05/25/2018 - Family Responsibilities and Academia

Monica presented a few different studies related to how having and caring for children affects progress in academic careers and how this depends on the gender of the parent. One source of information was a presentation given by Mary Ann Mason that reported on a longitudinal study from 1973 - 2007 of PhD recipients. Some major takeaways:

• Women who have babies within 5 years of receiving a PhD are 38% less likely to receive tenure.

• Men who have babies have more success achieving tenure than any other group (even single men without children).

• This trend is similar in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The presentation: https://www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/gender-equity/upload/Mason_Mary_Ann_APS_Gender_Equity_Conference.pdf ***

Monica also gave a short overview of the book "Academic Motherhood," which tries to focus more on how to make an academic career work for mothers. Some of the major takeaways from this book were:

• There is no "good" time to have a baby -- do it when you feel comfortable.

• A lot of people are unaware of their rights and/or resources available to new parents.

• The tenure process is designed towards a male-oriented clock and make this structure needs to change.

Here is a digital copy of the book: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19204

Resources at University of Michigan: https://hr.umich.edu/working-u-m/my-employment/leaves-absence/leaves-absence-associated-pregnancy-maternity

***We noticed in this presentation that non-tenured/adjunct researchers and lecturers are referred to as 'g*psy scholars'. This language is unfortunate and problematic, in that it uses a term considered a slur by many (and there is much that could be unpacked about that), as well as reinforcing the classification of non-tenure positions as second-tier. We make this note to recognize that all of us can mess up, but we hope to encourage a culture where it is okay to recognize mistakes within otherwise good and useful resources.