Male academics with wives/partners who don't work. Anyone else noticed this?

[Eglantiny]

First, I'll start with an apology
I'm not generalizing to all male academics. I'm sure there are some good ones out there.
And I'm not intending any shade on the women I'm talking about at all.

But I'm getting increasingly frustrated with male academics who have female wives/partners who either don't work, or who work in "non-professional" jobs.

I've noticed a few things about these men.
Firstly, they have high expectations of what an academic career should look like, and/or what's a reasonable set of outputs over a particular period of time.
I think this is simply because they have more time and headspace for actually getting stuff done because they've delegate life admin and responsibility to someone else.

Secondly, they don't give much of a shit about teaching and measure academic success on research alone.
I think this is because teaching relies on soft-skills, organisation, relationships etc. which they don't value or excel at, so assume isn't important.

Thirdly, they surround themselves with other odious men with similar approaches to life and academia.
I think this is partly affinity (we all want to be around people similar to us) but also because these men manufacture time/space to build networks that exclude others - after-work drinks, evening seminars, conference events etc.

Fourthly, they have a strange way of working with women. It's hard to pinpoint exactly but I find they only tend to work with women who are either super-big-time professors or early-career researchers.
I'm not too sure what my theory is for this. Maybe they don't see women as their professional equals. I think they work with big-time professors who can offer them something, and ECRs who they can be in charge of.

Fifthly, this only really applies to the social sciences disciplines but these men don't actually do much empirical research with people. They are good at spouting theory and at running quantitative models, but they do much less human data collection.
I think this is because human data collection relies on soft-skills which they don't have and don't value. They see theorizing and number-crunching as 'proper' academic research. I do also think some of them are quite insecure about being social science academics and try to get close to STEM-type methods.

Has anyone else noticed this ?

There's quite a lot of these men in my Department - RG, social sciences - and I just find them generally tiresome to deal with.

And how vanishingly rare was that? Once or twice a year? I suggest arranging a teaching swap for that session for one of you. But I'm sure you'll come along and tell me how absolutely IMPOSSIBLE that would be in your very unique situation, when literally every other academic seems to be able to manage this quite easily.

You really need to be able to solve some very basic (and infrequent) logistical problems.

It's not impossible, you just arrange with each other that you're not both away at the same time. I am taken aback at the lack of basic problem solving skills on display here.

But couldn't the wives be academic researchers while the husband take part time or flexible teaching or support roles?!

My partner is an academic, though he doesn't fit that description as he loves teaching and spends a lot of time supporting his students.

He does work very long hours in term time, but it's almost entirely flexible and he has a lot more free time than I do as a single mother working part time.

He doesn't do much housework at all though (we don't live together: that would have to change if we did!).

I suspect some of the posters on here are working in wildly different fields to each other - in my field we teach at least four days a week, and some of it is specialised research-led teaching that can only be done by us. So a few days off with a sick child and we've suddenly got to reschedule multiple hours of teaching at a time all our students can make in an already-packed semester. Some friends of mine working in a science field seem to have far less teaching, and only do it in some weeks of the semester (but are going on more field trips etc.)

@HandScreen yes but if you both work in same field only one of one can go to each conference. Ok yes you could go alternate years etc but it means half the opportunities to present your work, network etc.
Fieldwork too is tricky to do at separate times as often you try to do it during the holidays to minimise disruption to teaching schedules. You can’t both disappear for 2 months in the summer so you must also alternate that too, thereby slowing down your rate of output compared to someone who didn’t have those restrictions.

It's difficut for men working their way up, in a way too. DH isn't in academia but in a career where long antisocial hours are expected and there used to be very frequent relocations. If you had children then you could only really compete if there was someone at home to look after them, my career floundered on his frequent relocations. But if you wanted promotion you had to jump through those hoops. The women who were promoted tended to be child free or had a partner at home.
He's no longer in that profession, but men are often their worst enemy. The men at the top were clueless about family life.

Of the many hundreds of academics I know, nobody needs to disappear for 2 months over the summer. That sounds incredibly niche, and not the common academic experience.

@HandScreen
Yes it’s probably not the norm for sure. But that was the experience in the department I was in so if the OP was in a similar field I can totally see where she’s coming from.

It's difficut for men working their way up, in a way too. DH isn't in academia but in a career where long antisocial hours are expected and there used to be very frequent relocations. If you had children then you could only really compete if there was someone at home to look after them, my career floundered on his frequent relocations. But if you wanted promotion you had to jump through those hoops. The women who were promoted tended to be child free or had a partner at home.

@MorvernBlack your post is totally contradictory and demonstrates EXACTLY the problem for women wanting "standard" academic careers.

Your DH was able to work his way up because your career suffered.

There are still vanishingly few men that will take this hit, in the way they expect most women to do so.

Of the many hundreds of academics I know, nobody needs to disappear for 2 months over the summer. That sounds incredibly niche, and not the common academic experience.

Really? It's pretty normal in my field - it's the only time we get any real writing done.

My opinion is that career academics are useless if they can’t teach. This might be my Indian perspective showing through - over there research academics must be good at teaching or they are unemployable no matter how much they’ve published. & student feedback is often used to determine pay.

These people are unemployable in real jobs and so continue to exist in a sector that, with the advent of AI and online learning, is becoming more useless by the day.

I work in IT. Both DH and I have taken career hits equally over the years and now I earn 60-70k depending on bonus and DH earns 60-90k depending on bonus. We are actually financially better off than the 200k+ crowd with housewives due to tax bands and have a lifestyle comparable with much wealthier people as both of us have prioritised flexibility with our work.

These people are unemployable in real jobs and so continue to exist in a sector that, with the advent of AI and online learning, is becoming more useless by the day.

You couldn't be more wrong, but you don't work in UK academia, so go ahead and make assumptions.

You need to disappear for two months to get writing done? Like, leave the family home? All of us do research and writing over the summer. I do it during work hours, and I don't move out of the family home. Are you honestly telling me that's what people in your department do? Because if not, all you're saying is, "during term time, most of an academics' work focus is teaching and admin. During the summer, most of the work focus is on writing." Not sure why that necessitates a SAHP or family help.

yes but if you both work in same field only one of one can go to each conference

DH and I have been to the same conference together on a number of occasions, taking the kids with us. Some of the larger conferences have some chi;dcare, which is great. Otherwise we just attend half the sessions each. No-one wants to go to every session of a big, long conference anyway. Then we added a few days holiday on too. We had some quite fun affordable trips like that when the children were small.

I'm an ECR with a more established academic. We've been together since I was doing a phd and I have generally been busier than him - working while doing phd, now have more than one job to get a salary together/ get enough of a CV to apply for permanent work. As a result he actually probably does more at home.

I agree that one academic salary is rarely enough to live on so I think a male academic with SAHM is becoming less common.

However, I think a big disparity though is when you look at ECRs or even PhDs - many of us women in our thirties have young children. Few of the men do, presumably because they are more able to delay settling down/ having children.

3/4 of the women in my phd cohort finished with a baby, but none of the men did. This makes sense when on average men have a first child three years later.

So I think male academics are more likely to be able to study without childcare duties, travel around doing post-docs, fellowships, conference networking, short term contracts etc, and then start a family when they manage to get the security of permanent work. (obv a generalisation).

@Sizzlysausage

100% agree. Not sure why many female academics act as if no one has had kids before. I think it's difficult to juggle kids early in career, not due to the work load day to day, but because of short term contracts and moving around as I mentioned. But day to day, I think - for a professional full time job - academia allows for a good work/ life balance. But many academics will do far far more voluntarily which is very frustrating.

I do realise the contradiction. Whenever he has whinged about his life I have pointed out that I have facilitated his career. It seemed to be a shock to him the first time I mentioned it 🙄
But my point was more that companies expect people to fulfill roles that aren't compatible with family life and the people making these decisions are generally men, who expect other men to have a partner at home facilitating, men who can't be as flexible are overlooked for promotion.

I've always very much believed that the secret to a perfect life would be both parents continuing their careers with part time hours. But I absolutely can believe that your way has worked out well too. AlthoughI've always found flexibility to be a one way street and very difficult to find careers where the employee has much say in their hours.

There's nothing worse than having a sickness bug take a couple of weeks to make its way through your kids, when you have no one to care for them, employers breathing down your neck, deadlines due, plus you've only been in the job for 2wks due to another relocation. Then one of the kids breaks their leg needing surgery. At that point I crumpled.

Ah but @MorvernBlack any minute now Handscreen will toddle along to put you on the right track that you just need to employ those basic problem solving skills (that she doesn’t see on these threads) to make arrangements with your DH to cover all child care logistics for weeks of illness and a broken leg. Bobs your uncle, problem solved!

It rings very true of my days in pure academia. Don’t forget that many of those men are married to women with similar education who are capable of lending a helping hand from time to time, without any credit or compensation.

Not academia, but yes, I've done a fair amount of report writing/other paperwork for DH in the past. I'm actually far more qualified, but in his case starting work at an earlier age and ditching education was a more lucrative path.
But he does help me in my self employed roles now.

I just don't know how people manage it. Our youngest also has a health problem, which has taken quite a bit of management in the past.

I do think it is a lot down to luck...maybe only have one child and pray they are healthy.
I don't mean to derail the OPs thread, which was specifically about academia.