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?

BTW servalan

I discussed the pt option with said dean and was told not to with exactly those words. I think it needs pursuing because You. Are. Being. Exploited. And. Discriminated. Against...

yep I'm in Wednesday/Thursday next week if you're around!! (should probably do this on email hehe)

yes agree. There's another, older and childless, p/t woman in our dept (p/t because of illness) who feels exactly the same and we have considered action but surely if you do that that's basically the end of you in the dept as you'll have alienated everyone? (even more than being an Annoying Woman Staff Member With Inconvenient Demands)

Ps if you do email me on the gmail account, no space between names. Or you can just use the work one!

Confirm, and I'll tell you all about my latest campaign on parents at work

I have namechanged here and there. I know no-one is interested in my personal life and I'm not interested in stalking anyone else, but I do think I often reveal too much on here and people give me knowing comments sometimes at work!

Welcome to CAWK, Servalan
One thing that strikes me with regard to a lot of people on this thread, me definitely and probably you as well, is the way practical problems get tangled up with emotional or psychological issues like feeling inadequate, so that you end up without the confidence you need to overcome the practical problems, or the practical problems knock you back just when you're starting to get on top of the psychological ones. Does that make sense?

Dustbuster - don't think MB had a fight over her professorship, might you be thinking of Gillian Evans in the theology dept, who IIRC had a big sex discrimination case because she had not been promoted despite lots of books etc? However I was not in touch with anyone much in her faculty at the time when she got it and have never been much in the thick of academic politics anyway, so there could well have been something I missed.
Re MB not caring what people think, she was always renowned for her relaxed sartorial style, which meant wearing holey leggings and baggy t-shirts all the time, the reason being I think that she had so much to do she certainly wasn't going to waste time on grooming. Anyway, she appeared a few months ago in a list of the 30 most inpirational women.... in Vogue of all places Yay!

Fennel, LOL @ Dorothy Hodgkin's staff!
I said to dh the other day 'I wish we had a nanny' and he said 'But it would wipe out your salary.' I should, of course, have said, 'Well why don't you pay it out of yours and I'll support the family on mine?'

Servalan - sorry, have just realised it sounds like I'm making out your situation is mainly psychological - I didn't mean that at all, just that it is definitely NOT the case that you are not up to it, and you mustn't question your own ability when it is clearly the situation that is at fault.

No I get what you are saying absolutely, Kathy. The practical problems absolutely feed into the psychological ones and vice versa too.

On reflection it is indeed a sad fact that I end up blaming myself entirely for my work difficulties when, on more rational reflection, the problems are clearly structural as well as personal.

re. your dh and the nanny's salary- such a common misperception that the mother's salary must cover the nanny's, isn't it? Someone the other day told me it wasn't worth her going back to work unless childcare costs could comfortably come out of her p/t salary- it was as if the baby had nothing to do with her dh at all...

Sorry but I have not read the whole thread but I am also an academic (in the loosest sense at the moment ). My career appears to have taken a nosedive since having DD and DS, so much so that I am thinking of jacking it in and doing something else I work with men whose wives stayed at home, women who have no kids or women who were SAHM. Sympathy for my situation is non-existent.

Because I am in a new institution all research activities have to be done in your spare time... haha... my boss even said to me you should finish your paper whilst you have spare time on your maternity leave. Eh!!??

When I wasn't a mum, I used to spend all most of my "free" time researching and working. My contracted hours I spent giving classes and doing administrative stuff. Budgeting in particular is the way we spend our non-teaching weeks here.

Now, I am trying to do everything in my contracted hours and, what a surprise , there isn't enough time in the day. This seems to me to suggest something, ie that an academic's job is not actually do-able unless you can work weekends/evenings etc. I think I could manage with the teaching and the researching, it's all the other stuff that gets in the way.

I'm thinking about trying a new tactic:: not going into the office once classes are over one day a week and working from home with no distractions. I don't know if this is possible for you over in the UK, but at least here no control of actual bum-in-seat is made. It's more a case of you doing your work. But yes, I'm not a scientist. I can see that this won't work for those of you in labs

Oh and I won't know who any of you are even if you tell me what discipline you are in. I've been away from the UK too long

Kathy - not sure if its been said here or if it unique to the uni i work out but one of my colleagues has applied for a grant to pay for someone to do some of her research whilst she's on maternity leave, its a win win one of our post-docs is getting a 3 month extension and my colleague is getting research done in her absence. Any chance of tapping something similar? i can ask her what it is if you want. Also it would count as grant income so win win win for you.

Katz that's really interesting, I've never thought of that. Yes please, any more info would be fab, thanks.

i have emailed her for info - hopefully she hasn't gone on mat leave yet!

Thanks Katz.
Even if it isn't something I can apply for, it might be useful to someone else on here.

will report back once i know, i'm out of the office at a meeting tomorrow so will check back on friday unless i get an email sooner.

By the way, could I just say to all the other people who posted on this thread, and perhaps got ignored a bit because we moved on too quickly or responded to someone else and missed your post, please don't disappear! I fully mean to go back through the thread (at some point when the admin is quieter) and respond.

I think it's really important those of us who are more establised (if still CAWKs! ) and in continuing posts etc should not pull the ladder up etc... So am happy to pass on my views, support etc where I can.

And on the question of Mleave and Rleave
: you need to check you mat leave regs. If it says something about (and it should) that mat leave counts as continuous service then you ought to be able to apply for research leave after the usual cycle if it exists but including your ML in that time.

Problem is we lose the fight don't we? And depend on the nonsense of collegiality, which sometimes evaporates when it comes to actual details like this.

when I say 'lose the fight' I mean as in energy for it...

Best not trash any named individuals, hey?

[nervous laugh and coming out in cold sweat emoticon]

very slight crossover Penth - I submitted my PhD in 2000 so was busy writing up in your first year. I do a different subject these days (though related to my PhD) so we are unlikely to cross paths at conferences.

I'm going to ask MN Towers for a bit of selective post-deleting - don't want to lose the whole thread but there are a few indiscretions.

Nothing wrong with having different opinions on the same individuals. Senior woman academics have to be strong characters and some have had to behave in a certain way to survive so many end up quite marmitey (ie you either love them or hate them).

Yes, of course. Shall I ask them to delete my post above? Sorry. Late night brain-drain...

I too have moved away from the subject... Funny that!

True about senior women academics - like in many competitive professions, I suppose. I think particular departments/universities (for obvious reasons, of course) demand particularly strong characters too.

Some departments (and subjects?) are particularly competitive and bitchy, of course
My current subject is much nicer and the culture of teamwork is one of the things I love about my dept - I don't think I'd have had that had I stayed in the other subject.
Our seminars are unbelievably kind compared with the ones I remember at a certain place where people would be raising eyebrows if a speaker had an accent out of place on a handout.

I can only agree with you. I'm amazed at the difference in climate between my current dept. and That Place.

And my current dept. - for all its good naturedness and family-friendliness - is actually more productive than where we were.

All that pressure and back-stabbing and scrutiny and stay-late culture actually doesn't make for more research productive staff, most of the time. Just unhappy ones.

I remember those seminars well. Happy Days.

nopubsyet

I note no-one has dared answer your question about how long publications take!

I imagine that's because it's pretty revealing to let people know how long it does take if you're crap only competent!

CAWK: competent academics with kids

So, I think I would like to work up to the following rate, which would be probably the very minimum expectation the most research active profs would have of people like me... I have not come close to this rate over my depressingly long and unproductive career, except in the last couple of years when I benefited a bit from co-authorships and collaboration (which helps but doesn't bring the kudos)

...Here's my ideal rule of thumb while having 3 kids and fulltime job with lots of admin/management stuff

1 substantial research bid per year (but not nec PI)
1 smaller grant application per year
3 papers on go at all times - one beginning/drafting, one completing, one in submission/under review/being revised

That would work out at one paper for each six months. And one small and one larger proposal in each six month period also.

If I were actually working like this and things were getting accepted, I'd be very happy. I'm probably halfway there, but am not beating myself up as research productivity has increased dramatically in last 4 years (since achieving PI on major grant), I have had 2 babies in 5 years (as well as older kid), am still just 1 year back from mat leave with VERY full load and lots of citizenship.

So, in reality, this year I have drafted and redrafted one article - the one I'm hoping to resubmit end June; published two short book reviews; submitted one encyclopaedia entry and have two more to complete in (ahem) two weeks ; overseen one PhD funding proposal; and am co-I on a large project funding proposal that has been bubbling under for a year but needs submitting this summer.

Actually that sounds pretty productive for me - if I can just focus more on one or two single authored pieces a year, my life would be easier. That is, of course, the stuff I find hardest, hence distracting myself with nice, shiny, easy, admin stuff...