Do you think it’s hard being a mother and an academic?

[inexcessive]

This might seem the most obvious question in the world. But what do people think? For me, being a mother and not especially successful academic is fine. But to be a mum and a successful academic seems impossible. I just can’t get enough mental headspace to really focus and concentrate, or actual time. I thought i would find that easier as they got older and i would be able to ramp up work but have found they need me more, in different ways. What is other people’s experience?

[medb22]

Mine are young (both under four), and I have to say I’ve really struggled this last year in return from my second maternity leave. I’ve been screwed with an excessive workload, which obviously hasn’t helped, but even just the level of mental energy required to pull off teaching (and associated marking and admin etc) has been really hard. I feel like everyone is getting a raw deal, tbh - my students, my kids, myself. I’ve done next to no research, and there’s no chance that I could publish at anywhere near the level required to be considered “successful”. This past year has really made me reevaluate things, tbh.

[AlwaysColdHands]

I think being a “successful” academic as a mother is really tough. Perhaps impossible unless you are prepared to rarely see your family.

I’m in an institution where I’m not under massive publication pressure, it’s more teaching and admin workload that can get relentless, and so to contribute to my research portfolio (for the good of my CV) I would have to start working every evening. Can’t do weekends as I am the childcare and I also want to, you know, spend time with my children! However, in the evening, by the time I’ve got children in bed and done all the house shit, it’s about 9pm and I have to go to bed myself as baby is a dire sleeper.

I managed a bit of research progress after first maternity (when my oldest was 3/4) by working every early morning for a few hours before she got up (4.30/5am) but now I’m usually hanging over the edge of the cot trying to get baby back to sleep at that time.

I’m also part-time, which I’m happy with from the perspective of family, but feel seriously limited with opportunities because of this. And, of course, I’m always checking e-mails on my days “off”.

Doing quality, sustained writing takes not just physical time, but a clear run of headspace and I don’t see when I’ll get any of that in the near future. The novel Night Waking, by Sarah Moss, really resonated with me a few years ago, about an academic trying to write and parent. Also, I think this article in the Guardian not long ago is really pertinent: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/woman-greatest-enemy-lack-of-time-themselves

For me, much of work since I became a mother has been about keeping my head down, treading water, and just coping, getting the fire-fighting done so that there are no complaints or fingers pointed. But, I’m now probably at a point where I’ve almost made myself a bit too invisible and so I really need to think about progression plans over the next few years. I’ve got a few ideas about fairly small manageable things I can try to achieve, but they’re nothing stellar, just enough to satisfy demands at appraisal (if I ever have one).

Seriously, no answers but massive solidarity
✊🏼

(P.s. I started writing this post on Thursday night, and it’s taken me this long to complete it incrementally. ‘Nuff said!)

[geekaMaxima]

It's not impossible to be a successful academic and spend lots of time with your children, but it's difficult and involves a great deal of luck.

I went from SL to reader to professor in the same period I had my 2 DC - the youngest was a toddler when I was promoted to prof in a research-intensive institution. I don't say it as a stealth boast, but I would have found it really helpful a few years ago if someone had laid out what helped the most to manage family vs. academia, so here goes.

Some parts of what helped came down to good decisions. First is that my DP is a decent human being, which is why I had kids with him, so we share the parenting load 50:50. He's an academic too, but neither career is more important, and we split the load of drop offs, looking after sick children, cooking, laundry, etc. equally so we each get to do our research, attend conferences, etc. I took 6 months of maternity leave each time - we could have afforded the year but I'm glad I didn't take it, because I could feel my brain atrophying after 3-4 months - and found a great childminder I was happy to leave the DC with. Another decision we made early on was to only work in institutions that had sabbaticals - when looking to move jobs, I avoided anywhere that didn't have a clear sabbatical policy, and I had a year's sabbatical during my SL-prof years that definitely helped productivity. The last thing is that I became very, very focused on managing my work hours, which are a solid slog with little break - I work from home as much as possible to avoid interruptions, and I have pretty much stopped socialising on the days I'm in the office (no more coffees, chats with colleagues, long lunches, etc.). I also take a "good enough" approach to teaching and admin, and focus my real efforts on research. The payback is that I hardly ever work on evenings and weekends because those times are for the family.

But other things that helped a lot came down to good luck. I was awarded a big fellowship-type grant that gave me extra research time - without that, I would still be on reader. My department is actually great, with a functional workload model that really tries to ensure nobody gets overloaded, and it makes it easier to say no to extras. I think it's also a stroke of luck that my research area allows me to work from home a lot because that's where I'm most productive - I'm in STEM and have a lab, but spend most of my time analysing data and writing papers. And finally, it also helped that I'm really not cut out to be a SAHM - I was raring to get back to work after 6 month maternity leave, would have gone mad staying at home full-time with preschoolers, and really enjoy (most of!) the time I spend around my DC as a result.

Everyone's setup is different, of course, and it's been exhausting at times, but that's what worked for me 🤷‍♀️

[bigkidsdidit]

I, also, find it ok. I see my career as 35 years and if I had three unproductive ones - as I did - in the bigger scheme that’s ok. I have two dc, now at primary, and they Re quite close in age which helped.

I agree re headspace which is why I work early every morning. I do two hours of deep work on papers / grants / data analysis in the morning. This works because I have head space, I’m not worrying about the kids (dh does mornings) and I don’t look at my emails first.

I consider academia much easier for mothers than medicine, or nursing, or teaching, or any job with 0 flexibility.

[bigkidsdidit]

I also completely agree with the points above - I take a ‘good enough’ approach to teaching and admin and work flat out the hours I’m in. Then I go home early.

[Reginabambina]

Universities seem to be one of the most unfriendly environments for mothers (or on the very rare occasion it happens, fathers who are main carers) these days. I don’t know many women who have children and a careeer in academia but they all seem to have been sidelined for pretty much everything since having children. It’s one of the few things in life that doesn’t really affect me yet well and truly pisses me off. It was one of the reasons I decided against postgrad study.

[bigkidsdidit]

I’ve worked in four universities and don’t recognise that. There is ingrained sexism, I’m not denying that. But I know many, many powerful female academics with children.

[Glendora]

You see, the problem with this question is the inherent assumption that mothers are the primary carers for children. And until we get rid of that assumption, then yes - being a working mother of any type will be hard.

I don't think it's any harder to be a mother and an academic than a mother with any other type of career. In fact, it's probably a lot easier than being a teacher or GP or lawyer or etc etc. How hard it is will depend on what domestic arrangements you have. DH is primary carer for our kids, so I don't think I have it any harder than any father of young children. My success (or lack thereof) is more down to my own motivation, time management, etc (or lack thereof).

I actually think academia is a pretty decent career for a working parent. I have a lot of flexibility in my working hours (beyond lectures and meetings, I can dictate my own hours and workplace) and also quite a lot of flexibility in my productivity. So long as I publish a certain amount over a (pretty broad) timeframe, I'm ok (I'm in the humanities, so don't have to deal with running a lab or anything like that). So, I could in theory have months where I do naff all and then a very productive period and that would be fine.

I generally tend to see my children most evenings and mornings. I'm around (working from home) in the holidays. I don't find the university an 'unfriendly environment for mothers' at all. I know many, many women who have children (with a wide range of domestic arrangements) and have careers in academia ranging from those who are just bobbing along to those who are very very successful/ field-leading, etc.

That being said, I wouldn't recommend it to a career to anyone, e.g., thinking about doing a PhD now. But that's because of the scarcity of full-time posts and the utterly shite situation with precarious employment for the first 10+ years of a career. But I'd say that to men and women whether or not they had or were planning to have children.

[historyrocks]

As said above—a lot can depend on luck. Both of my DDs were terrible sleepers. I spent 5 years of utter exhaustion and struggled to keep my research going. I’m sure it would have been I much easier if they’d slept reasonably well. It also depends on how many children you have.

I also had PND after DD2, which morphed into bipolar. That was ten years ago and it’s still ongoing. That’s destroyed my research and career more than anything.

I was treated badly after my first maternity leave. The Dean informed me that being a mother meant I was no longer interested in research and I should move to a teaching-only contract. He also told me that depression is ‘just writer’s block’ and that I should pull myself together. All in front of someone from HR.

[geekaMaxima]

But I know many, many powerful female academics with children.

I don't, not personally at least.

I know many powerful female academics with no children or with one child, but there's a real scarcity at the top of those with 2+ children in my discipline.

[historyrocks]

I also don’t know any other women with two children. They all stopped at one.

[bigkidsdidit]

I wonder if I’ve just been lucky. My head of school, head of dep, mentor, And PhD supervisor all have two children

[bigkidsdidit]

(All are women)

[nachthexe]

Isn’t the CAWKs thread still running in OTBT? I haven’t looked for years but I assumed they were still chatting.
Andrea O’Reilly was running a tri-country research project about mothering in the academe a few years back (out of York in Canada) under the MIRCI/ ARM org. I keep meaning to dig up the outcomes.
Try and find the CAWKs if they are still around though. It was set up for academics with kids (AWKs) to discuss living, working and mothering and the specific issues that arose that did not (often) apply to male peers. It was a very supportive space with much encouragement as to how/ whether to progress an academic career.
The C was for crap, to denote the feelings of failure often internalised by women struggling to maintain life as an academic alongside home life.

[AlwaysColdHands]

Good to hear of some positive stories here.

I certainly agree that in terms of flexibility and autonomy, there can’t be many better jobs to combine with parenting. But, being able to pick your children up at 3pm is of course a different issue to being successful in an academic sense.

Certainly in my near 20 years in academia, the only women I have known to rise up to senior posts (either research or management) have either;

• no children
  
• older children who’ve left home, or,
  
• a partner who takes on the brunt of the domestic/childcare burden.
  

Thanks for the Andrea O’Reilly recommendation 👍🏻

[MedSchoolRat]

Somebody please define what is a "successful" academic. Am pretty sure your definition isn't mine.

It's hard to be a good parent.
Having competing demands makes parenting harder in the moment, but having a satisfying &/or well paid job makes it easier to be a good parent.
Contrary to most posters on this board, I perceive that most academics are happier in their jobs than most people working in most other industries.
And definitely better paid, so more financial security.

So on balance... yes it's tough. But probably easier to "succeed" than other industries with similar salary expectations. If there's a male-female difference, it's because of level of parental involvement that individuals chose, not intrinsic to sex.

[Phphion]

I think the problem with academia is that a lot of the work is not completely finite: you can always be doing more or better. People will have their own definitions of what it means to be successful, and also of what it means to be a good parent.

For me, as with other PPs, a mixture of judgement and plain good luck have allowed me to reach and sustain the level of success I want. Fundamentally, though, I think the thing that most helped me was that I waited until I was already quite successful before having a child, which I realise is no help to the OP.

DP and I agreed that we would go all out for our careers early on (we are both academics) and would only consider a child when we had reached a level where we perceived our reputation and status would allow us some degree of flexibility and protect us from the worst of what we had seen with other, mostly female, academics whose careers were completely derailed by having children when they were post docs or lecurers. It sounds very instrumental, but we sat down with our CVs and said 'we are both Readers now. If we had to really step back for 1, 2, 3 years, where would that leave us against the criteria for becoming a Professor?' And it was very much 'us'. There was no question that this was not going to be a 50/50 thing. It helped that we were both fairly ambivalent about having children and were ok with the idea that it could be harder, or even impossible, to conceive if I was older. Through a lot of planning and some very fortuitous timing, we were both promoted to Professor when DD was a toddler.

It has really helped that we are both academics, so we both have some degree of flexibility, but also we do a lot of picking up the slack for each other in the evenings and at weekends, knowing that at other times the situations will be reversed. We were lucky that DD was an easy baby, we had an excellent, late opening nursery just a few doors from our house and DD's school is at the end of our road and has an after school scheme. We could afford to buy a family house 10 minutes from work so we don't have to factor in hours of commuting. Together these things mean that as long as I focus, I am not working significantly less hours than I did before DD was born.

Like geekaMaxima, I was also really lucky with research grants. I applied for a big grant when I was on maternity leave and getting that and then two others have meant that I have not had any time without research buyout since DD was born nine years ago. Currently, I also have admin buy out and have chosen my admin roles carefully, avoiding as much as possible the ones that are too unpredictable or time-consuming (which I did do earlier). The only u/g teaching I currently do is on a course I designed, which is completely in my area and which I could be 'good enough' at teaching with almost no effort if that is what I chose. This means if I want to I can work from home with no interruptions a lot of the time. It is very unlikely I would have been able (or felt able) to do this if I had had DD earlier in my career.

It isn't easy, and there have certainly been times when I have felt I haven't been spending enough time with DD, but as time has gone on, I have seen that it balances out. I wouldn't have another child though. While it is not unusual amongst senior people in my department to have two children (but not more), while we make it work with one, I don't think we could with more than one.

[bigkidsdidit]

Just to put in the almost exact opposite POV - I had my first the year after my PhD! Lots of fellowships extend allowable time for maternity leave, and I found part time postdoc-ing ok. Went back full time when both started school.

[EhemaligeAkademikerin]

OP, your post really struck a chord with me.

I was a spectacularly high-flying academic, once upon a time. I did a PhD in three years, had it published, was head-hunted and was subsequently 'bought' by a university for my research record and potential, which increased their RAE score enough to mean their funding was secured for several years.

Then I had DC1.

I returned to work on his first birthday, to a hostile (and male-dominated, though this might not be relevant) environment.

It soon became clear that I couldn't be an ok mother and an ok academic. Both 'jobs' demanded more.

I then became pregnant again and resigned.

I used to tell XH that I needed to clone myself to do both things properly, and I just couldn't do it. Whatever I did, someone was losing out. Quite apart from the fact that there aren't enough hours in the day to do the admin and research, the students need someone who is available. They are not much more than children themselves, and are correspondingly demanding. And they deserved my time. But my DC needed it more.

DC are now adults and I am a divorced woman with zero career prospects, no money, and a brain which is excited by anything resembling academic thought.

I wish, so, so, so, so much that I could have done both, but it wasn't possible.

[SarahAndQuack]

Another decision we made early on was to only work in institutions that had sabbatical

May I point out, gently, that this is not a 'decision' open to many academics, and it's not necessarily helpful to present it as such? You're obviously hugely hard working and I don't for a minute imagine you don't deserve your success - but, for many people, you work where you get a job, and it's as simple as that.

I hope I don't sound chippy. I'm not, really.

Anyway. Frankly I find being a mother and a working academic much easier than being a mother and unemployed. I've recently come back as a postdoc and it means I'm no longer grimly trying to write my book while looking after toddler DD. I'm dead proud of the book, though.

I think for me the hardest thing is the uncertainty. I'm no high flier (actually, I don't know why I put myself down, I'm just fine, but not likely to be prof by 40 or whatever). So I am on the late side to be a postdoc (I'm 35). But I know plenty of people my age who're not yet in permanent jobs, and of course we may never get them. I would love to have the luxury of knowing where the money was coming from for a decent period of time. DP got out of university work (she's para-academic but can work in industry) and we're both glad she did. She prefers being at a university, but the uncertainty is just horrible.

[geekaMaxima]

Another decision we made early on was to only work in institutions that had sabbatical

May I point out, gently, that this is not a 'decision' open to many academics, and it's not necessarily helpful to present it as such?

It is a decision, though - even if it's not available to everyone according to their circumstances, it's a relevant consideration when seeking to move jobs.

It meant that when I was looking to leave a not-great department, I actively avoided applying to a nearby institution that would have been ideal in other ways because they didn't offer sabbaticals - I saw no long-term future there without breaks from the hamster wheel of teaching and admin, and it wasn't worth moving for a handful of years because it would have delayed starting my sabbatical clock somewhere else. It also meant my DP turned down a job offer in an institution whose policies suggested they had sabbaticals, but it turned out that they were granted only rarely and only one person (a professor) out of the whole department had been granted one in the previous few years. They were both decisions that meant we valued sabbaticals more than liking a department - we preferred to put up with some short-term pain (depts we didn't like but with a sabbatical on the horizon) rather than move somewhere that was better in the short term but not the long (better departments but no sabbaticals). Other people might arrive at a different decision when presented with that choice, but I was explaining what worked for me.

I know other people who apply a similar consideration to maternity leave, and will only work in places that offer at least 4 months' leave on full pay. I hadn't realised some universities only offer 6 weeks(!) on full pay, but alas it's true.

[SarahAndQuack]

I do take your point.

All I'm getting at is that there must be rather a lot of people who're of childbearing age but are not senior enough to make those kinds of calls, and it is part of what is a problem with academia and motherhood that's perhaps not such a big issue with jobs that don't involve so much short-term contracting into one's late 20s or 30s.

[geekaMaxima]

I expect there are large discipline differences too. In my discipline, there isn't huge shortage of academic posts and we typically recruit to lecturer roles after 3-4 years' postdoc experience in 1-2 labs. We also get people moving from another lecturer post elsewhere to a lecturer post with us, so a sideways move because we're a better fit for whatever reason than their previous institution. The latter group are doing something similar to what I did - moving selectively.

Most of them are late 20s to early 30s and have their first children within a couple of years of arrival! So I suspect they might have been timing their move with starting a family

[SarahAndQuack]

YY, I am sure I'm bringing my discipline-specific perspective into it. I don't know why, but sideways moves seem to be quite rare. It must make a difference.

[bigkidsdidit]

I think the thing is what the comparator should be. If you’re comparing to being at home, or working part time in a shop close to home, of course academia is difficult to juggle. But we are all intelligent driven women educated beyond all reason - our comparator jobs are what? Medicine / surgery, architect, running a charity, barrister. I think academia is easier to manage than all of those, if not easy in itself.