The Emerging Scholars Blog

Tomorrow, I’m leaving for our Midwest Faculty Conference, featuring John Sommerville as our plenary speaker. (Check out my quick review of his book, The Decline of the Secular University, as well as his latest essay in the Chronicle, “Universities Are Corporatized Because They Are Secularized”.) Since starting these summer faculty conferences a few years ago, we’ve tried to make them times of refreshment – for both faculty and their entire family. Our planning team even coined a new word for these events – confamication:

This event encompasses much more than the word conference can possibly contain, so a new word has been added to the lexicon. “Confamication” captures the fact of it being a stimulating conference, a restful vacation, which can both include and be a delight to the whole family. And it is a welcoming place for singles, couples and children as well.

Unfortunately, not all of academia shares this attitude that the “good life” includes rest, spiritual refreshment, and time with families and children. Lisa Belkin, who writes the Motherlode blog for the New York Times, recently published a heart-breaking letter from a young graduate student who, faced with an unexpected, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, has decided to have an abortion so that she can complete her degree. The decision was far from easy – you can hear her agony in her letter to Belkin. Explicit and implicit pressures from her graduate program were a major factor in her decision. Here’s how she described her sitaution: Read the rest of this entry »

Inside Higher Ed spoke with anthropologists at a “Mothering (in) the Field” panel discussion at the recent American Anthropological Association annual meeting. The topic: how do they conduct their fieldwork and be mothers at the same time? It’s an interesting article, with lots of great quotes.

So, how do you balance your research commitments with your commitments as a mother or father?

Anyone have observations, experience, or additional research to address the question raised by the Does Academe Hinder Parenthood?  The Inside Higher Ed piece begins:

Numerous reports and accounts suggest that balancing parenthood and academic careers can be difficult, particularly for women. Two new studies suggest that, possibly as a result, many female academics may be opting not to have kids. Read the rest of this entry »