For those who do wish to combine work and family, there are some changes that should be made. We’ve touched on them in some of the comments.
For me, the number one reform would be more part time work. Some commenters have pointed out childcare programs and family leave policies that exist in Europe. Our society also has to appreciate the work of caretakers and to make the job of raising children a community project. The commenters that seem most content live in areas of the country where there are more sidewalks, shorter commutes, available childcare, affordable housing, and less competitive environments. Those models should be replicated.
Though NOW may not be actively pursuing these reforms, other groups are. Check out MOTHERS and Mothers and More.
Sadly, there are many obstacles to bringing about a better balance of work and life. For example, unions are against increasing part time options, because these positions could undermine full time employees. Oddly enough, Republicans are more likely to advocate for increased part time options. Also, overworked parents have little time to attend rallies or write senators.
Can women and parents make the best of the system and organize their lives differently? Like taking advantage of opportunities that technology offers to work from home and set one’s own schedule? Or avoiding unsupportive careers, like academia? Moving to more supportive communities?
What are some changes that you would like to see? How can we overcome these obstacles? Or perhaps nothing can be done; trade offs must be made.
Apt. 11d 
For me, the number one reform would be more part time work.
Could you please explain what the problem is here? I’m not saying that you do not have a point, I’ve just not exactly sure what it is. If I understand my national employment picture, the problem in the country is, in fact, too MANY part time jobs, often held by people who would like full time jobs, but couldn’t get one. How can there be too FEW part time jobs?
“August employment figures released Friday show unemployment virtually unchanged at 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent the month before. Those working involuntarily part-time remained unchanged from July at about 3 percent of the work force.
Meanwhile, the total numbers of those working part-time continued to trend up.”
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The problem is not the prevalence of part-time work; it’s that the compensation for the part-time work is not sufficient. An example: My husband works 60% of a full-time week. However, his pay is not the equivalent of 60% of a full-time salary in that position. I often say we have 1.25 incomes–but we’re working 1.6 jobs.
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RB,
My impression is that part-time jobs are distributed unequally: there are lots in lower paid, low status careers (and often they have bad conditions), whereas in entire professional industries there are practically no part-time jobs.
In Australia though (where I live), I believe that academia is ahead of the curve in introducing voluntary part-time permanent positions at a pro-rata rate of pay, and at least in theory you aren’t discriminated against for promotion purposes. Part-time jobs that don’t permanently shut off any hope of promotion is the ideal Laura seems to be talking about.
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Have you read The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties While You Mentor, Nurture, Teach, and Serve, edited by Constance Coiner and Diane Hume George? This collection of essays, interviews, poems, autobiographic sketches and more is what I’ve been re-reading during your blog conference. It’s interesting as it isn’t solely a woman’s perspective: many of the contributions are by men.
While the stories are heavily weighted toward the experience of those who came into the academy with second wave feminism (and the horrors they faced transgressing the virgins at Vassar rule and other outmoded paradigms), it’s valuable even today. Some of the advice might sound familiar: push for part time job tracks, tenure-track delays, etc. But the terms “mentor” and “nurture” in the title I found indicative of valuable insights to be gleaned. Coiner and George and many of the essayists assert that the modern academic can bring new skills and new approaches to the tired traditions we sometimes feel trapped inside.
We’re centuries away from the old model of universities as the purview of celibate scholars and students preparing themselves for clerical careers. Why the heck are we still operating on so many of the old presumptions, then? Why do we think we have to perpetuate the old system?
We have no problem condemning hazing in fraternities, sororities and the military, for example, yet I’d argue that the hellbent road to P&T is just a variant of that practice. “If you can survive this, you’re in the club!” And the annoying extra hours that some people describe (required attendance at cocktail hours, receptions, addresses, chapel, etc.) doesn’t result in a big fat reward at the end of the process, only the faculty member’s sinking feeling that they rate about the same as a trained seal in the eyes of the Board of Governors.
Don’t get me wrong. I celebrate the joys of academia including the fact that I’m sitting here, adding to this post in between writing paragraphs in my latest article and grooving to Warren Zevon after a nice walk with the dogs. That kind of job flexibility is a dream to most other workers (I know, I’ve worked outside the academy, too), but, as we’ve talked about before, the many unpaid hours outside of the 9-5 that academics are expected to devote to their institution and the ways in which we have to subordinate ourselves to these outmoded conceptions of what the job ought to be, these go unreported in the popular media. The fact that I can always come up with something academic to guilt myself about (why am I posting here instead of concentrating on the next article, even if I’ve already clocked my alloted hours for the day or week?) — those issues are where we ought to focus our call for reform.
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Perhaps this is an anecdote unique to law, I do not know. I throw it out to see if it resonates with others. As a peer, I found this experience recounted to me frequently by young female lawyers:
The biggest obstacles in work/family balance to the 25-30 year old female lawyer was the 50-55 year old female lawyer.
The 50-55 year old female lawyers in question could often tell the same story, implicitly, in their treatment of young female lawyers — “When I graduated from law school in the 1970s, there were no women partners in my firm. It simply was not an option. I worked my ass off for years and became the first female partner in my practice group. I was unmarried or put off children or put my child in daycare full time while I worked 18 hour days. I am now old, childless, or estranged from my children. I sacrificed everything personal, but I am also very successful in my job. And you want to get on a ‘mommy track’ and still end where I am at the end? Get real.”
Perhaps an analogy can be made here to fraternity hazing.
The above is, of course, a gross over-generalization, but I am relating the personal experiences of women who worked for 6 or 7 different female partners (of dozen or groups I have interacted with — female partners are, of course, still a rarity, due to the very-real hardships these women obviously faced to get to “the top”). But I bet if you look at statistics for big law firms, you’ll see more female attrition from practices with 50-something women in charge.
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I am big proponent of part time work just because so many parents say that they wish that they could have their kids in part time childcare and work part time. Or work out some system with their partner to split care of their children.
As other commenter have pointed out, there are few opportunities to work part time at a professional level. There are plenty of opportunities to stuff envelopes or to work for slave wages as an adjunct. But few opportunities to be paid resonable wages and have a portion of health care benefits.
The inadequacies of adjuncting was documented in depth at The Invisble Adjunct’s blog (www.invisibleadjunct.com), so I don’t think I need to reinvent the wheel here on that topic. But academia has no real part time solution for parents. Some commenters here have been able to take advantage of the flexibility of academic life to work full time and mind the kids part time. Harry seems to have managed that well. But for many, the demands of tenure and the culture of certain universities proclude that option.
Many parents that I’ve talked to at the playground are desperately looking for part time, challenging work and have hit a road block. Those that have been successful in stepping down their work responsibilities for a short period of time worked for many years prior to the kids for major corporations.
Ancarett, thanks for the book recommendation. I’ll check it out.
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It’s not so much that parents are too tired to go to rallies and meetings to change things. It’s that many organizations that are involved in rallying and organizing do not structure their meetings and activities to include parents of young children.
See mama-nyc.org for a group that works on this issue.
I have witnessed exceptions to this rule. When I lived in Tennessee, child care was routinely provided by groups doing anti-welfare-reform organizing and living-wage organizing, because these issues were especially relevant to parents, especially single parents. In New York, when you ask if child care will be provided at any kind of community meeting, people act as if you are insane. The only exception I know of is the Bronx Action for Justice and Peace group.
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RB is completely right. The divide between stay at home and “working” moms is nothing compared to the divide between 50+ year old women lawyers and the new crop.
I used to not like that my firm had no older women lawyers. But perhaps I should be glad; I am able to work part time — and I made partner while doing so (plus I was pregnant at the time!). Part-time professional work is indeed the holy grail.
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I think part time work is rarely going to add up to a big & significant career, & that it’s probably not possible for most ordinary mortals to support two big careers and parenthood out of the same marriage.
The lab which makes a breakthrough on multiple sclerosis is going to be one where everybody is there nineteen hours out of twenty-four. The political scientist who gets tenure is going to be the one who has thirty papers in good journals, not the one who has twenty. And the thirtieth paper will be better than the twentieth – s/he has learned more & gotten better in the writing. There’s been a lot of progress in forcing people to look at women as contenders & not assuming that they will drift off into motherhood and coulda-been-a-contender. But to get to the top of the pole will continue to require the kind of single-minded devotion as it always has. That means that couples will need to choose – both partners can try to make significant careers & they will forego children, or one will, & the other will keep the home fires burning. The home fires partner can be either partner – but in general couples will find that one has got to do it.
That said, most careers are not going to be world-changing, and facilitating long-term part time work at decent wages is a good thing.
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