May 13

ABCs and PhDs

By Liz Stockwell

Last month my son’s first grade class did a unit on plants, seeds, and fruits. When his teacher sent home an assignment to collect a dozen different kinds of seeds, I was more excited than my son was. Since I was a little girl, I’ve collected seeds and seedpods from all over the world, and I offered to lend my collection to the classroom. The teacher said, “Oh, but would you like to come in and talk to the class?” I jumped at the chance, and prepared for the talk to twenty first graders just as I would have prepared for a freshman biology lecture, even staying up way past midnight getting it together. I had Powerpoint slides, fruits to pass around the room, seed pods, and all kinds of stories to tell about plant and animal interactions. I went way overboard. But I loved putting the talk together. And the kids seemed to enjoy it, even though they had to sit on the carpet while I went on for over an hour. The teacher, who knows a bit about my background, later said to me, “We need to get you back in the classroom.”

Now that my job is primary caregiver for my children I find I really miss teaching and research. I’m so eager to stay active as a biologist that I look for any opportunities to practice what I love, whether I’m paid or not. Talking to my son’s class was a chance to be a biology teacher again and engage my brain. I enjoyed the challenge of presenting ecological concepts in ways that six- and seven-year-olds would understand.

Recently a fellow Mama PhD blogger emailed a link to an article from The Wall Street Journal about “mommy SWAT (smart women with available time) teams.” These teams, composed of highly skilled women who left careers to care for their children full-time, are hired for short-term contracts to work on projects at a fraction of the salaries they commanded when they worked full time. The article suggests that both sides win: the women who are hired have a chance to refresh their skills and exercise their brain-power, while the companies that hire them gain cheap, highly qualified and motivated workers. No mention is made of health or retirement benefits.

On the one hand, I feel like these women are exploited. The companies with whom they contract are getting a great deal; do the moms feel the same? Would full-time dads be hired in the same way, with the same low salaries and lack of benefits?

But to be honest, my first reaction to the article was, great! If someone called me up out of the blue with an offer to be part of an exciting, short-term project that seemed right up my alley I’d forget all about practical considerations such as salary and benefits. After all, aren’t there some things we do simply because we’re passionate about them? How else did we get through the stress of completing a PhD, except by completely immersing ourselves in projects and research that we found stimulating.

When my husband got a tenure-track job and I needed a job in the same town, I eagerly accepted sessional lecturer positions for low pay and no benefits. I enjoyed the teaching, but like the companies that contract mommy SWAT teams, the university I worked for got a good deal by hiring me. I was a cheap, enthusiastic teacher earning a salary that barely paid for the childcare I needed after my first child was born. It seemed fine for me at the time because I could work part-time in my field and keep a toe-hold in academia.

It’s impossible to turn off the passion for biology and almost life-long love of nature that led me to pursue a PhD; they’re part of me. However, when the pursuit of these interests in a traditional academic setting began to clash with a desire for more time with my growing family, it was time to try a different approach. Now just as I immersed myself in my PhD research, I devote my attention to being with my kids with no regrets. I still desperately crave intellectual stimulation, and I long to work on projects. I haven’t stopped designing experiments in my head or getting excited when I come across new research papers in my field. One of the most arousing dates I’ve had with my husband (also a biologist) since my kids were born was a dinner at a great little restaurant where we drank lots of wine and talked about research projects we might do together. I felt sexy because I could turn my husband on with my brain and ideas. I know, what a couple of science geeks! But how exciting to know I still had it in me. And if I receive a phone call one day inviting me to join a mommy SWAT team, I’ll have a hard time saying no if it’s just the right project.

Comments

parenthood and working

Very interesting article. This raises the larger question of how women (academics with Ph.D’s or otherwise) balance parenthood with work. I have to work a university staff job out of economic necessity. We don’t have enough $ with just my husband working. In fact, I’ve been the primary breadwinner for many years now—it’s slowly coming to parity.

I started graduate school part-time for an MA in History, then quit because of getting married and having a kid. (I’d been working full-time all this time.) There’s nothing I’d like more than to get a Ph.D. But young children require a lot of time and nurturing and then there’s the “minor” matter of finances.

I read an article in The American Prospect about how the system is so screwed up that day care and after-school care personnel aren’t getting paid great salaries and there’s a large turnover in those fields. They made the point that in Europe, these child care workers are treated as professionals and paid accordingly. I bring this all up to point out that the day care/work system doesn’t favor women and we end up feeling squeezed a lot of the time.

I agree with the author that the mommy SWAT concept/process and the adjunct-type of professor positions “take advantage” of people b/c they can get workers cheaply and not have to provide benefits, etc. There’s a community college in my area that almost exclusively relies on adjunct professors to teach their classes. I’m sure most of these professors are fine academics, but wonder about their ability to sustain a living wage and having to pay for benefits and their tax withholdings quarterly.

These questions do not have easy answers.

Jill Porco, reading jill, at 9:10 am EDT on May 14, 2008

Assistant Pig-Keepers Unite

The only thing new about SWAT is the acronym; society has been powered by SWAT for a very long time. It’s not just the occasional seed pod class that’s enabled by SWAT; it’s all the room mothers across the country. It’s all the women who volunteer at food banks and blood drives. It’s all the women who take care of their elderly parents, drive their disabled aunt to her weekly doctor’s appointment, and help out the sick neighbor with grocery runs. It’s all the women who work in childcare and preschool programs for minimum wage. It’s all the women who take the adjunct jobs and the secretarial jobs that offer “hours convenient for moms with school-age kids” without benefits or hope of advancement. Although it is nice to be acknowledged as “smart” women instead of just “stay-at-home-moms,” the idea that we can be had for cheap isn’t exactly new.

There are, of course, many men who do similar work without pay (or much pay) as well, and their willingness to share the burden is to be appreciated, I’m just annoyed that someone has put a shiny new coat of paint on a very conventional idea (we can get a woman to do it for less than a man) and tried to pass it off as innovative. I don’t in any way blame the women who jump at the chance to design the marketing campaign for a new brand of cupcakes instead of baking the cupcakes for the 3rd grade Arbor Day celebration one month—I’d have done it myself when I was staying at home too—I just don’t think we should accept the claim that this “new” approach is a “great opportunity.” Smart Women with Available Time have been working for cheap for a very long time. We should thank them all (and the men standing in the trenches with them), and work harder to get them health care benefits.

In one of my favorite books, The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander,the young protagonist, who lives on a small farm, complains that he isn’t anyone important, and his mentor promptly gives him the title “Assistant Pig-Keeper.” Taran’s moment of pride quickly evaporates when he realizes that despite the fact that he has a new name, he still has to feed and water the prize pig—just like he always has. SWAT looks like an awful lot of Assistant Pig-Keeping to me (though if it is any inspiration, he does, eventually become an acknowledged hero of the very best sort!)

Megan, at 11:05 pm EDT on May 19, 2008