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?

Well, I don't know Libra. One of the things I've found most inspiring about working in academia is that I've worked in several teams of feminists with women who are nice to each other, and generally supportive of other women. It's one of the good things about my job. If they'd all acted like male academics I'd have left long ago.

It doesn't map onto gender at our place either, we have conscientious and helpful men as well as strategic women and vice versa.
I am very bad at saying no at the moment because I feel like I owe most people in the dept bigtime after they have covered so much of my work during mat leaves/sick leaves. I KNOW that the thing I have to do is to start thinking of my research as something that's potentially useful to the group by drawing in funding etc.
Catita - SNI sounds like a particularly sinister set of initials.
Congratulations on your pregnancy, you're due a few weeks after me so we can pace each other a bit with the tasks we want to get done prior to the birth.

DH pointed out that Personnel don't actually officially know I'm pregnant so if this all seems like a bit of a mean way for them to treat a pregnant woman it may not be their fault. HoD knows of course but presumably can't tell them. However I have my MAT B1 now so I can send it in and maybe slow down Das Process if it threatens to run out of control.

welcome to CAWK, Catita and Nopublications

NPY I've been at it longer than you by the sounds of things, but no further along . Maybe we can be publications buddies?

I think the real deadly combination is:

1. being a parent of small kids
2. being a responsible parent who takes on at least half of the caring and household stuff
3. being a responsible, collegiate person at work who recognises someone has to do the housework there too

It doesn't strictly map onto gender, but I think it does on aggregate (as the legislation on indirect discrimination recognises) because the evidence is that women do fulfil (at least the first two of) these roles more than men.

I have conscientious male colleagues too, with young kids in tow. And female colleagues in senior successful roles, some of whom are patently.

I think the REALLY rare beasts are senior, successful research active women who are also good citizens AND have young children. And if they're well known to you lot, could you ask them to step up here to mentor us all?

This 'time spent writing' thing is key I think.
I've just spent an hour of a research day emailing museums to get estimates for prices of photos of items in the their collection so I can apply for a grant towards the cost so I can put them in my book. ie not even ORDERING the damn photos, just doing preliminary work on getting the money to pay for them!
Does anyone else find it terribly easy for research time to get swallowed up in research-related admin? It's kind of the other side of the coin from it getting swallowed up in reading.
Having a chart which records how much actual writing I've done ought to make me less likely to spend dedicated research time on all those other things, and the research admin can at least be fitted into odd moments more easily than the writing itself.

Though to be fair, the first thing they would say is 'get the feck off MN'

In my defence, I do MN while working (one script, reward: one post ), I am multitasking (marking, eating lunch, watching the political crisis on BBC )

so long as you don't spend too much time beautifying refining your chart, Kathy ;)

(tis what I'd do!)

Well no one can tell me to get off Mumsnet because my field is Computer-Mediated Communication.

This is my job.

PhDLife - I was very good re chart - printed out the boxes as a table and then just wrote the numbers down the axes by hand rather than spending ages trying to work out how to do them on Word. And did not start counting the writing time until I had finished.

Oooh, I do like her column and read it occasionally. Could you ask her for some current mentoring support Kathy?

I especially liked this recent extract:

'Most men, I am convinced, however much they share the domestic chores when they are at home, leave them all behind as soon as they shut the front door. I watch Cambridge academics at seminars in the early evening. Suppose the discussion is going really well. You see them calculating if they can stay later than they should -- and quite how apologetic they are going to have to be when they roll up home an hour late. Will flowers be enough to compensate? Or a bottle of wine, or a dinner out? The women don't have a choice; they just leave.'

For you I mean, not us

Though if she were lurking...

Mary Beard posts v. good. What I like about her is that doesn't seem to care too much what people think about her. Didn't she have a huge fight to get a professorship?

Love those Mary Beard posts. I too had a brilliant and supportive supervisor for my Phd who was (is) highly respected and successful and has two (now grown-up) children. She has a massive fan club of ex-phd students. I have never asked her how the trajectory of her career went before and after having kids. Interesting. I do think though that when her kids were young her academic salary seemed to comfortably cover the cost of a full-time nanny. In fact, she was always saying to me, once you've got a FT job you can get a nanny. I suppose I could, but it would cost about £500 a month more than my salary! I think Mary Beard is absolutely right about men having to feel it too. I don't know whether this is really controversial on here but I think it would be preferable for all sorts of reasons if men and women could share parental leave.

I read the biography of Dorothy Hodgkin, the nobel prizewining chemist. All very inspiring except I did notice that when she and her husband were young academics, they could afford a large house in Oxford, a nanny, a cook, a maid and gardener (or some similar combination, a lot of "staff" anyway). (And, off the point of this thread, but relevant in terms of financial ease, they also afforded private education for their 3 children)

It does give you a clue as to how some people are so productive.

I don't want a full time nanny, or even an au pair, I want to be around myself for a fair amount of the time. The women I do know who are really succeeding in academia with young children are less dithery about this than I am - I want to be a super successful academic and an earth mother (with an active social life and community involvement, and to save the planet by green efforts along the way, oh and to keep fit), the successful ones I know do prioritise the work much more than anything else.

Can I join CAWK?

I've basically been blaming myself for my incredibly low productivity recently. Have recently thought of actually jacking in my job completely as I don't feel I'm actually doing it.

Also feel astonishingly jealous of most of my colleagues, who are overwhelmingly young/childless/male or some combination of those. They get to go on real holidays, swan off to conferences all the time (having had the time and energy to organise funding etc in advance), have IDEAS (mine seem to have run out lately), look competent and commanding at meetings. etc.etc.

Need I add that I work in a department which is well known for its FEMINIST studies bias- now that's got to be worth a snigger or two.

I was quite productive on my PhD (on the contemporary crisis of motherhood!!) when had ds1 6 months before starting at and ds2 at the end (he was 4 months old when I handed it in).

It was starting my job that really finished my research career . I took a job a long way from where I live (3 hour commute), in the meantime separarated from husband who threatened me with a massive residence battle if I moved the kids with me near to my job. As a result of this have sunk into depression. (he doesn't seem to have, strangely).

Am applying for jobs nearer where we live but have that 'stinking of death' feeling at interviews...I have a contract for a book (on motherhood, lol) in the pipeline but it's been 2 weeks now since real holidays (i.e. research time!) started and I've done very little.

Submission deadline June 2011, but with my (supposedly p/t but actually of course f/t) job, I don't expect to reach that.

1 article out last year. Not enough eh?

Another terrible irony is that I have half the week 'child free' due to shared custody but I seem to spend it missing the kids, worrying about the future and feeling depressed and angry with myself for underachieving

I do completely agree re. us female academics taking on too much. I have a 0.6 fte contract but I find I'm always agreeing to help people, read their papers over, do refs for students; yesterday agreed to write an introduction for a friend's book on a very general and scary topic which I really shouldn't be doing in MY book research time etc...would a man in my position have done that? no idea.

This thread and the CAWK thread are great ideas, let's keep them going

I do have a slightly horrified feeling that we're all going to be identifiable on this thread

So I'll keep schtum if you will (but feel free to CAT me)

Anyway, welcome all CAWKs. I imagine you're back at your MNing marking now you've done the school run, huh?

lupus if you're in a similar field no doubt I may know you, I'm like the Ancient Mariner usually moaning on about my situation to all and sundry at conferences etc ...

how do I CAT? not done that before...

Fennel: 'I want to be a super successful academic and an earth mother (with an active social life and community involvement, and to save the planet by green efforts along the way, oh and to keep fit)'
Ha! Are you me?! Except I am awful at the keeping fit. Would like to though.

Servelan: welcome! Sounds like you have had a dreadful time. I am not surprised you are feeling depressed, that is a hell of a lot to cope with. Did you have a thread ages ago under another name saying that you were thinking of giving up your job as awful commute from London, or was that somebody else?

I split up with DD's dad at Christmas, so I know exactly what you mean about wasting the childfree time missing them and feeling cross with yourself for not making the most of it. Sometimes when I get the chance to work I just can't face doing anything as it feels like the only break I get from the stress of Life.

BTW, I know from chatting to colleagues that lots of childless people have the feeling that they should jack in their job as they're 'not really up to it'. So maybe it's not just motherhood, but an issue of academic self-esteem?

PS Like lots of you, I also have a book to finish (due in Jan 2010). Have a huge teaching load next semester, so really need to get a decent draft done by the end of the summer.

You are right, Lupusina, this will probably be front pages of the THES next week!

Hi dustbuster!! yes that old thread was me when I was totally cracking up. Things are now on a more even keel though no picnic. (Think that thread was deleted as too identifiable but it looks like from what lupus has said that I may have done it again!! Mumsnet just gives me the urge to spill too much, it's the illusion of total anonymity the internet provides )

(btw Fennel, I so admire your idealism. That has got to be what I would aim for if had the energy. The non-'career' part of being an eco/feminist/socialist whatever ( there's got to be some better term for it) is a) so hard to get into one's life and b) remains totally unrecognised AS the hard hard work it really is...)

I am dreading seeing my teaching load. Head of School knows all about my situation but I have a horrible feeling he can't really get it and is just expecting that at some point I'll 'pull myself together' and sort everything out. If I don't I truly expect to be put down to teaching-only soonish.

As said am on 0.6 fte but I think there is a big issue with p/t women being given a nearly full teaching load as they don't get to do the career-building, planning and leading stuff, just the stuff no one else wants!!

The former dean of our august institution took me aside a few months ago and told me that as a p/t woman I will be doing all the work for less money and going nowhere, pretty unequivocal message that eh??

oh god lupusina I think I have worked out who you are....fancy meeting you here lolol. Must be more careful with the personal info on the net!!! (repeat to self x 1000) will email soon xx

heh heh heh.

I am completely discreet btw. Coffee soon?

Sorry to hear about your family stuff. Sounds like shit.

Wow, nice pep talk from your ex-dean there, Servelan.

Glad to hear things are a bit better since that thread, although it sounds like it has been a tough road.