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  • ABC’s and PhD’s: Let’s keep up the chatter and navel-gazing

    By Liz Stockwell July 22, 2009 8:21 am

    I found the recent Wall Street Journal article about family-work balance blogs surprising. After all, in my own family my husband and I frequently check in with one another and analyze how we’re both feeling about the family-work juggle. We’re both guilty of being pretty intent on our navels much of the time. But we find that we haven’t just made static choices about how to divide our work and family lives. It takes frequent dialogue and communication to be sure we’re where we want to be. And, as big fans of the Mama PhD blog site (no bias, really), we’ve come up with five great reasons why we all need to keep talking about work-family life balance, especially as academics.

    1. Our stories create community with others facing similar struggles and decisions about how to best split our work and home lives. And if the work environment isn’t conducive to these conversations or if one doesn’t have colleagues with whom to have discussions about accommodating family, a web community is the next best thing to avoid feeling isolated.

    2. We exchange information and ideas in an open forum. It’s useful to know how other academic mothers keep their lives organized and stay sane! There are no how-to guides, and we have few role models and sometimes no peers.

    3. Sometimes we feel discouraged or doubt the choices we’ve made, especially with an unsupportive peer group. In a forum such as this we find validation for the paths we’ve taken and can support others making similar decisions.

    4. We don’t often have in our graduate programs discussions about work and family balance or get any kind of guidance about the difficult decisions we may face when family needs don’t easily mesh with job demands (or study schedule). Sites such as this blog can be a source of advice or a resource as students move forward in their studies or begin careers.

    5. Our ideas and concerns may be heard by powers that be and actually effect changes in university family leave policies or inspire ways of accommodating those who fall through the cracks because they’ve left the traditional academic pipeline.

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Comments on ABC’s and PhD’s: Let’s keep up the chatter and navel-gazing

  • Searching for Balance
  • Posted by Soon to be Mom and PhD , Assistant Director at Metro State College of Denver on July 23, 2009 at 11:00am EDT

  • I absoultely love the Mama PhD blog because currently I am still trying to figure how how I am going to do both. I start my course work for my PhD in the fall and I hope in the next year to start having a family. I struggle personally and professionally with when is the "right time" to start a family and how will I balance it all. I have a passion for what I do and a passion for being a mom. I often find myself asking, is there room for many passions in my life? The only place to learn more about this is from other women who are doing it and learning from their struggles and triumphs. Thank you for sharing your stories and moments of how you are able to balance things. I'm still learning but every little bit helps me think about how this is all going to work in my life.

  • Discussion of life/work balance in graduate school
  • Posted by Suzanne , Associate Director, Centre for Learning & Teaching at Dalhousie on July 27, 2009 at 7:30am EDT

  • I too really appreciate this blog and enjoy reading it. There was almost no discussion of life/work balance when I was in graduate school. In fact we were often told that our life was our work. I put off having children in the hopes of obtaining an academic career but by the time I was 35 I decided I wasn't going to wait any longer. I now have two wonderful children. I do not have the academic career I was orginally seeking. Instead I found something better in terms of life/work balance. I work at a university learning and teaching centre where I help others improve their teaching, do some teaching myself, and continue researching in different areas. This position mirrors an academic one in my mind, but also allows for the life/work balance I believe both myself, my partner and my children need. I feel very fortunate to have found this position - to work within the university but to be able to maintain a life outside it too. Not that the balance is always easy with a full-time job (no matter what it is) and two children and a household to manage.

    My own experiences in academe and that of my peers over the years led me to create and design a workshop for women in academe that I've held at several universities. I've been pleased with the reception of this workshop that was intended for graduate students but attended by women faculty too. There is a definite need for more open discussion and awareness raising of many of the issues women face in academic life including work/life balance - but there is also a clear need for strategizing. The workshop I created was a small step in that direction, but so much more of this sort of thing needs to be done.

    I published an article on this workshop and its impact on the women who attended for those of you who are interested that can be found in the 2009 'Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal', volume 33.2, pp. 83-93. The article is entitled, "Enhancing Women's Graduate Education: Workshopping Women's Socialization to the Academic Profession".

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