BlogU

  • Mothering at Mid-Career: Snow Days, Sabbaticals, and Unstructured Time

    By Libby Gruner March 2, 2009 10:18 pm

     

    I read a piece in the Chronicle recently about learning to use unstructured time productively. Or, that’s what I thought it was about. As I read further, however, it seemed more to be about convincing people (and yourself) that you’re working when it doesn’t look like you are. That’s, of course, a very different animal, and one that academic mothers in particular may have trouble with.

    Last week I went to another in a series of lunches being held on my campus to talk about women and the tenure process. At this one, several academic mothers spoke about how they had managed their process — all, I might add, with grace and success. One in particular stands out for me; she mentioned that while she and her husband had not taken on conventional gender roles in their marriage before kids, she was now the one to do all the kid-related stuff, the pediatrician’s appointments and the school pickups and the sick days. She said it had worked out that way because his job required fixed hours, while hers were flexible.

    And of course they are, as are mine, as are those of all academics, parents or not. But we sometimes shortchange ourselves — and our work — if we allow that flexibility to turn into “free time” or “errand time” or any number of other time-consuming things. Because, really, that flexible time is still time we could be spending on our research, our teaching, or even our innumerable service commitments. We’ll still have to find that time, and if it’s not between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm then it will be early in the morning, or late at night, or on the weekend.

    Or, as for me today, on a snow day. (I’m spending part of mine in the office, though that’s as much because there’s heat here — and not at home — as because I have additional work to catch up on.) Or on sabbatical, as I found last year when I took on a volunteer job at my daughter’s school “because I had the time.” That time came from somewhere. Actually, it came from any number of places, from research and dinner prep and late nights that could have been spent watching movies, to name just a few.

    Flexible hours are great, don’t get me wrong. But my biggest issue with them is not, as it seems to be for the Chronicle writer, making them look productive. Rather, it’s finding the time to be productive when my work bleeds into everything else and then doesn’t look like anything at all. I’m not spending my flexible hours driving to the coast, after all. I’m spending them right here in the thick of things. I’m writing this blog post in my office, it’s true, but just as often I write (or grade, or answer student e-mails) while sitting on the couch at home. I look as if I might be playing on Facebook, so I’m interruptible — and, believe me, I get interrupted. But if I sequester myself in the study, I miss out on some of the parts of family life I want to witness.

    As is so often the case, I don’t really have a solution here. I’m reminded of the story that’s often told of Jane Austen, writing away in the drawing room, covering her manuscript when guests entered. Learning to produce in the midst of chaos has been good for me, I think, but there are days — many of them! — when I long for some order as well.

Go to comments (6) »
Advertisement
On the Job Market Together?

Comments on Mothering at Mid-Career: Snow Days, Sabbaticals, and Unstructured Time

  • Not to worry
  • Posted by Iris Devadason , Director CEFL at Dayanandasagar Institutes, Bangalore , India on March 3, 2009 at 6:45am EST

  • You are doing well.Dont worry about solutions now , as doing all this , balancing work and responsibilities, is hard work and will pay eventually.It is the solution itself.
    I wrote a poem once about being like the Hippo! The bulk reamins under water(academic work) but the eyes (ones' vision ) are above the water, fixed, undeterred by life's many demands...so keep going...don't lose sight of your academic ambitions.
    I submitted my doctoral thesis after retirement, after bringing up the kids and grandkids too and caring for aged parents and parents-in-law as well.
    Now I am teaching again after retirement.
    Iris

  • Posted by Laura on March 3, 2009 at 8:30am EST

  • I used to have fixed hours and I *still* did a good chunk of the errands, etc. My husband was quite good, despite his flexible hours, at protecting his work time. In part, that was so he could spend time with us as soon as he got home.

    Now that I have flexible hours, I'm finding it quite wonderful, although at first I was more like the Chronicle author and worried about making sure it looked like I was being productive. It was my husband who declared I should take it easy and mix in some down time during my work day (I work part-time from home on my own business). It's made all the difference. Some days are all work, but it's rare. I'm learning to embrace the lack of structure and not try to impose too much of my own.

  • Yes, I hear you!
  • Posted by Annette Wannamaker , Asst. Professor of children's literature at EMU on March 3, 2009 at 9:30am EST

  • I struggle with the same problems all the time, though I'm luckier than many women because my husband is also an academic and is able to take our son to school or the dentist when he's not teaching. More importantly, he understands that flexible time doesn't mean free time. (though our families keep referring to times we are not teaching as "time off.")

    Our biggest debates often are about where we choose to do our work at home. We both have studies -- his in a "man cave" in the basement and mine on the second floor. He spends hours in the basement (which I find annoying), while my upstairs study is covered in dust because I prefer to work where I'm sitting right now -- at the kitchen table, looking out of the window, and in the center of the house. He doesn't understand why I want to be where our son is, even if I'm distracted, and gets annoyed when I clutter up the house with my papers and books, which he thinks should be confined to a study. I haven't been able to explain to him why I want to be where our son and dog are, so I'm glad to see other women feel the same way.

    The most important lesson I've learned about being a mom and a scholar/teacher is that I had to get rid of those romantic notions about the creative process. A male colleague of ours, whose wife stayed home with his children all day, once said something along the lines of, "I can't get research or thinking done unless I have at least six solid undisturbed hours." This is a luxury I can longer imagine -- I'm thrilled to find a three hour block of time in a coffee shop, but when I don't get it, I've taught myself to write/think/work in 15 minute bursts: I wrote chunks of my book on the soccer field sidelines, waiting in the car in the school parking lot, riding in the car to visit family, while my students took a midterm exam, etc. I didn't allow myself the luxury of getting writer's block or of waiting for inspiration because I had to take advantage of whatever brief time slots were available where ever I got get them.

    Speaking of which . . . I need to get off to work . . .

  • Posted by Libby , Mama, PhD contributor on March 3, 2009 at 12:45pm EST

  • Annette, I have the same debates w/my husband (now a "recovering academic," in his terms) about where the work is done. Mine's all over the place, while his is in the study and the garage and the basement, where it "belongs." I do have to say, though, that he has done far more than many husbands, certainly his fair share if not more, of the pediatrician's visits, teacher conferences, etc., both because he's had flexible hours and because he's just like that. I love the hippo image, Iris, thanks for that!

  • Unexpected places do inspire
  • Posted by Iris , Director at DSI, Bangalore , India on March 4, 2009 at 7:00am EST

  • for Annette, esplly,
    yes, being with the dog and the child is ideal for a writer of childrens' books.Where else? Men do not identify with their offspring till they (the kids , I mean !)grow up, I suppose.
    I wrote the introductory paragraph of my 5th chapter of the thesis while in a cab ,stuck in a traffic jam.
    I was thinking about it ( SLA: second language acquisition at advanced levels) and suddenly I was inspired to write and I did, on a rough paper.
    The metaphor of ' a field full of landmines' to describe how L2 learners struggle with English came to me then.I never changed a word finally.My guide approved too.
    Iris

  • troubling work/time borders
  • Posted by drh , Professor Communication and Women's Studies at ISU on March 4, 2009 at 11:45am EST

  • I just sent an email to a pre-tenure colleague who is also a single mother of a small child (my daughter is five, in preschool; her son is nearly one, in daycare). The email was ostensibly about writing a grant proposal narrative, but it quickly came to be thoughts about the way we seem to experience time. I appreciate these posts very much and believe that we need a lot less about how to manage time efficiently (when efficient is always defined as transforming everything into a task and then completing it as quickly as possible) and a lot more attention to how work itself is defined and experienced in time. I treasure the three-hours at a coffee shop (blessed with wifi) and I treasure the "after-work" hours parenting my amazing child. I'm on sabbatical this term and struggling with the concept of "unstructured" time and "flexible time" and reminding myself that time is a structuring device and time itself has no flexibility--it passes. I wake up to an alarm clock that plays James Taylor's "The Secret of Life is Enjoying the Passing of Time." I get it. What I want now is to work on the political and social construct of "work" to enable good work to be pursued and achieved in what might be called "real life time" and to ensure that our institutions recognize that the experience of time and work has changed radically with the changes in who's in the room (classroom, board room, kitchen, bedroom, study, living room, all the rooms--none of which are "our own" nor, apparently, do many of us "Mama Ph.D.s" want them to be). An economist taught me (later rather than earlier in my career) to remember that time is a finite resource; it is also a relational resource--we have a relationship with time but the only thing we do with time is spend it. We can not make time; we can not find time. We spend time. I think we need to talk and write and think more about work and time in multiple ways--including how our insights should be reflected in campus policies about the work/life of the human beings who spend time there.

Print
© Copyright 2009 Inside Higher Ed