Mothering: The Adjunct and the Academy
Tamara over at My Pre-Midlife Crisis is an adjunct professor - has been for a few years now. She describes herself as "a member of the divorce-club, married to my polar opposite, pre-midlife...and feeling the crisis setting in." She and her current husband have apparently just begun to participate with a "pre-adoptive foster parent" program in hope of addressing the difficulties of infertility.
In her recent post Tamara talks about the balancing act she's in making decisions to teach/not to teach, when to teach, how much, and how these decisions weave together (or don't) with other demands on her life and time. Of central concern in working through her decision-making process is her life as a parent. She writes of her recent decision to turn down an offer for teaching a third class: "I said "no" and explained why. I explained that I wanted to spend time with my child. My child. Baby Missing-in-Action. Baby MIA. Baby MIA will need me more than I need the extra money from teaching the second section, and will need the stimulation of a parent more than I need the stimulation of 25 undergrads."
What catches my attention about this post is the wrestling that Tamara is going through to balance the demands of a mother with the demands of an academic life and career development. I know those struggles, even though my own children are grown well into their twenties now ... I'm still a "mom" first in their eyes, but there's little room in the academy for that reality. There's work being done on the topic, and that's good news, but in the meantime, it seems to me that "hard choices" are falling on women in the academy, particularly the increasing number of adjunct staff outside the protections of tenure securities.
technorati tags: Adjunct, ContingentStaff, Academy, Mothering
In her recent post Tamara talks about the balancing act she's in making decisions to teach/not to teach, when to teach, how much, and how these decisions weave together (or don't) with other demands on her life and time. Of central concern in working through her decision-making process is her life as a parent. She writes of her recent decision to turn down an offer for teaching a third class: "I said "no" and explained why. I explained that I wanted to spend time with my child. My child. Baby Missing-in-Action. Baby MIA. Baby MIA will need me more than I need the extra money from teaching the second section, and will need the stimulation of a parent more than I need the stimulation of 25 undergrads."
What catches my attention about this post is the wrestling that Tamara is going through to balance the demands of a mother with the demands of an academic life and career development. I know those struggles, even though my own children are grown well into their twenties now ... I'm still a "mom" first in their eyes, but there's little room in the academy for that reality. There's work being done on the topic, and that's good news, but in the meantime, it seems to me that "hard choices" are falling on women in the academy, particularly the increasing number of adjunct staff outside the protections of tenure securities.
technorati tags: Adjunct, ContingentStaff, Academy, Mothering
posted by Mary Godwin at 1:50 PM
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