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  • Motherhood After Tenure: Anxiety

    By Aeron Haynie September 17, 2008 10:13 pm

    When I was a girl, I took a trip to visit my grandparents in Florida. Leaving Buffalo, NY in November and flying up past the gray clouds into an immediately bright sunny sky was a revelation. I had no idea the sky was still bright and sunny in November; I actually thought it turned gray all the way up to the heavens until April.

    That’s how I felt when I finally went on anti-anxiety medication after my daughter was born. It was like taking off a dirty, scratched pair of glasses. I never thought of myself as anxious, I just thought I was a very capable, realistic person who recognized that life was a battle requiring constant vigilance.

    Once, when I was having a particularly horrible time in graduate school, my father gently suggested I consider medication. I was stung, insulted, and … instantly more depressed. But I was sure that once I finished my thesis, got a job, and got my romantic life settled, I would be happier. And I was.

    But when my daughter was born and I returned to teaching, I found myself getting terrified at the dust on my ceiling. It seemed a sign of all the things that were falling apart around me, all the things I wasn’t getting to, all of the things I alone noticed. And no matter how much my husband tried to help or reason with me, I couldn’t just relax and enjoy my daughter.

    On the outside, I had it together: I had just received tenure, had high student evaluations, and had lost all of my baby weight. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of masking my distress from the outside world until I received an email from my chair (also a good friend) who asked me if I was sad, and said that he was worried about me. It was a beautiful, humane gesture, but it was devastating. I was humiliated that my distress was so visible. And I wondered, if I was so obviously miserable, what kind of mother was I being? Would my daughter see herself as another task, was I teaching her that life was fraught and overwhelming?

    Politically, I have a lot of reservations about pharmaceutical companies mass medicating our country. I wonder why so many mothers need drugs, and I think that the academe fosters a particular type of anxiety, and rewards it. I know many academics who operate from places of anxiety, fear, and panic. And I wonder how this affects our students.

    Taking medication isn’t something I usually divulge. It seems sloppy to admit to such a weakness. I even worried that it would affect my teaching performance. And it has. It’s less of a performance and more me. Students seem to like it; I hope my daughter does.

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Comments on Motherhood After Tenure: Anxiety

  • Posted by Libby , Mama, PhD contributor on September 18, 2008 at 9:45am EDT

  • Aeron, I think you're doing your daughter a big favor by "cleaning your glasses" this way. Probably your students and your partner, too. But the most important thing is that you are taking care of yourself--something I think mothers often forget to do.

  • Posted by M.J. on September 18, 2008 at 10:40am EDT

  • Thank you for this post.

  • thank you
  • Posted by Caroline , Coeditor, Mama, PhD on September 18, 2008 at 4:50pm EDT

  • Aeron, thank you for this post. I agree with Libby that you're doing your daughter, your students, partner and yourself a big favor by taking good care of yourself this way -- but also your readers here. Thanks for being so brave as to share this; your post (and Tedra's writing) help dismantle the myth of the Invincible Academic. The academy would likely be a better, certainly a kinder place to work if more people felt they could be honest about their lives and needs.

  • Posted by Daddy Pat on September 18, 2008 at 5:40pm EDT

  • Thank you for having the fortitude to write this. So many of our young professionals, male and female, have been brought up to believe that they must do it all. An elderly dentist I know confided that when he was in dental school in the '50s, they never saw a case of bruxism (teeth grinding). Now it is a prevalent complaint for many of us young, successful professionals. When can we just be and enjoy life without all the added stress, real or perceived? Keep up the meds please!

  • Fellow academic mother on medication
  • Posted by sherbygirl on September 28, 2008 at 10:00pm EDT

  • Or, was on medication. My daughter was perfect when she was born. I never relaxed enough to enjoy her until I was on medication. Before that, every little thing was a failure on my part. I only wish it hadn't taken 6 months to figure out that it wasn't something I could control without medication. I am pregnant again, and I am planning on starting medication right away. Postpartum depression is a chemical/hormonal condition; the shame we end up feeling because of it is not. We should not feel ashamed. At least, that's what I tell myself every day.

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