return. O.B. didn't think that, as 17 and 18-year-olds, we were too young to "get" dramas of middle and old age such as Point of No Return and King Lear; he didn't think we needed to be pandered to or coddled. I might choose different books than he did to teach seniors in high school -- I imagine he chose different books, too, over the years -- but I still remember what we read and, especially, his presence in the classroom, pushing, probing, questioning so that we read better, read deeper.

Part of AP English then -- and, I imagine, now -- involved drafting the college essay. My first draft, as I recall it, was unimpressive. O.B. wrote in the margin that it was a "cursory adumbration" of a much better essay. I had to look up "adumbration." I didn't ask him to define it; I knew it was my job to figure out what he meant and then to act on it. We sat around a seminar table in his class and discussed our essays, and the books we were reading, and started to feel like scholars.

We weren't, of course, but his confidence in us was, at least for me, infectious. When I started teaching I thought of O.B. all the time. I couldn't emulate him as a teacher -- I didn't have his gravitas, his beard, his pipe. But I could and did remember the care he took with my essays, the love he had for literature. His was the approval I sought, the criticism I learned from, the example that inspired me. I can't say for sure that I'm an English professor because O.B. was my teacher, but I know he was a part of what made me choose the path I did. I did have the chance to say "thank you," years later, and I'm glad I did, but I'll say it again.

Thank you, O.B. Rest in peace.

I was moved by a number of the responses to last week’s column. I find it really helpful when people share their stories, humanizing what is otherwise cold (though interesting) data and speculation. I felt, though, that several writers fell into traps which, because they’re all too common, I’d like to address here.

The first is the tendency to generalize from one’s own experience, or “I was able to handle _______; therefore, what are you whining about?” This stance presupposes identical, or at least equivalent, circumstances, but these almost never occur outside of controlled experiments. Not all women are in command of the timing of their pregnancies, for example, and not everyone feels entitled to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Not all pregnancies and deliveries are problem-free, and not all children are born healthy. Not all families or universities are supportive to the same degree.

The second is the confusion of the terms “parent” and “mother.” In the program I attended, it wasn’t the “parents” who were exiled to the mommy track; it was the mothers. The dads did just fine. As Dana’s and Libby’s recent columns on the “opt-out revolution” demonstrate, it’s not generally “parents” who leave the workforce because of the dearth of “family-friendly” options. I think it’s important to make this distinction, not because dads don’t deserve consideration too, but because failing to acknowledge that the burden of childrearing still falls mainly on women can lead to victim-blaming. Expecting mothers of young children to always attend class on time and always hand in papers on time, without providing any backup or leeway, is often a setup for failure.

Which leads to the third trap, which I have tried to find a snappy, nonjudgmental name for but which I can only, finally, characterize as a failure of compassion. As “AdjunctMom” asks, “Does everything have to be a competition?” Can we listen to “Always Amazed,” who is more stressed by the “emotional battering” of undermining fellow students than by the demands of parenting while in school?

In addition to being the primary caregivers for our children, women are usually the ones to care for aging parents, disabled siblings, and, because of typical age and health differentials, ailing spouses. Some of us might choose to delay or forgo having children in order to pursue a career, but unless we isolate ourselves from all familial ties and obligations, most of us will end up, at some point, exhausted, with our fingers jammed in the dike. It might be helpful to keep this in mind when we blame others for their poor choices or for asking for the occasional pass.

If you try to divide 365 by 7, it does not come out evenly. 364, however, does divide evenly, meaning that if you divide 365 by 7, you get a remainder of one. This fact, when coupled with information on leap years (every 4 years), non-leap years (what should be leap years, but end in 10) and “re-instated” leap years (years that end in 10 that should be a leap year, but also are divisible by 200, such as 2000 was), one is able to use this information to fairly easily learn what day of the week any day in history falls on. This is the trick used by entertainers who easily rattle off the day of the week of people’s date of birth and of important historical events. It relies on the mathematical idea of congruencies, which allows us to solve problems where the solutions must be integers and is the basis of much of the cryptography that is used in computer based commerce. We would describe the fact that 365 has a remainder of 1 when divided by 7 by writing it as 365 ≡ 1(mod 7), read as “365 is congruent to 1, modulo 7” If we had a clock with 7 hours on it, the clock would rotate 52 times and then one more hour, as if it had moved only one hour.

I thought of this recently when I stumbled upon my first entry in this forum, and realized that the date fell on a Saturday this year, instead of the Friday from last year. As the year moved forward by one year, the “remainder” day brought us to the next day of the week. Wow, I have been writing this for one whole year, I realized!

It has been an interesting year. In that year I learned many things. I learned that I CAN write an essay under pressure, and that sometimes the ones that I write at the last minute are the best. I learned that not every college nurtures its adjuncts like we do, although I suspect that most adjuncts wish they did. And I learned that there is an “anti-adoption” movement out there. This movement found me in response to an entry I wrote, before I later found out more about them through the miracle of on-line searches. I suggest that anyone interested in learning more about this movement initiate a similar search. And then, as I re-read my first post, I realized that my involvement with “Mama, Ph.D” has been longer than one year, but has covered quite a few years, to be exact.

I stumbled upon a call for papers for the book “Mama, Ph.D.” while searching for information on maternity leaves at other schools during my last round on the Faculty Benefits Committee. I was determined to design a maternity leave policy for our college, and, if nothing else, get the Tenure Committee (which I was also on) to recognize maternity issues as a reason to adjust the tenure clock. I was not successful at either, but did find Mama, Ph.D. in the process, and began to think of myself as a writer as well as a Math Geek. Now that I have begun nurturing this creative side of my personality, I am back to the mission that set me on this path. I am back on the Faculty Benefits Committee, and I want to hear from colleagues about the maternity policies at their schools.

Ursuline, like most of the colleges in our area, relies on short-term disability leaves to grant faculty maternity leave, which means that new fathers and adoptive parents are not eligible. Although Family and Medical Leave is available to faculty, they must pay premiums out of pocket during the time away from work. This, while not perfect, is actually generous when compared to what is available to most of the staff.

And so, I put out the question for all of my readers; what kind of maternity leave does your college provide? I hope to hear from people from all different types of colleges; small, large, in-between, public, private, religious, etc. Indeed, I have begun the conversation on my own, among faculty peers at various colleges, and have heard many interesting things.

The most remarkable story has to be the one I heard third hand recently. A professor, nine months pregnant, was not allowed to begin her maternity leave until she went into labor. Amazed at this, she asked her superiors what to so if her water broke in front of the class. Their reply was that it would be a biohazard and that they would e-mail her a copy of the relevant protocol for dealing with such a situation.

PLEASE tell me that someone has a better approach to designing a maternity leave than the one that woman faced at her school! And, while we are at it, I would be interested in hearing about sick day policies at other schools, especially for those of us who teach courses that are difficult to find substitutes for at the last minute.

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday, despite my love of chocolate. As a reserved introvert I’ve always dreaded costume parties. It’s taken me years to grow comfortable with my everyday costume, my carefully constructed persona. But now that I’m the mother of an exuberant extrovert, I’m learning to put my dignity aside and get into the spirit.

My daughter doesn’t have school tomorrow and so I’m taking her to campus with me. I’ve never done this before; previously she was too young and unruly. Now, at 5, she’s capable of sitting still and drawing or reading for an hour at a time. Plus she likes being “a big girl” and so will happily adopt a poised manner if strangers are watching.

Still, I’m nervous because I usually keep my two roles separate. Frankly I’m a more polished professor than I am a mother. At work, I can control my environment and undergraduates – while sometime energetic and sometimes sluggish — are always easier to manage than my willful, buoyant, moody daughter.

As one of the only UW campuses without an on-site daycare, children are a rare sight. While most people seem delighted to see my daughter, I feel less professional when I’m with her, like wearing pajamas to work. There have been spirited debates about bringing children to campus. I’ve always encouraged student parents to bring their children, when appropriate. Yet I function better when I focus on one or the other. Walking down the hallway seems to announce that I’m not really working. And of course, I’m no longer a professor: I’m a mom.

I have two classes tomorrow: an upper-level course on the English novel in which we’ll be discussing Frankenstein and a freshman seminar on the culture of food. In between classes we will eat lunch like “big girls” at the student cafeteria — a treat my daughter has been looking forward to for weeks. I have too, if truth be told. I rarely eat lunch at the cafeteria; I’m usually eating at my computer or preparing for class. Bringing my daughter in, while not keeping me from teaching (I hope!), will keep me from doing all of the myriad tasks I usually perform while at work: grading midterms, answering emails, dashing about campus to pick up books. With a five year old in tow, everything will move much slower and I can’t count on being able to sit and concentrate uninterrupted for very long.

This week, as a test-run, I brought my daughter with me when giving a speech to a local high school honors society. I talked about the importance of making mistakes, the necessity to develop one’s own voice, and the power of authenticity. As I spoke, my daughter beamed at me, distracting me but also reminded me of how frightening it can be to reveal oneself, to expose the different aspects of our lives. And how delightful.

Now I just need to muster the courage to walk around my neighborhood dressed as catwoman. Wish me luck.

Last week, for Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee reviewed a three-day event held at the University of Iowa called “Platforms for Public Scholars." This symposium had as its goal the discussion of integrating humanities studies in academic institutions with civic work. It’s a difficult problem to connect the academy with the public. The tenure hierarchy was pointed out as a struggling point for this, as it’s hard to engage academics in collaborative work with the community since it often does not contribute to promotion. Coming from the science side (I don’t know the humanities very well) I’ve also seen issues with scientists who are not motivated to effectively convey their studies to the public, and stigmas surrounding faculty who write science for a popular audience. And this disconnect works both ways, as one commenter brought up, as evidenced by cases where institutions establish a venue to promote discourse with the “interested public” only to find no attending audience.

Some comments to Scott’s article also brought up a similar disconnect at another level: i.e. between independent scholars from outside the academy and with academics within. One wrote: “If and when [independent scholars] make attempts to engage with university scholars, we are met with polite skepticism at best.”

I find independent scholarship an interesting idea with a lot of undeveloped potential. There is a considerable number of independent scholars out there (especially in these times when far more PhDs are produced than can be assimilated into traditional, increasingly competitive academic positions); many of them notable, respectable contributors to their fields who, for a diversity of reasons, work on their intellectual passions with little or no connection to the ivory tower.

Becoming associated and recognized is a big hurdle that independent scholars need to overcome. There are several associations for independent scholars that provide a cornerstone for supporting and promoting these outside-of-academia academics. Two of the largest are the National Coalition of Independent Scholars and the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars (which has even produced the “Independent Scholars’ Handbook”). Smaller organizations within these umbrellas bring together scholars at a more local, personal level (for example, the Princeton Research Forum and others), if you’re lucky enough to be close enough to one to participate.

Despite the existence of these organizations, I’d say for most independent scholars (and I include myself in this club) right now it’s a hard and lonely road. The basic need for access to library facilities, the lack of interactions with collaborators and co-authors and colleagues to read manuscripts, and difficult access to grants, funding, and even publishing opportunities are real issues. This recent blog from the Times Higher Education exposés another difficulty: finding a professional identity in order to relate to colleagues at meetings. And with only a small framework for interaction these scholars have no voice.

BUT, there is a powerful force that is in the early stages of pulling these independents together: new media. I just discovered a support thread through the forums on Chronicle for Higher Education in which some Independent Scholars have recently come together in the beginnings of accessible discussion of the challenges they face. I expect we’ll hear more and more from this population as they use the blossoming array of social media to discover exciting new energy and strength in developing community.

It seems to me also, that there is a potential mutualism that has not been realized. Academia could contribute much to the development of independent scholarship, and there is just as much that Independent Scholars could give back – for one example, perhaps, by using their freedom to establish links between academia and projects in the public realm. A little give and take on both sides could at least ease the wall that often develops between independent and affiliated scholars, and I’m hoping to see this happen with the strengthening of the independents’ voice.

• --Joann Lipman notes in the New York Times that women's advances in the work force seem to have stalled since 9/11/2001, despite the fact that women make up half the work force, and "mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families." As one of those major breadwinners, I could wish that Lipman had followed through on her analysis of the reasons for women's lack of progress in the work force. Instead, the article ends with advice that sounds like it came from a women's magazine, not the "paper of record: she advises women to be self-confident, have a sense of humor, and "don’t be afraid to be a girl." It's not quite clear how following this advice would have kept reporters from making fun of Hillary Clinton's "cankles," however, let alone how it would help women achieve pay equity.
• --Manohla Dargis, also writing in the Times, suggests that "for actresses, it is no longer enough to be young and beautiful onscreen, they have to be dead and famous, too." She notes that, since 2000, "six of the best actress awards were for biographical performances, most of dead women." I'm not sure what this suggests, but it doesn't sound good. How does this piece relate to Lipman's? Do Coco Chanel, Edith Piaf, Julia Child, and Amelia Earhart represent better role models for contemporary feminists than Hillary Clinton? Inquiring minds want to know—but since I don't have time to watch movies, I can't judge.
• --Then again, Francine Prose reviews Gail Collins's book, When Everything Changed, and suggests that the women's movement did indeed make a difference. At least, as she points out, our employers can no longer ask our weight as part of the employment process. Unless perhaps we are auditioning for the part of a dead woman. Or running for office (see Lipman, again).
• --Bringing this back to the academy: Susan O'Doherty's blog post on having a baby in grad school seemed to touch a chord for a number of readers. O'Doherty's blog post references Mary Ann Mason's piece in the Chronicle on the same topic, and I'm especially struck by all the comments on both pieces. I didn't see Mason asking for the academy to accommodate graduate student parents—rather, she seemed to be wondering out loud why more graduate students didn't become parents, given that both biologically and, in some cases, professionally, it may be the best time to do so. (She makes a big exception for the sciences, however.)
• --For me, having a baby in graduate school was easier than doing it on the tenure track. In graduate school I had flexible hours, excellent health care, and a husband on the same schedule as mine. As a tenure-track assistant professor I had more money but far less time.
• --But that's just me. I finished my Ph.D. when there was still a little bit of money in the University of California system, and that made a big difference, as did supportive friends and a terrific cooperative nursery school. Since my second child was born, however, my home institution has started providing a workable parental leave policy. So if I were making the decision today, the tenure track might seem a more hospitable environment for child-bearing than graduate school.
• --What to do with all of the above? Clearly gender has not ceased to be an issue for the academy or the culture at large. My hope is that this generation of young women—my daughter, my students — will be able to change the conversation a bit, shifting the focus to the things we share with our male colleagues, our childless colleagues, with breadwinners and part-timers. And maybe by then we'll have some role models who aren't dead yet.

In this week’s Chronicle, Mary Ann Mason discusses reasons why relatively few students, especially women, opt to have children during the graduate school years. The entire essay is worth reading, but I was struck by one of the comments: “There's also the problem of isolation. Having a baby can be (not always -- but can be) very isolating, and so can graduate school.”

This was my impression during my graduate school years. I was pregnant for only a brief time in graduate school before I miscarried, but because I wanted a baby I was acutely aware of, and curious about, the experiences of mothers in my program.

The program we attended was fairly rigid. Students were expected to attend full-time, to hand in assignments on time, to and to spend summers in field placements. If you were unable to keep up, you were supposed to drop out, or, less drastically, apply for half-time status. The only people I knew in the half-time program were mothers, and my sense, and that of other full-time students, was that they had been cast off the ship and expected to row their own lifeboats. The first year of half-time status, the mother would at least know other students in her classes, but after that, she would drop behind, and so each year she would be alone among classmates who studied together, ate meals together, and partied together. And of course she would have no extra energy to pursue friendships with her new classmates, who were only going to be hers for a year, anyway.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I got pregnant again after finishing my coursework and internship. I defended my dissertation two weeks before my due date, four weeks before my son was born. Looking back, it’s hard for me to imagine getting to that point without the support of my dissertation group—or, for that matter, getting through my classes without friends to commiserate with, to coach me in statistics, and to remind me that the Theories of Personality paper was due this Wednesday, not next week. And given how exhausted I was for the three years following my son’s birth, I know I could not have kept up with either my work or my social connections.

Graduate school is isolating in that the intensity serves to separate students from non-student peers. If they’re cut off from fellow students as well, “doomed” doesn’t seem too strong a term.