Mama PhD

I took a few weeks off from blogging in order to participate in some end-of-semester faculty development, finish my grading, and otherwise wrap up the school year. So what did I miss? Naomi Schafer Riley blogged irresponsibly, sparked a call for a boycott, apologized weakly, and lost her blogging gig, all in the time I was away from the blogosphere. (See the first paragraph of Liana Silva’s recent post for the details—and read the rest for her smart thoughts on why minority scholars’ voices need to be heard.) There was an election in France. Some more pseudo-mommy-wars seem to have flamed up. And Maurice Sendak died.

Several weeks ago, I sat through a play that was three hours long, with no intermission. The friend I went with joked that the omission must have been a strategic decision on the director's part, because if they had let us out, surely nobody would have come back in. I didn't blame the playwright. She was obviously impassioned about the subject matter, and assumed that everyone else would be, too. Maybe she had exercised great restraint in cutting it back from five or six hours. But at some point, someone should have intervened.

Central to the subject of Economics is the idea of “utility maximization.” This concept proposes that people choose the optimal assortment of work, goods and leisure given the constraints they face. As calculus is applied to compute such choices, it is assumed that the economic agent is strictly self-interested, an assumption I find myself thinking about as we celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend.

I jumped on a plane recently to try and assist my son Nick with changing his “F’s” to “D’s” or “C’s” on his high school report card in order to graduate in June. His father and I realize that our last ditch efforts to discipline may be ‘too little too late’ for our son, but Nick understands that he cannot move out of his Dad’s house (or into my empty one) until he gets a GED. I let Nick know that some of the readers of this column are interested in hearing from him about his high school burnout, and he may, in fact, write a response to my maternal blogging (after we get through the next three weeks.)

Thanks to all for the thoughtful and helpful responses to my last blog about moving with kids. After several weeks of wrenching angst about whether to accept a new academic position on the other side of the country, we’ve taken the plunge. Oh. My. Gosh. We’re moving! Here, in a nutshell, is our emotional rollercoaster so far:

This week, The New York Times is running a series on the benefits and pitfalls of attachment parenting in its Room for Debate section, inspired by Elisabeth Badinter's "The Conflict." For the most part, the essays are thoughtful and measured, and some of them (Erica Jong's and Annie Urban's in particular, I think) discuss important factors in child-rearing.

In economics, we talk about purchasing machinery that is used in producing a product as “investment” in capital, and in acquiring skills and experience that will help an employee perform a job more efficiently as “human capital investment.” It is this later type of investment that seems to be on the forefront of the minds of many of my fellow parents who I run into lately.

One of the most pleasurable parts of my new administrative position is ordering new books on teaching and faculty development for our center’s library. I’ve given up my earlier naïve attempt to read each one before shelving it. However, Rachel Connelly and Kristen Ghodsee’s Professor Mommy was a book I couldn’t put down: a smart, readable description of the hurdles facing women who have children while in graduate school or on the tenure track.