Colleen S. Conley and Devin C. Carey
ACHIEVING A work–life balance is particularly challenging for women; mothers spend substantially more time than fathers engaged in caregiving, even when accounting for hours of paid employment (Bond et al. 2003; Hochschild and Machung 2003; O’Laughlin and Bischoff 2005). Because academic work is so pervasive, boundless, and demanding, often to the exclusion or detriment of family responsibilities, the challenges of the work–life balance are particularly salient for academic women (Drago and Williams 2000; American Association of University Professors [AAUP] 2001; Wolf-Wendel and Ward 2006). Despite increased rates of earning doctoral degrees, women are drastically underrepresented in tenured and administrative positions (Ottinger and Sikula 1993; AAUP 2001; Mason and Goulden 2002; Wilson 2004b). Among women who attain academic positions, more than half of those with children consider leaving academia, and turnover—including tenure denial—is higher among women, in particular those with children (McElrath 1992; Brown and Woodbury 1995; Mason and Goulden 2002; Yoest and Rhoads 2002). This problem is likely two directional: academic women are less likely to have children in the first place, even though they might want to, and those who do have children are less likely to survive in such a demanding career (Mason and Goulden 2002). Many have connected these problems to insufficient family-leave policies, such that academic women do not receive adequate resources—namely, paid, protected time—for establishing a manageable balance between work and family responsibilities (Finkel and Olswang 1995; Drago and Williams 2000; AAUP 2001; Comer and Stites-Doe 2006).
In response, some academic institutions have worked to develop family-friendly policies and benefits that promote the work–life balance for faculty. Although a wide variety of family-friendly policies and practices affects women in academia, this chapter focuses specifically on parental leave, which we define as a designated release from work time and obligations to adjust to a newly born, adopted, or fostered child. Furthermore, although family leave and work–life balance are important for women at all stages of an academic career, here we focus on policies and practices for faculty members. Finally, we concentrate on higher-education institutions in the United States, where family-leave policies are in particular need of improvement.
Academic institutions’ parental-leave policies vary widely, and actual practices often deviate from official policies. Policies at U.S. institutions range from no paid leave to two academic terms at full pay, which if timed just so within a nine-month appointment can yield nine months or more “off.” Without clear, consistent, mandated policies, women are often left to work out their individual leave situations with chairs and deans, which can bring about either supportive flexibility or an inequitable burden. Although some of their professional peers in other fields enjoy months of uninterrupted time to bond with a new child and adjust to the demands of parenthood, many academic women who are “on leave” are in fact still “on the clock”—teaching classes, mentoring students, and scrambling to meet scholarly deadlines and tenure expectations—while they juggle the constant responsibilities of nurturing a newborn. Even when leaves are available, many women fear stigma and career repercussions and thus avoid taking full advantage of leave policies by shortening their allowed leave, having summer babies, or delaying mothering until after tenure, which brings health and infertility risks (Ward and Wolf-Wendel 2004). Drawing on broad samples from academic institutions ranging from small teaching-oriented colleges to large research-oriented universities, this chapter explores the issues academic mothers face in negotiating parental leave by interweaving (1) a multidisciplinary body of theory and research on parental-leave policies and practices as well as their effects on academic women and institutions; and (2) personal accounts of navigating parental leave, which we gathered from more than fifty interviews and surveys of academic mothers and administrators. This synthesis, in turn, has generated recommendations for supportive policies that nurture the work–life balance to the benefit of both faculty and their institutions.
ON THE LINE AND OFF THE RECORD: PROBLEMS WITH FORMAL AND INFORMAL POLICIES
The United States lags far behind the majority of the developed world in paid family leave. Out of 173 countries studied by Jody Heymann, Alison Earle, and Jeffrey Hayes (2005), the majority provided fourteen weeks or more of paid family leave; the United States was one of only four countries that had no federally funded paid family leave. On the other end of the spectrum, Swedish parental leave includes up to sixty-eight weeks paid and an additional eighteen weeks unpaid for each child (Chronholm, Haas, and Hwang 2007). The U.S. Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), which provides up to twelve weeks unpaid leave per year, is inadequate as parental leave because it is unpaid, is not offered to all employees at all institutions, and does not cover nonbirth parents in domestic partnerships. Furthermore, it covers such a wide range of circumstances that can arise in the same year, such as health issues or elderly care, that women who have to use this leave when they encounter these other issues may be disqualified from taking time off after the arrival of a new child. Due to the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (amended in 2005), institutions with paid disability leave might offer six weeks of paid leave following childbirth if authorized by a physician. However, some disability-leave policies do not take effect until after six weeks of disability, thus essentially excluding childbirth (Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005). Even when disability or sick leave is paid, it is still inadequate as a parental-leave policy because it addresses the medical recovery of childbirth but not the personal needs of adjusting to parenthood and thus does not provide time off for nonbirth parents. One mother recalled: “[My university] had no official maternity leave policy, but I was eligible for disability leave. When asked to ‘please describe what is wrong with you,’ I had to write, ‘I’m pregnant.’ Classifying maternity as a medical disability was insulting to me and unfair to my nonbirth parent colleagues who were thus ineligible for leave.” Addressing the lack of sufficient federal policies, some individual states and employers have worked to offer their own more generous paid parental-leave policies. However, the Center for the Education of Women’s (CEW) 2007 national survey of higher-education institutions found that most have their employees take unpaid time off (as required by FMLA) or use sick, vacation, or disability leave (if they are eligible) to cover parental leave; only 18 percent offer distinct, paid, dependent-care leave (including parental leave), and 10 percent report no policy or accepted practice for maternity leave (3, 17).
Complicating the picture further, many institutions have ad hoc, informal, unspecified policies and practices, resulting in inconsistent and inequitable treatment. For example, one national survey revealed that leave beyond FMLA was “negotiable” at 60 percent of institutions (Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005), and another reported that 23 percent of schools that do not offer paid leave have informal policies (Yoest 2004). One faculty mother noted that at her institution, “there are no set policies beyond FLMA. This is a huge problem [because] each mother-to-be has to negotiate, from a low-power position typically, for her accommodation, and the person she’s negotiating with doesn’t know what’s reasonable.” Another shared, “The college HR [human resources department] prefers to keep the policy unwritten.… [T]his really [tripped] me up because I couldn’t learn what the policy actually was when I needed to know.” Without clearly established and enforced institutionwide policies, individual leave situations fluctuate with the structure and resources of departments as well as with the personalities and negotiation styles of chairs, deans, and faculty members: some faculty members scrape by with the bare minimum or even less, and others make off with much more (Yoest 2004). Even administrators we interviewed noted great problems with “lack of consistency” and “inequity” due to informal or unclear policies at their institutions. Furthermore, despite knowing of colleagues who have negotiated additional benefits off the record, many women fear that their job status is on the line and thus hesitate to try to work out anything informally. One woman noted that in the absence of an official policy, “I have been afraid to ask for too much and only got what I needed when official people gave more generously.” An astonishingly large proportion of women does not take advantage even of existing, formal policies often because they fear stigma or career repercussions, especially when they are pretenure (Finkel, Olswang, and She 1994; Finkel and Olswang 1995; Yoest and Rhoads 2002; Drago et al. 2006). Interestingly, interviews with higher-education administrators indicate that there may indeed be stigma attached to faculty’s utilization of formal and informal policies (Yoest 2004). This contradiction between seemingly supportive work–family policies and actual workplace climate surrounding use of these policies is similar to trends found in other work settings (Kirby and Krone 2002). In addition, our own interviews revealed both stigmas and penalties for taking parental leave. One woman said she “was told by a tenured female faculty member on my first day on the job to not have children before tenure.” When she had her second child in June, “I was told by my department chair that ‘I had the summer off,’ but to make sure that I was highly productive or the pregnancy would count against me toward tenure.” Another aptly noted: “A lack of clarity about procedures can be a stressful experience for a woman who is trying to negotiate for herself and her family needs at a time when she may be feeling vulnerable, and may be … judged as a less serious academic.” In sum, the ambiguity and inconsistency of parental-leave policies and practices make it difficult for both faculty and administrators to understand the rules, often resulting in inequality and resentment (Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005).
ON LEAVE BUT ON THE CLOCK: STANDARD LEAVE POLICIES DO NOT FIT WELL WITH ACADEMIC WORK
The most common types of leave policies offered for raising children simply do not fit with the nature of academic positions and academic work. Because many academics do not receive sick or vacation time, they are not eligible for these paid-leave options for which staffs are often eligible (CEW 2005; Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005). Furthermore, the highly specified, pervasive, and demanding nature of academic work typically means that faculty members still have several of their job responsibilities even while on leave, and thus unpaid FMLA and medical disability leave do not make sense in this context. Finally, the academic calendar, which commonly entails nine-month faculty contracts but expectations for year-round (and often unpaid) work on scholarly endeavors, poses specific challenges for faculty responsibilities, which family-leave policies must address.
The touted flexibility of academic work has been called an illusion, even a gilded cage: although some academic work is portable, its volume and nature are extremely demanding, thus posing great challenges for the work–life balance (Sorcinelli and Near 1989; Bailyn 1993; Ward and Wolf-Wendel 2004). As one woman put it, “I get to choose whatever sixty to eighty hours of the week I want to work!” Much of academic work—pursuing ongoing scholarly projects, running a research lab, presenting at conferences, writing grants and articles, meeting publication deadlines, mentoring student theses and dissertations—is so specialized and time sensitive that it cannot be put on hold or performed by a substitute during a leave of absence. In fact, many faculty-specific family-leave policies address only teaching responsibilities and omit scholarly, service, and administrative responsibilities from the leave provisions. Thus, even when leave is offered, faculty members often receive only a partial reduction in their workload.
A common theme in academic mothers’ stories is that of being “on leave” but still “on the clock,” both in terms of the big picture (the tenure clock) and on a smaller scale in the daily details of being an academic: “I did work at home throughout most of my leave”; “I worked until the night I went into labor. I returned to work part time … when [my baby] was two weeks old.” Just as academic work bleeds into personal life at other times, academic mothers on parental leave commonly report spending hours a day engaged in work correspondence and meetings (phone, online, or face to face), student mentoring, scholarly projects, and service responsibilities in the early weeks following the arrival of a new child. One woman shared: “Out of a sense of obligation … I continued to read drafts of theses and dissertations and to have regular email contact with graduate students. I also had some phone and face-to-face meetings with them. My goal was to be sure that their progress was not held up by my leave.” Another woman gave scholarly presentations at two national conferences during her maternity leave, noting, “I couldn’t afford to have such a gap in my [curriculum vitae].” Yet another explained, “I had a substantial research program at the time I became pregnant. My department had no interest at all in how I was going to meet my research grant obligations. The granting bodies did not seem to have any policies or provisions for this circumstance. They simply expected the research to be delivered as promised. I felt pressured by colleagues and collaborators not to make a fuss about this. At the same time, none of my collaborators could take over my roles on the research projects, so I went on working on projects during my maternity leave.” Just days after giving birth, another mother received reviews on a scholarly article that required her to spend hours a day holding her newborn as she sat in front of the computer, working to meet this deadline: “I had already invested five years into this project, so I couldn’t just give it up now. There’s no such thing as being on leave with this type of work.” Indeed, even when faculty members are on leave, they are still expected to publish (Yoest and Rhoads 2002; Fothergill and Fetley 2003; Ward and Wolf-Wendel 2004). Being “on leave but on the clock” seems to be a pervasive problem for academic mothers due to universities’ unspoken expectations. It deprives mothers of the opportunity to focus on essential parenting responsibilities, and in some cases it means that women are working without pay or against medical orders or both. One mother noted, “Toward the end of my leave, I was told by HR [human resources] that I was not authorized to do any work, even from home, until my doctor signed my return-to-work papers. If only they had known how much I had worked during my ‘leave.’ They just didn’t seem to get what academic work is like.” These stories collectively speak to a pervasive struggle for balance among the equally consuming identities of being a mother and being an academic; integrating such “dualities” successfully seems to be a core tension for academic women (Gawelek, Mulqueen, and Tarule 1994, 196). Indeed, our own experiences and interactions with other academic mothers reinforce the tension of this balancing act.
Although much of an academic’s scholarly work cannot be put on hold or performed by another person while he or she is on leave, teaching is one part of the job that might be covered most easily during a leave of absence. Faculty members get released from teaching for various reasons, such as scholarly leaves, for an entire academic term or more. However, parental leaves at U.S. institutions are typically for periods shorter than a semester, and, given the unreliability of due dates, faculty who need to take parental leave often encounter complicated logistical challenges in their teaching responsibilities. We heard from several women who taught right up until their children arrived—continually adjusting plans to transfer courses to colleagues—and then jumped back into teaching at the end of the semester, after being out of touch with the students and the flow of course material for several weeks. Some had to make their own arrangements to cover their teaching, sometimes piecing together colleagues to cover classes, which poses an unfair burden to all involved and may foster resentment among colleagues. We also encountered examples of women continuing to teach even when officially on leave: teaching class from home (in person, by phone, by Web cast), recording lectures to be played in class, or returning to the classroom after a few short weeks or even days. One woman recounted: “My graduate student covered my lectures for only three weeks. I was still required to answer emails, attend to students, and help with the grading.… It was made clear that my duties would not change because I gave birth.” The 2005 CEW report highlights the discrepancy between traditional leave policies and academic teaching responsibilities. It notes, “If departmental coverage of term-long teaching responsibilities is not adequately addressed, traditional sick leave policies may require or pressure women to return to the classroom sooner than the six to eight weeks following childbirth that is considered to be good medical practice” (9). Aside from the burden to the faculty member “on leave,” these shifts in who is teaching a class are incredibly disruptive for students’ learning, as reflected in course evaluations (Baker and Copp 1997). In addition, such piecemeal arrangements pose challenges for substitute instructors, department chairs, and other administrators. Two administrators in our sample noted that it cost their universities the same to hire a replacement instructor for part or all of a semester as it does to arrange for substitutes; thus, it seems to make most sense—for all involved—to replace a faculty member in her courses for an entire term. By providing semester-long replacements for teaching in their parental-leave policies, academic institutions not only help faculty and administrators strike an equitable workload balance but also, as the University of Nebraska–Lincoln policy states, “assure continuity of instruction of students” (2009, para. 5).
The unique nature of faculty positions and academic work has prompted many institutions to offer family-leave policies specifically designed to accommodate faculty work. For example, Knox College’s faculty handbook states: “The College’s health plan allows six weeks of sick leave with pay. In interpreting this policy as it affects academic obligations, the College recognizes the special nature of faculty obligations on the term system by granting … one term of leave with pay” (2011, para. 13). In cases where parental leave does not cover an entire term, many institutions provide an additional modified-duties policy for faculty that releases or reduces their “teaching, research, or service load for a temporary period (usually a term or two) without commensurate reduction in pay,” following the arrival of a new child (Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005, 44). Besides addressing the logistical and teaching-continuity issues that affect administrators, replacement instructors, and students, these policies offer a fair workload for faculty members, who typically perform other aspects of their work while officially on parental leave.
ON THE BALL: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SUPPORTIVE PARENTAL-LEAVE POLICIES
The American Psychological Association recently launched an initiative on work and families, offering suggestions for employers and policymakers that include paid family and maternity leave, noting that “implementing family friendly policies … is good business” (2004, 8). Similarly, the AAUP advises, “The development and implementation of institutional policies that enable the healthy integration of work responsibilities with family life in academe require renewed attention” (2001, 220). Offering such policies not only improves faculty morale but is also likely to bring institutional benefits in recruiting and retaining quality faculty, which ultimately is most cost effective (Friedman, Rimsky, and Johnson 1996; University of Colorado–Boulder 2001; Williams and Norton 2008). Based on our review of theory and research on parental-leave policies and practices as well as on discussions we have had with faculty and administrators, the following recommendations may improve the work–life balance, with a cascade of positive effects for faculty and academic institutions. (For additional policy recommendations, see Drago and Williams 2000; AAUP 2001; Mason and Goulden 2002, 2004a; Ward and Wolf-Wendel 2004; Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005; Smith and Waltman 2006; Williams and Norton 2008. For general work–life policy recommendations, see American Psychological Association 2004 and Halpern 2005b).
1. Establish principles and practices that promote a work–life balance. Being on leave but on the clock, not taking full advantage of leave policies for fear of career repercussions or stigma, and allowing a disconnect between policy and practice are deeply entrenched, pervasive problems in academia. These problems engender an incompatibility between academia and motherhood (Armenti 2004). Thus, an important first step in providing supportive parental-leave policies is to establish and promote a culture that supports a work–life balance and reduces the stigma of needing, wanting, and taking leave to tend to essential parenting responsibilities.
A work–life balance might broadly be defined as “sufficient time to meet commitments at both home and work,” but it also includes one’s perceptions of balancing roles and demands from work and home life (Guest 2002, 263) and of being supported at work as a person with a personal, family life (O’Laughlin and Bischoff 2005). Whether from objective, instrumental support or subjective, perceived support, work–life balance contributes to an employee’s performance in both roles. Therefore, being sensitive to such role demands and conflicts creates an environment where women faculty members have the flexibility to realize themselves as mothers and academics equally.
The most supportive parental-leave policies have a guiding philosophy that focuses not on the medically or legally mandated business of providing benefits, but rather on the best practices of nurturing employees as whole people. For example, Harvard University’s Guidelines for Faculty Maternity and Paternity Leave articulately states:
The years during which scholars are under the most pressure to produce work of extraordinarily high quality are often the same years those individuals are, or wish to be, starting families. A system where academic success is incompatible with family life is undesirable because it discourages talented scholars from pursuing academic careers, and particularly because it disadvantages women, who often bear a larger share of parenting responsibility than do their male colleagues. To the maximum extent possible, Harvard University seeks to support faculty parents as they welcome new children into their families, whether by birth or adoption, by providing them with paid time off and opportunities for relief from their teaching duties. (2006, 1)
It is notable that even such a supportive statement as this specifically addresses only faculty teaching duties, which typically compose only 40 percent of a faculty member’s responsibilities (Mancing 1991).
Faculty and administrators we spoke with at institutions with similarly supportive philosophies reported a positive work climate, a healthy balance between work and family, and better retention of faculty. One administrator noted that her institution is working to improve the policies and the culture of family leave by communicating such messages as the following: “Leave is not lost time; there is nothing to make up for. You’re on leave; don’t try to get work done; it will only make you crazy, and it’s not fair.” A more direct way to promote a culture of work–life balance is to take organizational measures to protect faculty leave time, such as by ensuring that teaching, advising, and service responsibilities are transferred over completely during parental leave and by removing parents on leave from all but the most essential institutional communications.
Institutions also can provide a tenure-clock stop automatically, not by request, and enforce evaluation standards to ensure that this practice is not adversely weighted in tenure and promotion decisions (Hollenshead, Sullivan, and Smith 2005; Smith and Waltman 2006). Other examples of parental-leave provisions that promote a supportive culture include Grinnell College’s statement that “the College will provide staff for course replacements; … the College, not the parent, is responsible for finding a faculty member to teach these courses” (2009, 61). The Stanford School of Medicine has a paid, two-term teaching-reduction policy that states, “[Faculty] should not be required to assume extra burdens of teaching when they resume full-time work” (2000, para. 19). Such policies take concrete steps to ensure that faculty members get the leave to which they are entitled, without an actual or implicit burden to make up for these accommodations. The University of Maine’s policy captures this message with the explicit promise that “no faculty member will be penalized for making use of this policy” (2009, para. 2). In sum, such messages and policy measures create and on some level mandate a supportive culture of work–life balance, reduce the stigma of taking leave, and ensure that faculty members receive a full and fair leave.
2. Provide specific leave for parenting in its diverse arrangements. At a minimum, institutions should offer specific parental-leave policies beyond sick, medical, and disability leave. Such policies regard the transition to parenthood as a unique life event—not as an illness, a medical procedure, or a disability—and ensure that faculty parents remain eligible for the same general benefits as their nonparent colleagues. Supportive, nondiscriminatory policies cover birth, adoption, and foster placements and include primary or coequal caregivers regardless of birthing status, gender, or marital and domestic partnership arrangements. For example, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Policy for Family Care for Faculty states, “Faculty members, regardless of gender, who wish to spend the majority of their academic time on the care of and responsibility for a newborn child or a child newly placed with them for adoption or foster care will be released from teaching and administrative duties for one semester at full pay” (2006, para. 23). Such inclusive policies afford all faculty parents the opportunity to adjust to their new roles and increased responsibilities at home without jeopardizing their roles and responsibilities at work (see also Smith and Waltman 2006; Ecklund and Lincoln 2011).
3. Provide paid leave or modified duties or both for at least a full academic term. The majority of higher-education institutions offering paid parental leave do so under sick or disability leave and for birth mothers only (CEW 2005), and such policies typically apply to all employees at the institution. A more appropriate approach is to offer a faculty-specific paid parental-leave policy that accounts for the nature of faculty appointments (e.g., nine-month contracts, no vacation or sick time) and responsibilities (e.g., teaching on a semester system and performing service and scholarship as well, frequently outside of a nine-month appointment). The most fair and facilitative policies include paid leave for a certain period of time (most commonly twelve weeks or a full academic term, though sometimes up to six months) as well as modified duties (e.g., no teaching, specifically for faculty) for an entire academic term or two. Other parental-leave policies, such as Vanderbilt University’s, relieve faculty of all of their work obligations for a full semester, with full pay and benefits: “The faculty member shall be relieved of the obligation to teach …, relieved of research and scholarship expectations …, [and] relieved of all faculty service responsibilities, including committee work and student advising, for one semester” (2009, 145). The most supportive policies also allow the parent to choose the academic term during which to take the leave. Santa Clara University’s policy states that leave can be taken anytime “within the first year following [childbirth,] adoption, or foster care placement” (2011, para. 3). Because faculty contracts vary from nine- to twelve-month terms, this policy makes leave equitable regardless of the time of year in which a faculty member welcomes a new child. We have encountered similar long-term paid leave or modified-duties policies at numerous institutions spanning the range from small to large and teaching to research oriented.
4. Make policies and practices formal yet flexible. Unless policies are clearly specified and consistently applied, inequities will persist within academic institutions, affecting morale and turnover, especially of faculty who are mothers. At the same time, it is important for institutions to provide some flexibility—in an overt, formalized way—to help individual faculty members achieve balance and optimize their potential as people and academics. One administrator we interviewed stated that “good policies must be malleable to individual circumstances,” and another noted that even generous policies should be regarded as “minimum standards” to be applied more thoroughly on an individual basis. Recognizing that faculty—for a variety of personal, professional, medical, and familial needs—“benefit from the temporary opportunity to focus more attention on their personal lives,” several institutions offer additional unpaid time off, reduced appointments or workloads, job-share appointments, or part-time accommodations that range from a semester to five years, or all of these options (Smith and Waltman 2006, 5).
Many of these changes cost nothing or very little to implement, and the initial costs of some changes pale in comparison to the price of recruiting and hiring new faculty (Friedman, Rimsky, and Johnson 1996; Davis et al. 2001; Jackson 2008). Indeed, on a broader scale across workplace settings, there is compelling evidence in favor of offering more family-friendly policies to the benefit of employees as well as employers (Halpern 2005a). Quality faculty ranks are worth investing in, as universities routinely do with start-up packages and other funding. Investing in family-friendly policies has a substantial payoff in terms of improving institutional climate as well as recruiting and retaining quality faculty who seek to balance their professional and personal lives (Williams and Norton 2008).
Improving parental-leave policies and practices can have a substantial impact on helping academic women achieve work–life integration. One woman summed up, “I did it. I did it all. The career, the babies, tenure, grants, conferences, committees, advising/mentoring students.… But the cost to me was huge. I have very little memory of my daughter [at some points], only pictures.… What I never achieved was a sense of balance. Perhaps that is too elusive in an academic career, at least for women.… It is possible, but it isn’t easy, and it isn’t for everyone.” Academic institutions have an opportunity and a responsibility to invest in their faculty as academics and as people so that their faculty can progress as scholars while also thriving as parents. More important, universities and colleges become models for work environments at large. Well-balanced and satisfied employees succeed both at work and at home, and, as a result, their institutions succeed as well.
