Is anyone else an academic who has not produced enough research while having kids and is now in the s***?

[Kathyis6incheshigh]

There are lots of academics on MN, just wondering if there is anyone else in my position.

Am pg with 3rd dc in 5 years. Have had hyperemesis and other problems in all 3 pgs, which on top of 2 maternity leaves means heaps of time off work. In the meantime I have completely lost research momentum and produced sod all apart from a few book reviews. I was not submitted for RAE (though fortunately my dept did very well without me so none of my colleagues are holding it against me personally.)
Every time I come back it takes me all my time to get back up to speed with teaching and admin, get on top of all the changes in my field etc, and I only ever seem to make baby steps towards producing anything before I am sick or pregnant again.
Just had uncomfortable meeting with (supportive) HoD at which she broke news to me that I am about to get a scary letter from Personnel and a process is going to start which will probably include ritual disembowelling/change to a teaching only contract if I don't get something submitted before baby is due. Which would be fine as long as the foetus behaves and sickness holds off - am only just back at work after 2 months off with HG.

Serves me right for having children, doesn't it?

Or maybe they are low fliers and being on the outside, I don't recognise the gradations of success.

OK I'm joining CAWK.

1. Will write for an hour a day
2. Will submit a grant application no matter how daft it is

See you later when I've done my hour

CAWK sounds good (must get off here and finish marking) ....

I love the idea of CAWK as well.

Have to go and do job application and lecture notes now... ...but I should really find time to send off a finished article which was just rejected because the referee hadn't read it properly

Ooooh. The thread reminded me. Managed to not meet my goal so far yet (exam board) but am gonna time myself and do my hour right now!

First year scripts can wait a teeny tiny bit longer...

I stared at the screen for 27mins last night, then wrote one sentence. Not sure if thisd counts...?

have document open now, but lo sleeping in left arm and brain badly on the fritz. really just want to go to bed!

If it's a really, really good sentence

Look, it's a start. I just did 50 mins on my article. It involved more than just writing: I needed to re-read something, think for a bit, and I wrote a paragraph. It is minimal and I do have to rush off and mark. But I feel excellent I have done it at a time when normally I think writing is impossible. It isn't is it? It's about making the time. If I could only be as productive as I am on MN!

But look, one sentence, one paragraph: it is better than bugger all. And do the same tomorrow: it all builds up.

Could I suggest NOT staring at the screen? Lots of writers on writers block etc suggest writing anything is better than nothing. Free-writing is a technique I have used before to fill up my writing time and it really works as a strategy to get you going, especially when you've been stuck for ages.

Julia Cameron suggests it in the Artist's Way and the unpronouncable Hjortshoj in his very helpful book about writing. Write something, anything in your 10/30/60/120 minutes, whatever it is, even if you write 'I don't know what I'm going to write today blah blah kid was sick on me this morning' [he was, actually]

yeah... I get that "write anything" business. prob is what I tend to write in such situations is, erm, MN posts

ok that's it, am officially too tired-stupid to string theoretical sentences together. Am going to bed early, see if I can function better tomorrow...

This thread makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, because most women on it seem to have full time jobs and several small children, or very young children. And yet everyone's castigating themselves for not getting down to more productive work, or not working harder. But really, I suspect that most women with several small children and also a paid job, part time or full time, are doing a lot in life. Should we really be trying to motivate ourselves to do even more? Instead of saying, This Is Enough.

I work hard, I am good at my job, everyone who works with me knows that. That should be enough.

And if it isn't, perhaps it's academic expectations which are the problem, not our lack of motivation or energy to do overtime.

And there in a nutshell you see why I am not progressing at speed up the career ladder. But I have been prancing round the garden and paddling pool today with 6 small children instead.

Fennel, you're right. I am approaching my situation on two fronts.

1. I am doing my best to meet this blasted target and trying to get more writing done
2. I am thinking more and more about how unreasonable the whole bloody situation is and what should be done to change it.

I think maybe CAWK (and we are using the word 'crap' ironically - we KNOW we are not crap, it's just we also know we're viewed as such by certain people) could come up with a wishlist of what we would like to be different.

Here's some to be going on with:

1. The biggest problem is clearly for people who haven't yet got jobs and the only way they will get one is if they do research in their spare time. So for them, we need

a. some kind of postdoc for women who have had career breaks, to enable them to refresh their knowledge and build up a research profile. (I think I heard that a few of these have been introduced in the sciences.) b. or alternatively, people recruiting could simply take into account the fact that looking after babies interferes with research and instead of going 'oh she hasn't been research active since 2004' they could go 'Oh look, she was research active up until her baby was born straight after her PhD, that's fine.'

1. Realism about the impact pregnancy, maternity leave and looking after young children have on your ability to plan ahead across maternity leaves, work more than normal hours, travel to international conferences etc, and hence realistically adjusted targets for RAE

1. No expectation that you will work during maternity leave applying for grants, conferences etc - or alternatively, money to pay for childcare while you do

1. Extra study leave after every maternity leave to help you catch up

anyone want to help develop a CAWK agenda?

I don't know if any of you have come across a book "Why so slow?" by Virginia Valian. She analyses data regarding the differential career paths of men and women and specifically considers academia. her summary conclusion is that "the data demonstrate that women in academia are substantially underrewarded" NB this considers more than just pay. Her analysis looks to identify the causes as well as the outcomes - it's an easy and interesting read.

I'm not an academic - but she also examines the position of women in the professions which is more relevant to me.

Dustbuster, I got the book you recommended and read it at the weekend (while supervising children in paddling pool, so I was not using it as a procrastination device when I should have been doing real work.) Thanks very much for this, there was some good stuff in it. I did his questionnaires and thought a bit about why I have not got enough done - I definitely fall into the category of being too perfectionist (I don't have trouble starting to write, I have all these nearly-finished papers I haven't submitted) but the other thing that really rang true was the danger of thinking you have to have a big block of time to write in. So I am definitely going to go for the 'hour a day' method.

Was feeling really up for it this morning but have just been told by HoD that if I can't go for the BA Small Grant (which I had done loads of work on) I have got to go for the AHRC Research Networking - which will be completely from scratch, so it seems like an insurmountable thing to do in a month. (Anyone here ever applied for one of these by any chance?)

I do think the RAE/REF by default is a form of indirect discrimination for what it's worth.

I do remember when the rules for the last RAE were announced and various people were saying 'It's ok, it will be taking maternity leave into account.'
It did but of course in the most minimal way possible - as a result of my 2 maternity leaves and 3 related periods of sick leave I would have been let off producing one out of the 4 articles I would have needed to publish to be part of our submission.
I don't mind being overtaken by people because I've chosen to take time out and they haven't, but I do very much mind it affecting my job security.

Who honestly has the energy to sit down when their children are finally asleep and grapple with an article/chapter/research proposal?

I am in a department which is full of high flying ambitious women and I honestly don't know how they do it (although one, with three children sets her alarm at 5 every morning in order to do research).

I'm back to this thread - lots of interesting discussion since I was last here. Can I join CAWK? I've got to submit a co-authored article before I go on ML in July and I haven't even done the background reading! And I'm still putting off all the blasted marking by coming on MN.

Lionheart: I find it completely impossible to work evenings - by the time ds is in bed and dh and I have cooked and eaten some supper, it is usually 8.30 and I'm asleep on the sofa by 9.30-10pm. As for weekends, I am bullish about not doing any work apart from maybe reading something if ds is watching TV or having a nap, because the weekend is my family time.

At my last staff review my reviewer passed on some anonymous 'constructive criticism' from a colleague who said I tended to be a little snappy and sharp. My reply was that there simply isn't time in my day to stand around making pleasant conversation by the photocopier!

I am so sympathetic.

I used to work in a university (as a senior RA, I never ever wanted to be a lecturer).
After I became a mother, I couldn't keep the hours; well, bluntly speaking, I wasn't paid enough to pay for as much childcare as needed for the hours they wanted (a 40% contract in our institution translates to at least 24 hrs/week). And the pressure to produce work while off on maternity leave, no allowance at all there, not in practice, anyway.

And I was only an RA, not a lecturer expected to pull in £150k of grants each year and supervise 2-4 PhD students on top of teaching and my own research output.

So now I am overqualified and jobless, and I am realising that I tend to be useless at ordinary jobs like shelf-stacking or sandwich making (even as a volunteer ).

My step-sister is a lecturer and works crazy hours, but fortunately her husband is a SAHD to their only child.

Kathy I think I just fell in love with your 14:48:13 post

I'd say more about your agenda but dd is over there desperately trying to find nipples on dh's collarbone. And at 9:30pm I was just starting my research "hour"

Kathy - glad the book was helpful. Sounds like a lot of people here are already using some of his techniques e.g. working a hour a day, free writing to get started etc. (I do find this very useful, I think part of the 'staring at the screen' problem is a result of feeling like you have to write something intelligent and publishable. But in fact writing anything at all is a start, and it is often better than you think.) What a bummer about the AHRC application - that seems ludicrous.

I do agree with Fennel about being Good Enough, but certainly here in this institution there is rapidly increasing pressure for us to up our game, with capability proceedings being threatened if this doesn't happen. So instead of just having 4 RAE publications, they have to be in leading journals etc. The expectations are crazy, our Head of School thinks that you 'have' to work 60-70 hours a week to do the job. (Nonsense, obviously.)

I was chatting to a couple of (male) colleagues yesterday, and we all agreed that the best thing you can do is try to get published in the most prestigious journals in your field. Even one article in a 'top' journal can be a charm in persuading your colleagues that you are a research star. It's easy to think that your work isn't up to scratch, but IME the response can be very encouraging, and the readers' reports can help you get a really good article out of it.

OMG, loving this thread but finding it depressing at the same time! I got my Phd at the beginning of last year, had DD straight after, and then started work again when she was six weeks old (at home thank God) in a non-academic job, just to pay the bills, as had no maternity pay. In December I went physically back to work two days a week for which I pay for three days childcare, and started applying for academic jobs, and got a 2 year postdoc starting in Sept. So since about March I've finally had time to start writing for publication. But I'm still doing the non-academic job (to pay for childcare essentially) so have just one day a week to write. As a result, it's going very slowly and I feel constantly crap about myself, because it's such a long time since my PHd and I haven't published, and I don't know how long it will take or if I will be good enough ... and to top it all I fully intend to get pregnant again as soon as possible and I don't know really how that's going to go with the Postdoc etc, and whether it will be OK within a fixed term contract.

I want this career so much but it's hard isn't it? I'm so relieved to find you lot here (even though I think you're mostly further along in your career than me) discussing this as I have no-one in RL to chat to about this type of thing who understands from experience.

Oh goodness, what a rant - so happy to have got that off my chest though. I promise to be more concise in any future posts!

But can I ask a quick question first? How long does it normally take people to produce an article for publication? And does everyone find it really daunting and a bit of a struggle to begin with?

Another one who wants to join CAWK.

I only have one objective:

1. Get off Mumsnet, stop procrastinating and write the bloody book.

I have a contract. I have a deadline for 1 January.
In theory that gives me MONTHS to write the book. In practice, I have from the end of exam boards to the beginning of teaching at the end of September.
This excludes the weeks of the school summer holidays that I have negotiated with DH that I am covering.

My main recommendation for all members of CAWK who wish to get on is to think like a male academic.
Sweeping statement: in my opinion, women are far more likely to agree to take on extra admin, to respond to student queries quickly, to agree to talk to students who have just stopped by.
The male academics in my department either say 'no' or have developed selective deafness and don't even hear or acknowldedge the request.

Another sweeping statement. After spending the morning reading through other people's research proposals for a funding council panel - male academic reviewers can be much more cutting about other people's research. Women try to find SOMETHING nice to say.

Libra

Aren't they supposed to be anonymous? How can you tell?

Oh it's the way the women use little hearts to dot their i's.

No, I am on one of the panels. I get to see precisely who reviewed what. The women really write in a different way. More 'What a nice idea, but I am afraid not too convincing. The men write 'this is crap'. (Sweeping statement, sweeping statement, but there is definitely a difference.)

Hello ladies:

Could I also join you? I have a 15 month old DS and am 4 months pg with no. 2. I work in a university in Mexico, which has its own nasty version of the RAE called the SNI (which I am being assessed for this year: it's individual not collective grr...) I get 12 weeks maternity leave and so far after 6 years toil there is no sign of being allowed even a term's research leave .

I haven't read totally in detail all the thread (sorry...) but am attracted to the idea od a support thread.

I before DD (for 'tis a girl) arrives at the end of October I need to:

1. Finish the bloody book I promised to write before DS was born.
2. Get my archive database up and running and working without my 24/7 imput.

Am in a real pickle at the minute as my childminder has to go for a hysterectomy on 25 June and will be out of action for 2-3 months. Also I am in the UK at a conference in those weeks in June and so will have to come back to no childcare whatever. I am currently putting DS on waiting lists for nurseries, but it's not being a successful hunt so far.

As for hekpful hints:

1. My supervisor always told me that 2 hours a day should be your aim. This I managed when it was just me, but post-DS I too get into the trap of doing the admin stuff and forgetting about the research.

I am trying to manage an hour a day. No much, but it keeps me ticking over.

1. "Just Say No" (á la Grange Hill ). Difficult but true. No to all that will not help you with your research (ie non obligatory admin/looking after student well-fare stuff). There are lots of men/women with no children or men with lovely wives who have chosen to SAH to do this. They have more time than you. Stop volunteering (this is the hardest thing for me. I have a volunteering bug).

Apologies for the long post. Hello to everyone.