Thanks to Ellen Cohn, Beth Huebner, Barbara Koons-Witt, Robin Robinson, and Susan Sharp for help in answering these questions.
Please send questions to be considered in future “Ask a Tenured Professor” columns to: ssharp@ou.edu.
1) I am a new professor, and something that is on my mind a lot is about getting pregnant. Certainly I know that I should be able to reproduce as I please, but as a brand new professor, I worry about how that might be perceived. In that this is my first year, I do not plan on getting pregnant this year. However, my husband and I are considering starting to try next fall. Ideally, we would work it so that I would be pregnant through the school year and give birth as summer just begins, but I know from friends that it does not always work that way. How can this be managed? I have a fantastic chair and department who I think would be supportive (even excited!), but I am afraid it will make me look unprofessional. I don't want to wait five years until I get (or don't get!) tenure. Lastly, if there's room in the column, I have imagined that having a child in academia is in some ways easier than it was for me in non-profit. That is, there is a childcare department on campus where faculty can leave children while they teach, and I would only be teaching 2-3 days per week, able to be at home with a child the other days. Is this a reasonable assumption (I know all places are different, but generally speaking)?
ANSWER 1
Obviously every department is different, so I can only speak about my experiences. My husband and I deliberately waited until I earned tenure before starting our family. My goal also was to time things so that I would give birth at the end of the Spring term and have the summer off , but you can’t always plan things like that. Conception happens when it happens – it took us about nine months of trying before we got pregnant the first time. My first child was born part way through the fall semester, which meant that someone had to cover my classes for the rest of the term. Even though I was on leave, though, I still ended up having to do the final grades and respond to a lot of emails from students. In addition, I basically was required to return at the start of the next semester, even though I’d wanted to take a bit more time off.
You should find out if you can stop your tenure clock while you are pregnant. I found that being pregnant seriously impacted my productivity – I got very little research done while pregnant or during the first few months after giving birth.
Not all faculties are equally supportive. A friend of mine at another university became pregnant while on the tenure track. It was a difficult pregnancy and she ended up having to take off several months before the birth, as well as time off after the birth, of course. She did get her clock stopped for a year but it was clear that her colleagues resented having to cover her classes, take on her advising duties, and so on. She got a bad tenure review from her department and her chair, and ended up not getting tenure. The official reason was her low publication rate, but since another junior faculty member with a very similar publication output did get tenure, one has to wonder what role the pregnancy played in the tenure decision.
I would say that waiting at least a year or so after starting a new position would be a good idea. I know one individual who got pregnant (intentionally) during her first year as a new hire. After the baby was born, she took the rest of that term and the entire next semester off (under FMLA, I believe) to stay home with the baby. There was some bad feeling around her department about this because of the extra work it put on everyone else to cover for her for such a long time when she was so new to the department. Her research output was basically nil during this entire period and she did not do well on her annual reviews. I believe she ended up leaving her department and moving to a more teaching-focused college. Again, one wonders how much her choices regarding pregnancy affected the results of her reviews.
Regarding child care issues, if you are staying home with your baby, when will you work on research and writing? I thought that during the first couple of months, when I was staying home with my baby, I would get a lot of writing done, but that did not happen. Babies may sleep a lot, but they also take a lot of attention, and of course you don’t get much sleep in those first months either. Plus, if you are focusing on work while home with your child, your child is not getting any attention or stimulation – no one is playing with her or talking to her or anything. In addition, what about faculty meetings, committee activities, and so on – they may happen on days you are not teaching. You need to see whether your university’s childcare program allows you to “drop in” your child if you have to go to a meeting or attend a grad student’s defense or something.
ANSWER 2
This is a difficult situation for many women in academe. What makes it particularly tricky is that there are universities/colleges without (good) family friendly policies for faculty members, and then of course there are the “unspoken” rules at the universities. Let me begin by stating that I found myself in a similar position to the one you describe, although I wasn’t so concerned about the perception part of it as I was how it would impact my ability to successfully receive tenure and promotion. In my case I wanted to begin a family during my probationary period because of my age—I simply could not wait until I received tenure. In fact, I had two children during this period of time. I was literally putting together my T & P file during my eighth month of pregnancy! I didn’t stop my clock and in the end I figured I had done the best I could and I would leave my record speak for itself.
Your “planned” maternity schedule is not likely to work out the way you would like it to so best be prepared by doing some investigating at your institution. First, I would recommend that you figure out what policies are in place at your current institution. For example, would you be able to receive reduced responsibilities (smaller teaching load, no teaching at all)? Would you be able to stop your tenure clock? Policies vary greatly from university to university. In my case, I was completely in the dark. My Chair had not had to deal with a pregnancy during his tenure so he was unsure what my options were available to me. I went to HR and they were not very helpful either. Furthermore, I did not have any senior female faculty members in my department at the time so I felt pretty unprepared in terms of what I could and/or should do. In the end, my Chair worked with me to come up with an arrangement that was sensitive to my needs and situation.
After determining what policies are in place at your institution, I would consult your mentors, senior female faculty members if they are available, and talk with your Chair. As for your questions about what happens afterwards, again it is difficult to predict. You are right it is nice to have the flexibility that academe offers when raising kids. Others are not so fortunate. The fact that there is a childcare facility on your campus is great. The extent to which you will be able to get work done once your little one comes along is hard to gauge. I thought I would be able to get work done when my daughter was born. I figured she would sleep a lot during the day, but it didn’t work out that way. Each child is different so you don’t necessarily know how “cooperative” your little one will be once they arrive. I think the key is to be flexible and be prepared.
Finally, let me weigh in on your concerns about not appearing “professional” by wanting to begin a family so early in your probationary period. I think that is not unusual for others who have been in your position. I personally had to come to terms with my new identity. I love being a mother, love my kids but I also love my work. Sometimes you feel some guilt on both sides of the equation because you feel you are not doing one or both (usually both) jobs 100% and everything is “suffering.” I’ve had to come to terms with the idea that I can’t work all of those hours that I use to because now I have two great kids (currently 3 years and 5 years old) and actually that is okay! It sounds as if you like your Chair and colleagues, hopefully it is a department that is family friendly—maybe other colleagues have recently had kids? Rely on others who have been through similar situations (and your mentors), ask good questions, and it seems you have a supportive Chair. I wish you the best.
2) I am on the job market and am unsure how much to divulge about my feminist approach. Some of my peers say that would keep me from being considered for many jobs. Others point out that if I am not forthcoming, I won’t know whether feminist scholarship will help me get tenure. I am getting confused. How should I approach this?
ANSWER 1
There are several related questions you might consider as you approach your job search and interviews, including campus visits that include job talks and/or teaching a class as part of the campus visit. For the sake of discussion here, let us divide your concerns into three discrete but related issues for you to consider: 1) what you mean by “feminist approach” and how to present what you mean; 2) your theoretical and methodological stances in your scholarship and pedagogy; and 3) what kind of colleagues and environment will support you to be happy and productive.
First, what do mean by a feminist approach? Feminisms vary. This is an important question, because feminist principles may create integrative or marginalizing aspects to any endeavor. You may see the feminist approach to a project as bringing woman-centered theory to the framework, and/or woman-centered sources of data to the methodology. Your feminist approach may privilege women’s voices in a larger, mainstream context and/or consciousness. Your feminist approach may focus on women’s stories in policy, literature, history, law or other disciplines allied with justice studies. You may embrace a feminist aspect of critical theory, or, you may be working to create new feminist theory. You may find that more traditional academic programs or departments may welcome you as a feminist scholar to bring diversity, and to entice students to the department. Whatever your approach, the clearer you are about your contribution to the program or department, the more valuable they are likely to see you as a confident, promising addition to their community. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the research and teaching interests of department members, as well as other programs on campus to which you could contribute or with whom you might be affiliated. But focus on what you, as a feminist scholar, bring to their offerings.
Second, be clear about your orientation to research and teaching without being polemical. This is important. Present your work in a sound theoretical framework: research and teaching. Craft a strong statement of scholarship upon which you base your work, and be clear about this foundation to your work. Formulate and share your teaching philosophy, and explain feminist theory and feminist praxis that inform your statement. Likely, you will submit samples of your written work, so if your work is feminist in orientation, search committee members will know in that way as well as from your other materials. And if they ask you to teach a class and you bring feminist foundations to your pedagogy, be consistent with your usual approach. Consistency, integrity, and confidence in your presentations are likely to be the most solid pathway to a satisfying job in an environment that values your contributions. And this leads to…
Third, you do not want to be a closet feminist in a hostile department. This third issue follows from the other two: if you are clear and strong about what principles guide your work, and your scholarship is sound, and you are offering these qualities as contributions to their department, then you will be a strong candidate, unless those doing the search are anti-feminist in any case. Being straight up about your feminist scholarship and pedagogy may, in fact, make you a more attractive candidate, and have your statement and work stand out in a large pool of applicants. Bottom line: You would not be happy or successful in a hostile environment in the long run, as you engage in all the hard work you do toward tenure, so you wouldn’t want that anyway, would you?
ANSWER 2
I guess the best answer is, “It depends.” One of the things we must each do is get clarity on our own goals. I know that I made a decision when I went to graduate school that, even if it meant not getting tenure, I would not do any work that did not meet my own standards. However, not everyone is in a position to take that sort of stance.
I also think it is important to look at what you hope to do and ask yourself where it might be published. Some departments only recognize certain journals as acceptable places to publish. I have been fortunate in that my department was willing to listen to my arguments about where the most appropriate outlets were for my work. I know others that have not been so fortunate, though.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you will need to have external reviewers who can speak to your work, so building a network of other feminist scholars can be very helpful when you come up for tenure. Usually, the candidate for tenure submits some names, and the department also submits some names. The letters for your dossier will come from a mixture of these two. With that in mind, it is important that you achieve some level of visibility in the feminist community so that people will be willing to review your work.
Finally, I think things are better today than in the past. There are a number of departments now that actively seek feminist scholars. I know that my own department is very open to hiring people who do feminist work. You should make yourself familiar with the tone of the departments where you apply. Look at the vitae of faculty there, especially those who have been granted tenure. Personally, I would not want to work some place where my work was not valued.
ANSWER 3
It is in a candidate's best interest to divulge their approach to scholarship. At the same time, most departments, particularly in this difficult economic market, are looking for the most adaptable job candidate. Therefore, it can be helpful to frame teaching and research interests within the larger needs of the department – particularly in the cover letter. Many departments need assistance filling teaching spots for intro, methods, and theory classes. It is always helpful to mention your broad skill set during an interview. In terms of scholarship, it is important to describe, in detail, your dissertation and plan for future research. Withholding information at an interview will make the interview awkward, and the faculty likely already know a lot about you from reference letters. It is also appropriate to discuss with the chair the requirements for tenure. Feel free to ask specific questions about what counts for tenure in terms of numbers and type of scholarship outlet (do book chapters count, are publications weighted by prestige). It is always useful to examine the records of tenured professors to get a good sense of what a tenuarable record looks like as there can be substantial variation across universities. As a feminist scholar, you can be successful in any type of department (just look around the DWC for some fantastic examples). It is most important to find a department that fits your needs and larger research plan.