Mama PhD

Long Distance Mom: Love, Academic Style

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:19:56 GMT

I want to introduce myself as a new writer for Mama, Ph.D. — Long Distance Mom. I will share Thursdays with fellow blogger Aeron Haynie (a good friend who helped me survive my grad school pregnancy).

As a filmmaker and film studies scholar, I am used to traveling frequently to complete my creative and scholarly work. But now I also travel for love. For the last decade, I’ve been involved in long distance relationships — first with my partner, and more recently, with my children.

Twenty years ago, I married a fellow graduate student, but I did not anticipate the challenges of being a dual career family with infants. (I managed to finish the Ph.D. He did not.) Neither did I anticipate divorce. My marriage made it through graduate school, and my first tenure-track job. By the time I got tenure and promotion, though, the pressures of being a breast-feeding college professor had taken their toll on our relationship. My husband and I divorced when our children were 3 and 5.

I soon fell in love with another academic who lived in another city. We worked on film projects together, which provided a ‘tax-free’ excuse to see each other. By traveling on Southwest Airlines every other weekend, I was able to pursue this relationship while living with my children, and maintaining a tenured position.

5 years later, I was hired as chair of a department in my partner’s city at double my former salary. My ex-husband declined to move to my new city and my children wanted to remain in their schools. Accepting this new administrative position meant maintaining two houses, paying child custody, and commuting long distances to see my children, who had just entered their pre-teen years. For lots of reasons that many people do not understand, I decided to try it.

Four years later, I sit writing this document on my laptop on a Southwest flight. I vacuumed one of my houses this morning, hoping the roaches and ants would stay away for the next 12 days. (I earn enough money to maintain two residences, but not enough for a house cleaner). When I try to explain my situation to other parents or even to colleagues -- "I have a job in the north, children in the south" -- I get many dubious looks. People seem to relax when I say, “Just imagine me as the Dad who commutes to Atlanta during the week and comes home on the weekends…”

I have met other academic colleagues in similar situations. We teach Tuesdays through Thursdays, and commute to see our kids or partners on weekends. The Chronicle for Higher Education described some of the challenges of long distance relationships in an article on married college presidents Irvin D. Reid and Pamela Trotman Reid. He works in Michigan. She works in Connecticut. Their jobs as their schools' top administrators does not leave much time for relaxing. They plan their time together in six-month increments.

In this column I plan to write about long distance strategies for academics and their families. How do we shorten the emotional distance? By using cell phones? Skype? Facebook? How much work can you realistically accomplish on the plane? How do you keep your child from feeling secondary to your work? Is distance really fundamental to desire?

ABCs and PhDs: More on the 'Career Lattice'

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:19:00 GMT

I also read the article from The New York Times that my blogging colleague Libby Gruner referred to in her post yesterday, which discusses corporate world changes in attitude in thinking about the career ladder more as a career lattice. I agree with Libby: the academy certainly does not offer the “customized model for how careers are built and talent is developed” in the way the accounting firm Deloitte is described as doing in the NYT article.

And yet, academia has changed in the last 30 years, documented by a recent report put out by the American Association of University Professors. In 2004, 68% of American higher education faculty had contingent (non-tenure track) appointments, up remarkably from 1975, when 43% of faculty hires were non-tenure track. Similarly, the percentage of part time faculty has gone up – from 30% in 1979 to 48% in 2004.

So maybe here’s where there is room in academia for pausing and for lateral growth. There are more non-traditional ways to stay in academia part-time and full-time - tenure doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all. My husband successfully nabbed his non-tenure track lecturer position, in which he feels secure (he has made himself indispensible to the department through excellent teaching), he is able to carve out large chunks of time to be with family (including much of the summer), and he is “growing” into a new administrative line that he has added to his teaching.

Of course, many contingent positions unfortunately are created more for the purpose of saving money for universities than for accommodating an increasingly diverse set of Ph.Ds. Non-tenure track positions can be reasonably secure and well-paid, but there are plenty of adjunct positions with no security and that are way undercompensated. At the same time, these positions can provide a way to step laterally. Here’s a place where more thoughtful, proactive efforts could improve acceptable, non-traditional careers offerings in academia.

There are also hints of change from a proactive perspective – for example, I was encouraged to read the proposal by Bob Drago to develop options for part-time tenure track positions. These positions evidently are in action in a sprinkling of institutes for higher education around the nation, including the University of Washington, the University of California, Berkeley, University of Iowa, University of Oregon, and Wellesley College. There is a need for active discussion and exploration of these positions, to resolve some issues, widen their acceptance – from the side of the department AND the individual – and make them part of the norm. Part-time tenure track is something I never considered possible as a graduate student (but I think I would have been very interested in pursuing this option!)

Academia has a long way to go on its path to career “lattices”, but people are talking and trying out new things. Academics need to embrace the possibilities and make them legitimate, as (maybe) the corporate world has. Well, this is no easy task, and it is slow, but I’m interested to see what opportunities the next generation will have in academia.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Climbing the Lattice

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:00:45 GMT

A recent article in the New York Times suggests that rather than career ladders, we should be thinking of career “lattices,” with both vertical and horizontal moves possible in the long-term development of a career. It’s an appealing image to anyone who has ever wondered if they’re cut out for climbing a ladder all the way to the top. Myself, I have something of a fear of ladders (ask my husband, who climbs them routinely to work on our roof — I can’t be anywhere in the vicinity when he does) but I’m wondering if the metaphorical lattice is going to work for academics as well as — according to this piece — it does for accountants.

It’s an appealing metaphor. As the Times author puts it, “Like the literal lattices you see in gardens, these are living platforms for growth with upward momentum visible along many paths.” But do we really have many visible paths for growth in the academy? The dominant metaphor for us is, after all, the “track.” Once on the tenure track, some of us have the opportunity to pause briefly, perhaps, taking a leave of absence, but there’s little if any room — at least as I see it — for lateral growth. Maybe after tenure? Certainly some people move into administration while others focus on teaching, leaving still others to continue their steady climb up the research ladder (though the adminstrative ladder may actually be more lucrative). Still, I see little movement among the three areas, even though it’s theoretically possible.

I keep coming back to something Tedra Ossell said in a recent column: “No, you can’t just “take time off” between a PhD and applying for academic jobs. If you’re going to apply for research-based positions, you will need to have, up-to-date research activity going on. Period.” I didn’t see anyone disagree with her in the comments, and her advice extends beyond the post-degree period through, at least, tenure and perhaps promotion for most faculty members.

There are, certainly, places in an academic career when one can pause. Best, perhaps, is a gap between the undergraduate and the graduate degree. For myself and many of my colleagues, a breather at that point proved to us that we could support ourselves, and also that we didn’t really want to do so outside of the academy. It didn’t seem to hurt much in terms of applying to graduate school (though I hear differently from some of my former students, these days). One can also take a few extra years, at least in the humanities, towards the Ph.D. itself. Again I point only to my own experience: having a daughter in grad school certainly lengthened the time it took me to write my dissertation, but once it was finished I was competitive with peers who had been more speedy.

But both of those “gaps” are really before the ladder starts. Once you step onto it, it seems to me, it’s much less flexible. Can we imagine our careers following a “lattice” rather than a “ladder” model? I think it’s noteworthy that the nay-sayer in the Times article is a succesful man: can those who have climbed the ladder themselves imagine a lattice behind them, for their successors? I’m still waiting to see.

Career Coach: One Reader's Reaction

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:40:01 GMT

A scientist/reader writes....

I urge you to show a bit more flexibility in your advice on the career/family bit. If the goal is a faculty position in the sciences, there is usually an interim postdoctoral stage. Postdoc can be a great time for maternity and infant bonding- whether you are headed for a research-intensive university or a liberal arts college.

In the physical sciences (chemistry, physics, etc) 2-3 years of postdoc are customary, and even in engineering postdocs are becoming more common. In biology and the biomedical disciplines you will not get hired at a research institution without at least 2 years postdoc, and 4-8 years (usually combining postdoc and "research associate" ) is more common.

These are great times for starting a family, much less stressful than trying to do it while you are tenure-track and much healthier because you will be a younger mother.

Correction noted! And let me also mention a friend of mine who had a nice postdoc (in Manhattan, yet) in anthropology. So yes, in this respect, Linda Hirshman is right: if you want a career (and kids), you're much better off in the sciences and social sciences than in the humanities. Plus they pay better and there are more jobs.

(That said, I don't want to re-ignite the Hirshman wars; yes, her premise that a significant number of educated women "opt out" of work to stay home with kids is wrong. And yes, the real problem is the ongoing structure of "the workplace" on a foundational belief that "the worker" is a man with a wife that stays home, as The Chronicle of Higher Education noted recently. More on that next week.)

ABCs and Ph.D.s: Changes in attitude -- a personal history

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:54:49 GMT

When I was 17, I wrote an essay entitled “Why I do not want to have children.” My seemingly prescient mother saved it, along with other high school memorabilia, and when I came across the essay a few years ago I was amazed at the depth of feelings I’d developed at such a young age. The gist of the paper was that although I loved kids, I didn’t feel that I was capable of having both a family and a career, and I really wanted to focus on becoming a biologist. I pointed out that I knew many women who very successfully combined career and parenting, but I didn’t feel that I could. Recently I’ve been doing some soul-searching to think back on how my attitude has changed from age 17 to 43 (this fits well with fellow Mama PhD blogger Tedra Osell’s recent post too), and interestingly I’ve remembered some moments when I was pretty judgmental about women who took on traditional mothering roles.

As an undergraduate, in the mid- to late eighties, I once had a conversation with one of my professors in which I asked him where his wife worked. “She works at home,” he answered defensively. “She works very hard looking after our kids.” At the time, I thought the wife’s situation sounded pretty pathetic. But no wonder I felt that way: everything about college was gearing us up towards ambitious career plans. The joke that some women were there to earn an MRS degree was the ultimate insult. However, by the time I got to my senior year, I began to wonder if maybe I did want children someday. I joined a “Women in Science” support group, and we invited one of the very few women science professors at the college to speak with us about combining career and family. Her advice was don’t take any time off; go to grad school right away, finish quickly, land a job and tenure while you’re still young, then have kids. Having just decided to take time off to work as a research assistant for a few years, I figured I’d blown it. It was too late to follow her advice, but career and family were still nebulous concepts anyway.

In my first year of a PhD program, I met two former graduate students -- a married couple -- who’d come back to visit my department. The wife was a lecturer at the school where her husband had a faculty position. She was satisfied with her part-time position, she told us, because it gave her more time with their young children. She’s a drop-out, I thought. How could she accept what seemed to be a lesser job in the same department as her husband? But at the same time I worried, “What if that’s me after I finish my PhD?” It was hard to see over the PhD mountain and plan for what lay ahead.

I was part way through graduate school and newly married, when my post-doc husband suggested that it might be a good time for us to have a baby. “Are you crazy?!” I asked. I was barely managing to stay afloat as a grad student, and I didn’t feel organized enough to be a parent. (Nor am I now, for that matter!) Yet we knew a number of grad student parents, and they seemed to have well adjusted kids and lead balanced, if hectic, lives. I began thinking more about when we’d have kids, and surprised myself when I told my doctor that I wasn’t too worried about birth control since pregnancy wouldn’t be the end of the world. I later heard about a PhD graduate who decided to leave academia to care for her child full-time. My response was: Wow, that takes guts!

Hours after turning in my dissertation, I followed my husband across the continent to his first tenure-track appointment. And a year later, realizing earlier fears, I became a part-time lecturer in his department, which gave me more time to spend with my newborn son. Although exhausted, I was pretty sure I had the best of both worlds. However, when I met other parents at play groups or at the playground, I always made a point of saying that being home part-time was only temporary, that I wasn’t really a stay-at-home mother. One day I’d be back to full-time teaching and research. I felt this odd distance, if not hostility, towards women who were with their kids all day, and I must have been pretty unpleasant to be around. Perhaps again I feared that I’d be there too someday. And sure enough … along came child number two and another change in mindset. By this time I was almost 40 and knew I wasn’t going to have another baby. Being a full-time parent just didn’t seem like such a terrible thing anymore, and I was between jobs making it an easy transition to full-time parenting.

So, now twenty-five years later maybe I should write an essay entitled “Why I do not want to have any more children.” (no energy for one thing, and of course my husband’s vasectomy would thwart any plans for a bigger family, thank goodness) True to the 17-year-old’s dream, I did become a biologist after all, even exceeding my expectations by successfully combining career and parenting for a little while. Maybe I didn’t reach the pinnacle I’d intended, but I found a different measure of success. My path is my own; it’s not advice, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to make the same kinds of choices I made. But with my changes in attitude along the way, I’ve learned a thing or two about pre-judging other women’s life decisions. And who knows what further changes are in store on the road ahead.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Thanksgiving Week

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:56:48 GMT

Thanksgiving week offers a welcome break from the treadmill of the semester, which always seems to speed up just before it comes crashing to a halt. One day last week I spent 13 hours on campus, then returned less than 12 hours later. Feeling somewhat sorry for myself, I posted this information on my facebook page — and had almost immediate commiseration from colleagues on both coasts who found themselves in the same straits. Both are also mothers.

Usually I try not to pull long days on campus. While I certainly don’t come close to the imaginary “three hours a week” professor, I can usually leave before 5:00 p.m. — especially on the days I come in before 8:00 a.m., which is most of them. While on campus I teach my classes, hold office hours, grade, prepare, attend and sometimes organize committee meetings — all the things faculty members do. I try not to do too much work at home, though I do end up doing most of my grading there. I also try not to count the hours I spend at work — there’s nothing all that magical about forty hours, after all, and I figure the weeks when I spend much more time on campus should be balanced by the weeks when I spend much less. In other words, the thirteen hour day felt like an anomaly. I am the faculty sponsor for a student organization, and student organizations often meet in the evenings to accommodate their schedules. I just try not to meet that often, as my own energy and attention levels after the dinner hour drop off significantly. And, of course, evenings can be prime family time, especially these days when they are not taken up by battles over bathtime.

But my colleagues who commiserated seemed not to think our long days were anomalous. One said “welcome to my life.” The other had put in two long days (12+ hours on campus) in a row. Sometimes we do that, of course, but I wonder who is well served by repeated long days? I remember Virginia Woolf’s words in A Room of One’s Own — “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” I take her words metaphorically: we do all things better if we are well cared for, and long days are rarely a marker of good care. But, this being Thanksgiving week, I should also take them literally: truly, a good meal can make a big difference.

How do we care for ourselves? On my own long day, I actually had two very pleasant meals with colleagues. While they were both clearly business meals — one a chat about pedagogy with the coordinator of a program I’m involved with, the other a meeting with my department chair — in both cases we made sure to eat well and give ourselves a little time to unwind. I may heat up a frozen pizza for lunch at my desk on a teaching day, but then I’ll also try to get home in plenty of time for dinner. It’s still, in other words, all about balance.

This week I’ll do more cooking than I do in any normal month; I’ll catch up on some grading, and send out the revisions to a recently-accepted article, the fruit of last year’s sabbatical. Nest week I may find myself putting in another long day, but with any luck there’ll be a turkey sandwich or leftover pumpkin pie to compensate. I wish the same for my colleagues, and for all of you as well.

Career Coach: Riding the Waves

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:46:11 GMT

I am a senior at the undergraduate level, and would very much like to be a professor someday. The difficulties involved in trying to balance motherhood with graduate studies or accomplishing tenure as a professor seem excessive. I was wondering about the feasibility of the idea of taking a few years off to raise children after completing a PhD but before applying for a professorship. Did you review any information in your research concerning that situation? Do you think it would be advantageous for me to be able to devote myself completely to school until I get the PhD, then devote myself completely to children until they are old enough to be in school, and then be able to enter a professorship without having to take maternity leave or be physically exhausted from childbirth? I am not sure if taking a few years off would be damaging to my chances of being accepted as a professor. I would hope that they would consider me in a positive light, as I would no longer have to take maternity leave, but I am afraid they would view my years of childrearing as inactive and wasteful at a time when I could have been publishing papers and conducting research.

Even so, family would be an extremely important part of my life. I do very much want to have children, and am trying to figure out the best way to balance being a good mother, a good student, having time with my children when they are very young (I would like to avoid child care if possible), being able to devote time and energy to my career to have a good chance at tenure, but still having children young enough so that I won't risk infertility. I would be very interested in the stories of people who chose to take time off after achieving a PhD to raise children but before becoming professors -- whether this is a positive or negative choice upon their careers.

Thank you very much,

This is certainly going to fall under "pointless advice" because inevitably the best laid plans of mice and ambitious young women gang aft agley. I speak from experience: many were my plans, as an ambitious young woman, about how I was going to combine marriage and a PhD and children and so on. Some of the planning was helpful and some of it turned out well, but a lot of things--including me!--didn't quite turn out According to Plan.

That said. My advice to ambitious young women? DON'T OVERPLAN. Do whatchalike. Life will happen, and you will ride the waves. Really. You can tie yourself in knots planning and second-guessing and being a perfectionist, and all that will do is tie you in knots and waste a lot of time and brain power. You can drown doing that shit. So stop it.

Other pieces of advice:

1. If you're going to grad school, get a good therapist. I know this sounds bitter, or snarky, or tongue-in-cheek, but it's actually straight up advice. A good therapist is a good thing to have, especially for those who spend too much time in their heads.

2. Don't ever devote yourself "completely" to anything. A better recipe for neurosis and disappointment, I cannot imagine. It is good for scholars to have non-scholarly interests and activities. It is good for mamas to have non-mama interests and activities. It is good for children to have mamas who are Doing Things.

3. No, you can't just "take time off" between a PhD and applying for academic jobs. If you're going to apply for research-based positions, you will need to have, up-to-date research activity going on. Period. If you're going to apply for teaching-based positions, you will need to have some sound teaching experience and up-to-date knowledge of pedagogical methods and trends. In the latter case, you can probably get away with dicking around a bit and then picking up the occasional part-time course -- which is a fine thing to do -- but recognize that that's what you're doing and don't "plan" that somehow this is going to magically turn itself into a full-time tenure-track teaching job.

4. Yes, yes, there will always be people who will be the exceptions to one or more of these rules. Nonetheless. And a lot of those people are crazier and/or unhappier than they will let on.

5. Yes, combining children and an academic career is hard. No, it is not impossible. Let go of the idea that you're going to be "good" (by which, with the language about "completely" devoting yourself to things, really means being "perfect") at everything. You won't be perfect at anything. That's okay.

If you for sure really want kids, then freaking go ahead and have them. You will love them, they will love you, and no, they won't be Your Entire Life. If you for sure really want to go to grad school (and for god's sake, are you *sure* you want to do this? Can you imagine doing another job? If so, go do that job for a while before you apply for grad school. Please.), then apply for graduate school and go. You will enjoy it (and if you don't, then YOU ARE ALLOWED TO LEAVE). If you for sure want to teach, then you will end up teaching. If you for sure want all of these things, then go for it--but give up the idea that you can do them all perfectly.

Get some freaking day care: the kids will enjoy playing with other kids. Do the research that interests you instead of Keeping Up Because You're Supposed To. Stop worrying about what's "advantageous." Stop worrying. You are already one of the luckiest young women in history, with birth control, the potential for money and a room of your own, and the ability to do what you want to do with your life rather than what's "advantageous" or what you're "supposed" to do. Honor your feminist foremothers and take advantage of your freedom. Please.

I am, finally. Even if it is in the half-assed way described in (3), above. I was an ambitious young woman who married a young man who adored me, on the condition that he would support my plans. (I do recommend not marrying any young man who doesn't agree to do that, by the way.) Our plans, therefore, were for me to a full-time professor, to have three kids, and for him to be a househusband. Those plans changed. The changes cost me a lot of angst because I was so hung up on the idea that I Must Follow The Plan. But now I live in a nice sunny locale, and I have one child, who I adore, and I gave up the t-t job, and I have a mental illness I didn't plan for, and my husband is the primary wage-earner, and he loves his job and I never clean the house and love teaching my one class and writing various things as the mood grabs me and spending a lot of time volunteering in my kid's classroom. And I am, actually, thinking about learning to surf.

I have it all. But I have to tell you: it doesn't look anything like I had planned.

Have a question? E-mail Mama PhD.

Math Geek Mom: A Sad Goodbye

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:01:38 GMT

This is a sad week in the life of Ursuline College, as one of our own has died. Jackie, a member of our nursing faculty since 1973, was called home Friday of last week, and our campus mourns her loss.

Jackie was integral to the growth of our nursing education program, a program that has become almost synonymous with the words “Ursuline College” She assisted the math department when we undertook a total revision of our curriculum several years ago, and was an important spokesperson for the nursing program. She could always be counted on to work with faculty throughout the college and to communicate the needs and requirements of the nursing students to the rest of the faculty. I served on several committees with her, and recall fondly the enthusiasm she brought to her work. I know that I will be automatically reaching for the phone to call her about advising questions for a long time to come.

But it was not just advising questions that Jackie was there to help me with. She joyfully helped celebrate the adoption of my daughter and helped to welcome her into the extended Ursuline family. I recall her supportive words to me at times when I was lost as a middle age mother of a preschooler. Somehow, coming from a nursing professor, her assurance that it would all be fine made me feel much better. In the back of my mind, I sometimes thought that maybe she would teach my daughter as a nursing student some day.

I recall how several years ago I dislocated my shoulder while swimming at a public pool, only to find myself in a local emergency room with a graduate of Ursuline’s nursing program responsible for getting it back into its socket. I made some comment about how “I hope I didn’t fail you in statistics”, but deep down, I knew that I was in the best of hands. People like Jackie run an excellent program and turn out only the most competent nurses. I knew I would be fine, and I am. Our nursing graduates, all beneficiaries of Jackie’s teaching in one way or another, are scattered throughout Cleveland and the world, bringing top-notch health care to many. She leaves a legacy of graduates who will carry on her work for many years into the future.

I am reminded at this sad time of another professor whose life was cut short much too soon. My history professor from college, an inspiration to my own academic career, died suddenly at much too young of an age. He had a favorite quote that I think is appropriate as we mourn the passing of another great teacher. In the play “A Man for All Seasons”, the character Rich is contemplating a career as a teacher. He asks More “and if I was, who would know it?” The reply from Sir Thomas More says it all.

“You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that.”

Goodbye, Jackie. This mom of a young child will always appreciate the encouraging words you had to offer.

Motherhood After Tenure: Advice to an ABD

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:26:23 GMT

One of my best friends has been struggling for the last ten years to finish her dissertation. She’s brilliant, has an impeccable academic pedigree, and her graduate papers are charmingly readable. Many times I have urged her to just quit; she has an independent income, and besides, she’s so smart, she doesn’t need a PhD to prove it. Yet a combination of family pressure, guilt, and habit have propelled her onward.

As Matt Groening’s early cartoon illustrates, graduate school asks you to put off your life.

You grow older, but you have nothing to show for it; life gets put on hold until you have no life. Although I finished my own doctorate lickety-split, I regret the extent to which I put my own life on hold during graduate school. I guess I thought that life was a zero-sum game: if I put less into my personal life, I would be more successful in my career. This is true, but only up to a point. There are some activities and relationships that generate energy, that provide balance, and that offer a safe place to fall when your career hits a snag.

Once finished with the doctorate, the tenure process often asks faculty, particularly women, to delay their lives some more. In a recent article, Mary Ann Mason notes that women faculty members have fewer children than women in all other professional fields.

“Among female faculty members who worked between 50-59 hours a week, 41 percent reported children in the household, compared with a robust 67 percent for female doctors.” She goes on to analyze the discrepancy between male and female professors, but I’m left wondering, why is it harder for women to have personal lives in academia than in other professions? I wonder if it has something to do with the all-encompassing nature of the academic life. There is not a strict demarcation between when we’re off and on the clock. In addition, the pathologically competitive job market can foster a hyper workaholism. As I told my husband once, when he was complaining about my working at night, "the really successful academics work on Christmas day."

A few years ago, frustrated that my friend was so palpably unhappy, I gave her some odd advice: I told her to have a baby. “It will either snap everything into focus or you’ll never get anything done for the rest of your life,” I jokingly advised. What I meant was, start living your life. Graduate school (and academia) will not reward your slavish devotion.

In the past few years, she moved across country, met a sexy carpenter, and got pregnant at 42. When I watch her with her boisterous baby, I see a more confident woman, a grounded person whose identity is not tied to academic performance. And now she seems to be nearing the home stretch of her dissertation. The last time we talked, she was thinking about applying for jobs. She wondered about part-time teaching, or whether that would preclude her from ever getting a full-time position. “Just ask yourself,” I told her, “how much of your life are you willing to give to the academy?”

PhDs and ABCs: Science Fair

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:59:53 GMT

My daughter came home from school with a slick science fair booklet last Friday along with a homework assignment to begin initial explorations into the topic she had chosen in class: “Do different colors of light change how plants grow?” She is excited. This is her first year doing a science fair project. I’ve never done one either, and I’m impressed at how much parents are encouraged to assist with carrying it out. At back to school night, the teacher passed out a science fair booklet written for parents, and discussed at length the importance of supporting this project at home. Well, we thought, with advanced degrees in biology that shouldn’t be too hard.

Friday night, after my daughter went to bed, my husband (also a biologist) and I had a science fair project pow-wow. It started with us thinking about what kinds of seeds would be best to use for this kind of experiment. I wanted to make sure that we could order seeds online with enough time to do the experiment, since the last time we were at the garden shop they had a slim selection (being winter and all…). And our conversation grew from there. Soon, our simple Google search for seeds turned into full-fledged research. How many seeds she would need required us to look into sample size and numbers of treatments. This easily flowed into a discussion of experimental design. Before we knew it we had dug up all sorts of scientific papers describing plant experiments. We discovered that while growth in many seed types is not affected by wavelength, far-red light does inhibit germination in lettuce seeds. A discussion of how we could separate far-red wavelengths from red light ensued. We started talking about pilot experiments, measurements, statistics, controls.The project pulled us in, the complexities exciting to think about collaboratively. But WAY beyond fourth grade level.

It is clear that my daughter’s science project will not be a superficial experiment. With two academically trained biologists for parents (who have spent much of our lives working on our own experiments as well as leading college students in designing, carrying out and analyzing science experiments) and solicitation for parental help coming strongly from her teacher, my daughter won’t be shining lights on seeds willy-nilly. We will make sure that the process is done right. At the same time, it’s going to be a learning experience for all of us – my husband and I will be learning how to simplify and restrain ourselves from the rigorous completeness we would otherwise throw into this kind of project, and figuring out what expectations are appropriate, while still retaining the integrity of the scientific process. We need make sure we can express our enthusiasm without overwhelming our developing scientist, so that even if she doesn’t decide to pursue a career in science, she will have a healthy respect for, enjoyment of, and understanding of the process.

A different facet of the complex challenge of balancing academia and family.

Mothering at Mid-Career: The Balance Thing, again

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:10:47 GMT

A colleague, rushing out the door, popped her head into my office briefly. "You don't happen to have any secret tips on parenting 7th graders, do you?"

Alas, I don't. I have one child who's six years past that stage, another not at it yet, and I have a remarkable capacity for forgetting almost everything as soon as I don't need it any more. While this can be a problem in academic life -- yes, I really do need to re-read Jane Eyre every single time I teach it -- it's a boon in parenting, I'm convinced. Because almost nothing I learned about parenting my daughter applies to my son. Often it didn't even apply to my daughter for more than six months or so.

When my daughter was still very young - -I was still in grad school -- a senior professor who had two teenagers said to me, "parenting's all about achieving equilibrium, then falling off, then getting back to it." As I remember it, he suggested that we'd find ourselves in six-month cycles: on, off, on, off. I haven't kept close track of the calendar, but it still, all these years later, rings true to me. We don't actually find and maintain balance in a stationary way, after all -- we're moving, the kids are moving, life is moving forward. What worked last month won't work again, just as the child who happily ate carrots last month may reject them now. The only true thing I know about being a parent is that "this too shall pass" -- and so shall that.

I'm in the happy position right now of being in a department with a number of parents, some of them even at roughly the same stage as I am. There are some parents of younger children, and some parents whose kids are long out of the nest, but there's a nice cohort of us with teenagers and preteens right now. We understand that just because our children are in school that doesn't mean they don't need attention; we recognize that there are demands on our emotional and mental energy even if the kids don't need quite the same physical attention that they once did. It's nice to be part of a club, even if it's one that can only share a moment of solidarity in the hallway on the way to some other obligation. What I know from my older colleagues is that this, too, shall pass -- so we'll try to enjoy it, or at least to pay attention, while we can. It's not much of a secret tip, but it's all I've got right now.

Math Geek Mom: Invest in Yourself

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:18:05 GMT

This is the time of the school year when many of us are running around looking for people to teach classes for us as adjunct professors. This brings back memories of the times I worked as an adjunct professor when I was in graduate school, acquiring experience as I was paid minimally for my time. Today, as chair, I see the market for adjuncts from another perspective. I want to take a minute today to discuss the economics behind the market for adjunct professors, and how this might help potential adjunct professors find the best possible position.

Economic theory tells us that firms will be willing to invest in training workers if they can anticipate reaping the rewards for their investments (for more information, see a labor economics text, such as that written by Ehrenberg and Smith.) The problem arises when an employee is not planning to stay long enough for the firm to be able to reap the benefits of their investment, as is often the case with adjunct professors. The worker mobility in this market leads to a disincentive for colleges to put time and energy into helping their adjunct professors become the best teachers possible. Instead, they usually choose to pay low wages, in effect asking the adjunct to pick up the cost of the investment in their training. This is one explanation for the prevailing low wages in the market for adjunct professors.

As many former adjunct professors know, the experience gained from working as an adjunct is very valuable, despite the lower wages. Since working as an adjunct can be so important to breaking into (or back into) the academic labor market, I suggest that the lower wages should not deter one from this route. Instead, when looking for an adjunct position, one should look for a school that is going to invest time and energy into helping them become the best teacher possible. This is something we have committed ourselves to here at Ursuline.

For example, we often allow our adjuncts to teach smaller, upper division classes, allowing them to gain experience by teaching majors who are dedicated to the subject and eager students. We have observed adjuncts as they teach, and provided feedback to help them improve as teachers. We work directly with our adjuncts and our students to resolve any problems that might arise and therefore give them some insight into typical classroom management problems. When our adjunct professors leave us, it is with a new set of skills that we helped they acquire, and, despite the low wages they are paid in this market, they are generally better prepared for the academic labor market and see the experience as a positive one. And they often leave with one of the best thing that you can bring from an experience of working as an adjunct; a glowing letter of recommendation to use in applying for other positions. We have written letters of recommendation for former adjuncts that have helped them to acquire good full-time positions. While these teachers are no longer working for our college, the academic world is benefiting from the investment we made in their skills.

The lower pay in the market for adjunct professors often makes it difficult for us to find professors to teach such classes. However, if you think of the experience as a way to gain skills that are transferable to your next job, the lower wage is just another way that you are investing in yourself.

Motherhood After Tenure: the Pedagogy of Parents’ Night

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:57:29 GMT

Last night I attended a parents’-night talk on healthy eating at my daughter’s preschool. I had no intention of going; as an avid reader of books on nutrition and someone who cooks absurdly healthy meals, I knew they would be preaching to the choir. But my daughter was in a frenzy of excitement and begged that we attend the “party at school,” so I forced my husband to sit for an hour in an uncomfortable chair while two nursing students nervously lectured to 15 parents about the food pyramid.

While I sat there, I thought, as I always do in these situations, about what makes good teaching. These young nursing students, bless their hearts, were professionally dressed and tried hard to sound knowledgeable yet nonjudgmental when discussing food choices (a bit of a paradox). A hand-drawn poster illustrating the new food pyramid was propped up next to an example of a nutrition label. Sample packages of processed food were passed out, and the young women explained how to read the food label (good active learning, I noted). After 30 minutes, we took a break and were offered tiny plates of quinoa stir fry, a small cookie made with applesauce instead of butter, and a little plastic glass of water (experiential learning, check). My husband’s look clearly said, Is this all I’m getting for dinner?

Despite the meager servings and charmless room, all of the parents listened patiently. In the room were several mothers, one lone dad, and an Asian family of four. Our daughter’s school/daycare is located in a lower-income neighborhood and many of the children receive subsidized daycare. School events are rare and generally poorly attended. Since I pick my daughter up in the early afternoon, I have long chats with the teachers, but rarely see other parents. Perhaps this is one reason I attended the talk: it seemed like an effort by the school to foster a greater sense of community among the parents and I wanted to support it.

Although the young women did a fine job explaining the main points of how to make healthy food choices, I was frustrated at the missed opportunity to form a community in the classroom. Here were 15 parents of different ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and cooking expertise who didn’t know each other at all, united by our willingness to come out at 5:30 and hear a lecture. I didn’t learn anyone’s name, their favorite dishes, or their greatest challenges in getting their children to eat healthy food. As much as I balk at many of the classroom icebreakers (even as I use them in my own classes), it felt odd not to introduce ourselves. I wondered what the Asian family sitting in front of me made of lecture, and which of their traditional meals contained “super foods.” And what did the single dad sitting who went back for thirds of the stir-fry think about switching to more vegetable-based meals?

Neither I nor the presenters had any way of gauging what people learned from their talk, what changes parents intended to make, or how the nutritional information jibed with their own practices. Taken in a larger context, the presenters’ lack of interest in the conditions of these parents’ lives speaks to a larger issue of class and education. What does it mean to tell someone that the way he feeds his children is wrong, or that the things that taste good to him are bad?

A novice teacher focuses on her own performance, while an experienced teacher focuses on what the students have learned. But as I walked out of the room last night, I realized that when the teacher stops talking and leaves the room, all students have is each other and if the teacher hasn’t helped us form a community among ourselves, we just walk away alone.

ABCs and Ph.D.s: Frills, lace, and dressing for success

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:01:00 GMT

I know that my mother and mother-in-law laugh at me behind my back. After all, I’ve taken some pretty ridiculous stands in the name of feminism since my daughter was born. To my mother-in-law I implored: “Please. No pink or frills or lace. I know she’s your first granddaughter, but I want to go easy on the girly-girl stuff.” Ha! Somewhere around age two my daughter mysteriously gravitated toward ruffles, lace, and sparkles, despite my best efforts to steer her toward practical, sporty, gender-neutral clothing. Ever frugal, I was frustrated by her refusal to wear her brother’s hand-me-downs, but they just couldn’t compete with the clothes generously passed on to us by friends with older girls. My daughter loved sorting through the stuff we received, and before I could filter out the tutus and pink tights, they became part of her wardrobe. So much for gender-neutral. Thanks to our generous friends, my daughter had plenty of previously loved clothes to choose from during the summer. To meet her discriminating approval, dresses and shirts had to have spaghetti straps and lace, and bottoms had to be pink, purple, or flowered. We got through the warm weather with few problems—so what if the paisley-swirled tank-top clashed with the pink polka-dot capris.

However, as the cold weather approached, I started to worry. My daughter’s first day of pre-school was cold and rainy, but she insisted on a perky sundress and refused a sweater because it covered the lacy spaghetti straps. A winter wardrobe of turtlenecks and sweaters simply did not fit my daughter’s sense of style. Then one day my daughter rediscovered a shiny, blue velvet dress she had ignored last winter. With a gauzy rose on the chest and long fuzzy sleeves, this garment has become the new favorite, and she wears it two or three days in a row, sometimes sleeping in it. As long as it’s not obviously soiled, I’m just happy she’s wearing something relatively warm. One day we were an hour late for pre-school because the blue dress was wet in the washer; we eventually found something else to wear, but it required lots of cajoling, cuddles, and gentle persuasion. Was my daughter’s insistence over the blue dress a stand-in for some other anxiety? Perhaps, but once we got through the impasse over clothing and found another acceptable outfit (all purple, with sparkles), my chipper little girl sang all the way to school.

I think I know how my daughter feels. My own clothing is sometimes important to me too. When I was teaching, I always worried about looking too young, and days before the first class I would rehearse my outfit so as to make the exact first impression—authoritative, yet comfortable and a little stylish (but definitely no pink, lace, frills, or flounces). My husband, on the other hand, shows up for his first lectures of the semester wearing jeans and a T-shirt from some conference he’s recently attended. How come he doesn’t have to worry about first impressions? I envy his confidence to just be himself without worrying about what his students think. Certainly it was the content of my classes and my ability to be an effective instructor that mattered, not something as trivial as how I was dressed. But wearing particular clothes gave me that extra boost of confidence going into the classroom. From high school to graduate school, I had only two female instructors in science courses, and somehow I developed the idea that women faculty had to be conservative in their clothing choices. However, some of the women I most admire in science aren’t afraid to flaunt their own senses of style and dress in stereotypically very feminine clothing. One such highly successful scientist wears beautiful flowing clothes, often pink, and even accessorizes with scarves she can use to illustrate points in her lectures. Far from being judgmental about the clothing other women choose to wear, I sometimes wish I could free myself from the “Dress for Success” mould.

My daughter’s not quite four years old, and I celebrate the determination and strong sense of preferences she’s already developed. She has far more flair for fashion than I do, and I love seeing some of the combinations she creates. I’m sure we’ve experienced just the first of many disagreements we’ll have over clothing, and lacy frills seem pretty innocuous. In fact, I’ve come around in my thinking—a few weeks ago I went to the fabric store to buy, of all things, yards and yards of different kinds of ruffles, lace and sequin trims to sew on the “boring” clothes. Anything to increase my daughter’s clothing options and make the winter shirts and pants “prettier.” If it has to be practical, it might as well be frilly too. And if she ever stands in front of a lecture hall filled with students, I hope my daughter has the confidence to wear her pink lace and frills with pride, if that’s what she’s still into.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Knitting

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:49:45 GMT

One of the things I do when I'm not teaching or preparing for class, not grading or cooking or working on my research -- one of the things I do relatively rarely, in other words -- is knit. I like to knit. It satisfies on many levels. For one, it allows me to create something without requiring great effort -- I just follow the directions. I don't need to think very hard about it. It can be done while I am watching TV, or listening to the radio, or even (once) listening to a conference paper. Sometimes I get a Christmas gift out of it, or a warm scarf for myself. It's also a pleasure to see myself improve at something -- my knitting is better now than it was only a few months ago, though it's still not very good.

It may seem counter-intuitive to add an activity to an already busy life, but I think it can help maintain the work-family balance to have something to do that is neither, strictly, work nor family. Some of my friends garden, or do yoga; some are very politically involved, or volunteer in their kids' schools. I've done all of those things, but mostly, if I have a free minute, I knit. Many of us have little if any free time, and fit these activities into tiny interstices in our long days: knitting is both portable and easy to put down, two qualities that few other leisure activities (besides reading, which is both work and leisure) possess.

The other day I met a colleague in the hallway who noticed me wearing a knitted scarf and asked if I'd made it. I confessed that I had, and she said, "you must be some kind of supermom." Funny, I'd never associated my knitting with parenting. I didn't knit when the kids were little -- I didn't have the time or the energy then. And in fact I knit for others -- or for myself -- far more often than I do for my kids. They don't accessorize with scarves, which are my go-to project, and they're too big for me to force them to wear my creations anyway. Rather, I think of my knitting as taking away from them, at least sometimes, when I prefer to sit down with a quiet project rather than play a round of crazy eights or cook a multi-course meal for them.

Thankfully, at this stage of all of our lives, they don't need the kind of hands-on parenting that so consumed the early years. Rather, they need to know someone's around. Right now my daughter is in her room watching TV or working on her NaNoWriMo novel or chatting on facebook with a friend in another city. My son is laboring over a social studies project that's due tomorrow. Neither one needs me right this minute, but I am here -- in case the computer crashes as Nick prints out his project (one such crisis has already passed this evening), or in case Mariah wants to make plans that involve one of the cars, or for no particular reason at all. Parenting right now is more about being present than being active -- and that does leave me some time to knit.

I don't miss the busy hands-on days. They were exhausting -- full of great pleasure but also long stretches of boredom sometimes punctuated by anxiety or outright panic (the first time the baby fell on her head; the first broken bone; the first emergency room visit). There's still room for panic these days, I know, but there's also a little more room for quiet contemplation -- and thus for knitting. Tomorrow I'll be back in the office, meeting with students, grading, and wondering whether I can find time to get back to some article revisins that are starting to feel urgent. But right now those can all wait while I knit one more row.

Math Geek Mom: Teach Our Daughters Math

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:11:18 GMT

The American Mathematical Society recently published a study (Cross-Cultural Analysis of Students with Exceptional Talent in Mathematical Problem Solving) that finds evidence to disprove the widely held idea that girls are not as good at math as boys are. Instead, the relative small percent of girls excelling in math is traced to cultural forces found in the U.S., forces that can be changed so girls can approach the study of math with an open mind. While such changes would open doors to girls, it would also benefit society in general. To find the true cost of such social forces discouraging girls, we must think in terms of what girls bring to society through their math skills.

What is the cost of perpetuating the myth that girls can’t do math? The most immediate cost is to our daughters themselves, who are then denied access to many careers that depend on math. As many have noted, the high paying jobs in our economy today tend to rely heavily on math. To deny our young women good mathematical education is to forever deny them entry into the more lucrative positions in the labor market, and to make the return to their time worth less than the return to their brothers’.

But there is another cost to this, too. When our children learn skills that help them use their own talents to the best of their ability, they bring creativity to our world that would otherwise not be there. There is therefore an externality involved, as the cost of such negative ideas, like the effects of second-hand smoke, extends beyond the little girls who are hurt and affects society as a whole. How many girls do not become doctors, how many potential teachers do not pursue teaching, because they mistakenly believed that math would forever be a foreign language to them? To limit them and their future is to lose not only the skills that they can bring to our world, but also to limit our world’s potential.

When I first started teaching math at our small women’s college, I was surprised at how many students came to me saying that they had “math phobia”. This was something completely foreign to me, since I have been encouraged to study math from my earliest years in grammar school, and have found discussions about how boys are naturally better than girls at math to be odd and unsettling. How could this be, since I was obviously pretty good at math?

Unlike many, I was gifted with excellent teachers who did not allow me to buy into the perspective that girls can’t do math. Instead, I was encouraged to study math and math related subjects. This was very different from some others in my generation, who were told that boys did math and girls did not. I am now chair of a mathematics department at our college, and see the effects of such ideas on my students. I have had students sit in my office in tears telling me that they simply can’t do math. I think they were surprised when I do not believe them, but instead help them to find ways to learn the math we are studying. Some of these students were returning students in their mid 40s or beyond who have raised multiple children successfully. With only one child, I am in awe of their accomplishments in life, and so try to convince them that they HAVE been doing math all along. They had stretched budgets to meet the needs of large families, and had made important financial decisions that had allowed their families to flourish even in hard times. As I teach them basic math concepts, I am very aware that there is much about the practical applications of math to everyday life that they could teach me. If only they had been encouraged in this field at a younger age!

When you interact with young girls in your life, I hope that you encourage them to pursue any interest in math that they might exhibit. Not only will they be better off for it, but so will we all.

Motherhood After Tenure: Michelle Obama’s Dress

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:18:30 GMT

Of all the possible reactions to Barack Obama’s historical victory this week, I wasn’t prepared for a lead story about the black and red dress Michelle Obama wore to her husband’s acceptance in Chicago. If you read the comments (and I’m not suggesting you do; the punctuation alone will drive you mad) you’ll find a pathological animosity toward the next first lady’s appearance: her teeth, her size, how she walks, how she stands. It’s not just her dress many commentors hate, it’s her physicality itself. If it weren’t so horrifying, it might be amusing to read commentors’ struggles to put their fingers on exactly what is wrong with Michelle Obama (her choice of pantyhose, one comment suggests?) There’s just something inexplicable about her (um, her race) that rubs some folks the wrong way.

While many of the negative comments about Michelle Obama are clearly racist, the fact that this racism is directed at her physical appearance suggests the ways that women’s competence or legitimacy is often judged in terms of appearance. This seemingly trivial topic has vexed both sides of this campaign. In a recent essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Rose Stremlau argues that the “vulgar and crass” public comments about Sarah Palin represent an inability “to accept female authority on its own merits.” Stremlau goes on to make a comparison between how female politicians are treated and how female professors are often sexualized by students—with inappropriate student comments on evaluations (like “nice ass”) becoming a part of one’s professional record.

Opinions about how female professors should best dress vary. The impeccable Ms. Mentor generally counsels untenured women to avoid drawing attention to their bodies/sexuality. While this is pragmatic advice, it misses the point: Women with public authority will always be subjected to intense scrutiny and judgment. If you wear a navy suit, you still face comments about makeup (or lack thereof), weight, and cleavage.

When I started teaching, I wore short dresses and clunky heels. While pregnant I stood in the front of the class and rubbed my belly. I expect I will revel in my gray hair, although the persona of crone may be harder to pull off than Madonna or whore. After all, older women are invisible in popular discourse.

So maybe that’s why I relish the sight of Michelle Obama, slightly awkward but firmly herself, unapologetically tall and womanly. And while there is so much more to our future first lady than her looks, I think she’s a beautiful sight.

ABCs and Ph.D.s: The Sequential Strategy

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:37:12 GMT

When I was in graduate school I could count on one hand (maybe even one finger) the number of graduate students I knew who had children. In my cohort (which I have blogged about before), not one of the ten of us had children before we finished, and this was true of the cohorts before and after mine in my department. I was the first in my cohort to have a baby; born 6 months after I defended my thesis.

I’m thinking about this again now because I’ve been working a few hours a week for a graduate program in biology at the University of Maryland and the graduate student who works with me in the office there is six months pregnant. She will have her baby about a month after finishing her prelims. Many people say this is a great strategy for balancing a family and academia: get a family started while you are flexible as a graduate student. Unlike my graduate experience, when no one was following this strategy, there are a number of students here who have done just that.

While I see her calculating exactly how to fit the baby into her academic life, I am torn for her. I remember the freedom of being a graduate student, the time I spent sitting around in “the fish lab” with a diverse bunch of other grad students on Saturday nights. I remember collaborating with my lab mates on experiments that we jubilantly finished at 4am, and then celebrating by going out for breakfast. I remember bonding with three fellow graduate students who came with me as field assistants to Ecuador (especially after we survived the effects of a nasty food-born virus - three days wracked with fever, lying immobile in small huts in the sticky heat of the Amazon rainforest).

Graduate school provided huge enjoyment for me. I traveled; I thought hard; I worked all hours; I interacted intensely with amazing people; I took advantage of resources available to me. While I understand that the idea of planning one’s family for the benefit of their career is important - often crucial for continuing the traditional academic route - for me the unfettered enjoyment of immersing myself in graduate school was a formative experience that I am glad I did not dilute with a family. I realize that not everyone enjoys graduate school to the same degree. Part of my enjoyment was having a crew of peers who shared my interests, and who were living the same way I was. I’m not sure why students didn’t have children in my program the way they do in other departments, but I’m interested in exploring this, and the effect it might have on graduate and career experiences.

While I loved it, I was ready to finish graduate student life when it ended. I might have enjoyed continuing in a traditional academic career, but I didn’t want to dilute my next intense adventure – parenthood. Again, I put my all into this venture, and wouldn’t have it any other way. For me, the sequential strategy worked well. Now, as my children get older I have more time to weave family and career together, and I am finding academic opportunities I would never have considered if I had planned to mesh these important aspects of my life right from the beginning.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Getting out the Vote

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:52:37 GMT

I first came to political consciousness during the Watergate era. We'd been living overseas and actually returned to the U.S. on the day of the break-in; the next few years, it seems to me, passed by in a haze of newspaper articles and Senate hearings. The names Haldeman and Erlichman still mean something to me.

Unfortunately, what they mean is a pervasive cynicism about politics. I can't be sure, but despite my engagement with the Watergate story at the time, it feels to me now that what it taught me was to be cynical. Yes, the "plumbers" (ah, how different that word is this year) got caught, but how many others didn't? Nixon resigned, and I lost interest in politics. Political news started to focus on personality, rather than policy. We started to hear stories about our idols -- they turned out to have feet of clay, too. As story after story of affairs, mistakes, and poor judgment poured out of a faster and faster news cycle, I tuned out. They were all crooks, cheaters, and liars, it seemed; I couldn't imagine that anyone honest even wanted to be president any more -- if they ever had.

This is my fourth presidential election as a college professor. I've dutifully reminded my students to go to the polls in years past, and have gone myself, but without much sense of hope, without much conviction that anything would change. While I now think the last several elections really did change our course as a nation, I remember in 2000, especially, thinking it didn't really matter all that much. I was wrong, of course, but I think lots of us were; instead of a campaign, we followed a horserace in which people backed their favorites for reasons that seemed to have little to do with how we actually live our lives. Alpha males and earth tones -- tactics, not visions -- dominated the coverage. Who cared?

This year I care. This year it really does feel like the election matters, and I'm approaching it differently. My state is suddenly a swing state. I've registered some voters; I've made a few phone calls. For the first time in my life, I've got a bumper sticker on my car. I'm writing about voting, trying (perhaps desperately) to link it to my work. I'm reminding my students to register, informing them of polling locations, letting them know about the campus shuttle service that will be available if they can't make it to the polls on their own. While I'm not open about my political leanings -- I don't want to alienate them or make them feel pressured -- I've made it clear that I think this election is important, and that I want them involved. On Election Day, I've rescheduled my office hours so that I can drive folks to the polls -- or knock on doors, or make phone calls -- myself. Some of them may as well.

My daughter votes in her first presidential election this year. The names Haldeman and Erlichman don't mean anything to her; Monica Lewinsky barely even registers. I'm glad of that. Like my students, she's coming of age in a time of hope. I envy them -- and I take heart that their involvement signals a new energy, a new beginning. For the first time in years, I can't wait to get out and vote.

Math Geek Mom: Seventy Seven Cents?

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:39:54 GMT

Women are paid, on average, only seventy seven cents for every dollar earned by men. As can be seen at the site of “moms rising”, even larger differentials exist for women who are mothers, and these are most extreme for women who are single mothers. But where do these numbers come from? How are they calculated, and, more importantly, what assumptions are made in performing those calculations? I will discuss how these wage differentials, which many of us have encountered in our own professional careers, are calculated. If you want to learn more about the techniques discussed here, consult a good labor economics text, such as that written by George Borjas and published by Irwin McGraw-Hill.

To calculate this differential, we need to get beyond asking what the average woman is paid and comparing it to what the average man is paid. Instead, we ask the question “what would the average woman be paid, if she were paid according to the same criteria as men.” For example, if a man gets paid an extra $10,000 for each year of schooling, then so would this average woman. This analysis is done for each labor market characteristic that we believe influences a person’s pay scale, such as education, experience, and number of young children at home.

To find how each variable influences men and women, separate regressions are run for both men and women. This statistical technique looks for the effect of each characteristic, while holding the other characteristics constant. The effect of each is found, assuming that the other characteristics are not changing and therefore are not affecting the pay scale themselves. Of course, we all know this is never the way things work; we might pursue additional education just as our children arrive and we may drop out of the labor force for a while when they do arrive, so nothing is ever really “held constant”. But this technique allows us to imagine what would happen IF everything else could be held constant. The result is information on how a change in each characteristic affects the pay of men and of women.

We then look at the average woman, an imaginary woman who has the same education, experience, etc. as the average value from our data set for each characteristic for women. We calculate what her average pay would be if she were to be paid as a woman, using the mean values for women and the pay scale information we found from our regression for women. We then ask what she would be paid, if she were paid according to the pay scale for men. The difference between what she would be paid as a woman and what she would be paid as a man is unexplained, and is often attributed to discrimination.

Note that, since this looks at the effect of a change in an input variable, simply changing the level of that variable, such as education, for the average woman will not necessarily have any effect on the wage differential. When people talk about lowering the wage differential between men and women, they need to look beyond increasing the level of education or training for women. Instead, they must look at the reasons why men and women are often rewarded differently in the labor market for the same characteristics.