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Original poster

A support thread for academic mums?

51 replies

Mimile · 08/12/2010 00:01

There was a thread like this a year or so ago... not sure whether it died or moved.
Anyone out there in an academic post, struggling to keep research momentum with mat leave / childcare etc and who is struggling to churn out the 3* publications for the next REF?
There is so little mentoring for young mothers in the work place that something here would be good!

OP posts:

Whipmawhopma · 29/01/2011 09:23

I wish I'd known that was an option, Boffin! (Though I somehow don't think it would have been open to me.)

One thing (one of the many) that drove me completely bananas was that we had to be "visible" in the Department from 8-6 Monday to Friday. Yes, even if it was a so-called "research day". We had a horrible thing on the wall in the dept. office where we had to sign in and out (like those machines in factories). If we had the temerity to sign in or out a minute late/early, it triggered a dressing-down by the HOD. Oh happy days. Hard to believe it was an Arts department.

BoffinMum · 29/01/2011 09:48

That's appalling management, Whipma. And it breaches the EU working directive.

Have posted in t'other thread in off the beaten track - any support gratefully received.

greennblacks · 29/01/2011 17:39

Wow this is depressing reading... Am thinking if switching back to academia as an alternative to corporate hours/lack of any sort of family-friendly atmosphere, but it sounds like I'd be going from one pressure cooker into another..

greennblacks · 29/01/2011 17:41

of switching back... (and obviously the culture isn't the only reason I'm wanting to move!)

BoffinMum · 29/01/2011 19:14

I wouldn't advise it at the moment. It's really struggling since the announcement of the cuts.

hatwoman · 29/01/2011 21:11

oh you poor things...as some of you know I've lurked on the edges of academia for a while (have a few publications, have done some lecturing, been approached about a book) and have tried to take a proper leap into it...applied for jobs but failed, and consequently contemplated a phd...but have pretty much decided not. sounds like it's the right decision.

It makes me mad though listening to your stories...sounds to me like you take a young and brilliant mind, with amazing potential, but that as they age you force them into a position where they have 3 choices (whatever their gender) : have a family, a life with that family and give up on their aspirations; have no family and no life; or have a spouse that does all the family stuff. And inevitably society is still such that those choices favour men (more likely to have the supportive spouse). and (even if it didn't favour men) it still results in the the loss of brilliant minds to research and lecturing - which does no-one any good.

Whipmawhopma · 29/01/2011 21:28

Well said, Hatwoman. Those three choices are, unfortunately, the only ones that were available to me as an academic. There was no sense at all that any kind of balance was possible, never mind desirable.

BoffinMum · 30/01/2011 21:34

The power structure in this society is very much still dominated by a certain kind of man and also a certain kind of childless woman. Sometimes it breaks my heart to think how little progress has been made since the Equal Pay Act.

Faceonlyamothercouldlove · 31/01/2011 21:06

Sadly equal pay was never going to be enough. We would need to change the whole shooting match. I have moved so slowly from a position of self-blame ( ie. " it's my fault this all seems so difficult" ) to realising I was scuppered before I started. I am referring to trying to do it all, have a professional career, a partner, children etc etc. One day I looked around at my colleagues ( in a competitive profession ) and realised I was the only one with young children. I am not an academic but via DH I see that things are not much different there.

It's bad enough trying to juggle admin work, research and teaching without adding children to the wobbly plates!

BoffinMum · 01/02/2011 09:54

So it seems we still have a societal structure that associates work with the idea of the 'serviced male', i.e. being able to get on with it with domestic tasks more or less fully delegated to someone else, preferably a wife or paid housekeeper/nanny.

I think then you'd have to go back to before the Industrial Revolution to find a different model, and that would probably be the cottage industry one, with the whole family being involved in the project that is called work.

networkynot · 04/02/2011 09:06

Hello, I'm an academic. Fledgling, just trying to build up a career with young children. It's a struggle, to get publications out etc and I feel pessimistic about my chances of getting a job after the current funding runs out. This is my second career so I'm a bit older. It's depressing to hear all this. But it seems to me that there ARE women out there loving this job, and managing to do it more flexibly than many corporate jobs? Re: the hours, I totally agree that very many jobs are structured around the notion of full-time always available worker, with no other commitments, and that really works against women. But it seems to me that there is an additional problem with academia in the sense that people feel it almost as a vocation and it's highly competitive. Wouldn't that fuel long hours whatever the underlying structure, patriachal or otherwise? I'm not saying this is good by the way and I guess that the pressures have become even more intense than they were, with looming redundancies etc. I just wonder what your views are on what realistically could be done to reduce the hours? I hope this isn't a bad question, I'm genuinely interested in the answer.

ViolaTricolor · 04/02/2011 09:09

Hatwoman, you summarise the situation all too perfectly.

ViolaTricolor · 04/02/2011 09:21

networkynot I have sent you a PM. I don't have the answer to your question though -- the problem you describe is very real, and I know I fall behind colleagues who work every evening just because I want to have other aspects to my life. I don't even have any DC yet, but that is really a direct consequence of the paranoia, pressure and uncertainty that my career has given me. It's tough to decide to jump out of it though, when I love my work and have put myself through all kinds of trials to get where I am now. It was a career change for me too, though really very early on.

picc · 04/02/2011 10:09

So many bells ringing!
I left research (trained and now work as a teacher), but DH is still an academic.

He really tries to do everything. Helps out loads at home, is very proactive with the 2 DCs....but EVERYTHING has to be "timetabled" in.

And I know that, despite working every evening and a lot of the weekend, he still feels like he could do more.

So, on our bad days, I feel resentful that he doesn't have enough time to spend with the family... and he feels resentful that he's doing "everything" (house, kids, demanding work) and still not acheiving anything.

At the end of the day, you're "competing" the whole time in academia. And there will be lots of people out there with no life/family. It's tough. And I don't know how you all do it.

networkynot · 04/02/2011 12:41

Thanks for the PM! Paranoia and pressure, I get that too. I wish I had made my career change earlier though so that I could have established my career pre-kids. Oh well. Not exactly progressing it staring at Mumsnet I guess!

BoffinMum · 04/02/2011 16:57

Oh but you are, Networky. All sorts of good is done by talking to other professional women on here. It's the first time in history we can all network properly like the chaps have been doing since time immemorial.

NicknameTaken · 04/02/2011 17:09

Aaaaand I've just been told today that I'm being made redundant from my university job. Wot larks.

ViolaTricolor · 04/02/2011 17:13

So sorry, Nickname. That's awful.

BoffinMum · 04/02/2011 18:24

Oh shit Nickname. How can we help??

NicknameTaken · 05/02/2011 10:31

Sorry, didn't mean to burst in so dramatically. I was just in shock. Anyway, it's not immediate, I'm here till May. I might have some questions later on, because I don't think the situation has been very well handled and I'm not sure what to do to about it. Don't want to out myself either.

So ahem, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

qwertymcwerty · 05/02/2011 12:13

Hello all, just marking my place - must dash in a minute to try to cobble together some fictive account of my REF outputs for my meeting with my 'research mentor' next week, while the DCs sleep. I've just returned to academic work after my second maternity leave; how does anyone manage to juggle all of this without their head exploding? It's a mystery.

DP isn't an academic, and struggles to understand why I have to work evenings, weekends, and often can't sleep for fretting about everything I still haven't managed to get done. It strikes me though that it's probably worse if your partner is an academic too.

Nickname, that's shit and terrible - when you feel like it, tell us more (discreetly) and see if we can help.

qwertymcwerty · 05/02/2011 12:19

networkynot - in my more optimistic moments, I feel like the answer is to try to work inside the academic system but refuse to play the game like that. It's the only way things will ever change. Realistically though, I know that that's probably the quickest way to lose my job.

Actually, it sometimes feels like the one thing you're never, ever allowed to say is that this is just a job - an important and interesting one, but a job nonetheless - which you leave at the end of the day to go and get on with the rest of your life.

BoffinMum · 05/02/2011 15:39

I have taken the liberty of starting a Senior Common Room for us here to be able to reflect on both the good and the bad, as I thought it might make a nice space for all sorts of interesting discussions and debates, broadening this out a bit and encouraging more academic people in. I am over there with a pot of coffee and an eights cake if anybody wants some.

Senior Common Room of Requirement

LittleBoPeeps · 06/02/2011 16:57

Could someone PM me the link to the support thread please? Have just returned to work after maternity leave and finding it hard going tbh. Hope to make it over to the Senior Common Room too once dinner is sorted. :)

beanlet · 08/02/2011 21:20

Just back at work after 6 months maternity leave with my first child. I think I'm very lucky that my DH is also an academic (so understands the pressures) AND is on sabbatical this year, until DS is 15 months old in fact. So we are just about treading water with DS in nursery only 2 days a week (next year 3) with us working every other hour god sends.

But I know what else makes a difference: one's institution. I seem to have the very best job in the world, with a sympathetic HoD who is only insisting I teach one module this semester and don't have to come in the rest of the time; then that's me until end of September. Whereas in my previous job. . . actually, I'm not sure I could ever have gone back to it, it was such a killer - 80-hour weeks just surviving my teaching load, forget research. Both of them Russell Group universities too.

So to encourage you, there ARE good academic jobs out there with reasonable work-life balance (50 rather than 80 hours, and a better balance of research and teaching). But you may have to go through hell to get there.

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