Brenda K. Bushouse
AT AN ACADEMIC conference in 2009, I participated on a panel in which faculty described their career trajectories to aspiring graduate students and recent Ph.D.s. Until that day, I had not realized that I had a story to tell, but as I saw the reactions from the young, female graduate students and assistant professors and answered their questions, I realized that these women were aspiring to have my life. From their vantage point, I had attained the “holy grail” of tenure while mothering, with the added feature that my husband also attained tenure at the same institution. These women wanted to become mothers, they wanted tenure-track positions, and some of them also wanted tenure-track positions for their partners, but the goal that I had achieved seemed out of reach to them. As I reflected on my experience, I realized that it was not that long ago that I, too, thought the goal was unattainable. In this chapter, I intermix my personal history with the growing literature on tenure-track mothers in academia (Fox 2000; Gatta and Roos 2004; American Council on Education 2005; Wolf-Wendel and Ward 2006; Center for the Education of Women [CEW] 2007; O’Meara 2007; Jackson 2008; Mason 2009b; Misra, Templer, and Hickes-Lundquist 2010). After reviewing family-leave policies, I turn to the challenges of returning to work to discuss the range of options for modifying tenure-track appointments and the concomitant perils that accompany those choices. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the need for advocates to support successful implementation of family-leave policies and continued support throughout the tenure process.
My academic career began in 1998 with a tenure-track position at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. I initially began as a lecturer but was promoted to assistant professor in 1999 when I completed my dissertation. The position was a joint appointment between the Department of Political Science and the newly created Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA), with teaching and service split between the two offices, although my tenure line is wholly within the Department of Political Science. When I began at the University of Massachusetts, there was not a spousal-hiring policy, but my husband fortunately had a postdoctoral fellowship at Indiana University and was able to telecommute from Amherst.
In 1998, I was in the enviable position of having a tenure-track position but faced an all too common thirty-something biological alarm clock. Because of my age, delaying childbirth until after tenure was not an option. Both my husband and I wanted children, and in 2001, two years into my tenure clock, we became the parents of twins we named Sophia and Maxwell. Three months after their birth, my husband began a tenure-track position at University of Massachusetts. My path to tenure was not assured, nor was it one that I would choose to traverse again. But for those attempting to travel the tenure track and at the same time mothering young children, supportive family-leave policies and the option for modified duties are critical to successfully attaining tenure. Those policies must be supported by an organization culture that recognizes such policies as “normal” rather than exceptions or unfair extensions to the six-year tenure clock.
I place my experience in a larger context of support policies for academic mothers. At the time, I thought that I was alone in my struggles and was unaware of the literature documenting that my experience was typical of mothers in rigid bureaucracies. Women who are both academics and mothers often feel that it is an individual “problem” rather than a structural problem, but the reality is that the university tenure system is not structured in such a way to be anything other than difficult for mothers and active fathers who strive to build their careers and care for children. The important work by Joan Acker (1990, 2006) makes it clear that structural inequality in organizations occurs across work environments. In the context of the university, inequality is built into the bureaucracies created with a long-standing male-centered model that make it tremendously difficult to achieve both motherhood and academic success. Yet if universities want to retain faculty and students who are also mothers, they must make policy changes to support these women. Just as important as the policy change is the shift in organization culture that must accompany those changes so that women have confidence that they can utilize the policies without sacrificing their career advancement.
Because universities run on semesters or quarters, parental leaves need to reflect that cycle. Six-week leaves make no sense in the middle of the semester, and not everyone can time their pregnancies so that they deliver in the summer, although many of us try. But even with parental leave tied to semesters or quarters, women returning to work need support during the intensive early parenting period, in particular women who are also on the tenure track. In order for this support to be given, there needs to be a modification of duties as an alternative to the six-year, cookie-cutter mold for tenure.
FAMILY-LEAVE POLICIES
In 2001, the University of Massachusetts implemented a broadly inclusive, far-reaching parental-leave policy for the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP), the union representing faculty and librarians. Prior to the family-leave policy, expectant mothers had to negotiate on a case-by-case basis with their department chairs, who in turn had to cover courses without any funding from the administration to hire temporary replacement faculty. A woman could use accrued sick leave and vacation time or could apply for unpaid leave under the federal Family Medical Leave Act, which provides for twelve weeks of unpaid leave. But if her accrued leave ran out or she was unable to forgo pay, she had to return to work. The MSP had been advocating for parental leave for several years, but in the 2001 collective-bargaining process faculty and department chairs testified at a daylong event in support of family-leave policy, which then became a catalyst to advance change. When I testified, I was very pregnant with twins, and I made the argument that without a delay in the tenure decision year it would be impossible for me to remain in a tenure-track position. My department chair was a sixty-five-year-old bachelor who also testified about the difficulty he had just experienced in negotiating maternity leaves for two assistant professors in my department due to the absence of a standard policy. Listening to the testimony throughout the day, I was struck by the inequity: some women had negotiated a full-semester leave, whereas one woman had returned to the classroom a mere two weeks after giving birth. The testimony was a pivotal moment in which the administration first “heard” the extreme inequality across the campus. The administration soon afterward agreed to include a maternity-leave policy in the MSP contract. Better yet, the union pushed for and won the inclusion of both fathers and mothers in the policy (Page and Clawson 2009). Those efforts resulted in a family-leave policy that provided tenure-track faculty (and contract faculty with a minimum of six years at the university) with one semester of paid leave and a one-year delay in the tenure decision year for the birth or adoption of a child (MPS 2010).
The University of Massachusetts family-leave policy is unusual in that it provides one paid semester of leave and a one-year tenure delay for both academic mothers and fathers. Recent survey data from the University of Michigan finds that tenure-clock extensions are now prevalent in “doctoral extensive” higher-education institutions. In fact, the survey data indicate that between 2002 and 2007, tenure extensions had the highest growth in family-friendly policies across all types of higher-education institutions. For “doctoral extensive” institutions, stopping the clock is available in 92 percent of the survey respondents, with other institutions ranging between 44 to 69 percent (CEW 2007, 8). However, it is important to note that the circumstances that produce eligibility and the frequency of use are not standard, and some institutions offer the policy on an ad hoc basis rather than as a formal policy.
Far less common is a paid semester of leave. In the 2007 CEW survey, only 29 percent of higher-education institutions (across the varying types) provided paid leave beyond the disability period (17). The term disability period stems from the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which requires that women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions receive benefits equivalent to those of other employees who are unable to work for other medical reasons. If a university provides less paid time off for pregnancy than for other medical conditions, it is an illegal practice. The minimum amount of leave is six weeks for an uncomplicated birth. But academics’ lives revolve around the academic calendar. Having six weeks of leave and yet having to return to complete the term does not absolve the faculty member from designing the course and coordinating with the substitute instructor. Researchers at the University of Virginia found that they had to develop a broader definition of leave policies to capture the range of policies that exist in academia. For a 2004 survey of 168 randomly selected universities by the Family, Gender, and Tenure Project at the University of Virginia, the definition of paid parental leave was “more than 6 weeks of full relief of the faculty member’s teaching duties with full pay, or half relief of teaching for one full semester or quarter, or full relief with half pay for a semester or quarter” (Yoest 2004, 6). The survey results for the 153 universities responding indicated that 35 percent of the sample provided no parental leave, and only 18 percent provided a full semester, with the rest providing less than a semester of leave. The remaining universities provided a range of policies: 25 percent allowed faculty to use accrued sick leave, 8 percent provided six weeks or less, 9 percent provided between eight and twelve weeks leave, 5 percent provided half pay or reduced teaching (Yoest 2004, 7).
In my personal experience, the tenure-clock extension and paid leave were absolutely crucial for me to return to my tenure-track position, but the birth of my twins occurred eighteen days shy of the policy start date. However, I petitioned the administration, and on June 12, 2001, I became the first MSP member to receive one paid semester of leave and a one-year delay in my tenure clock. The leave was necessary to bond with my children, but it was also a medical necessity. I had severe post partum complications and was quite weak when the fall semester started. Had I been required to return to teaching, I would have resigned. My husband began his tenure-track position that fall and was technically eligible to take a parental leave, but he did not feel comfortable taking it, particularly because he was starting a new position. His experience is mirrored by a University of Massachusetts survey in which it was found that only about half of the eligible parents took parental leave (O’Meara 2007). At the University of Massachusetts and other universities, data indicate that the main factor in an individual’s decision to take leave or stop the clock is department culture (Drago et al. 2001; Mason 2005; O’Meara 2007; Misra, Templer, and Hickes-Lundquist 2010). Although I did take a parental leave, it was thus not without cost.
RETURNING TO WORK: THE NEED FOR MODIFIED DUTIES AND CULTURAL SHIFTS
When I returned to campus for the spring semester, a senior male colleague complained that my maternity leave had provided me with a “sabbatical” that was unfair to the other assistant professors. Exactly when I could have conducted research during the newborn months was beyond my comprehension; I remember having to choose between eating, sleeping, and showering in the forty-five minutes between feedings. I have heard mothers talk about working on research during naptimes, but there were no downtimes for me to squeeze in academic work given that I had twins. Unfortunately, my experience in returning to work was not unlike that of prior generations of academic mothers. Similar to women in Mary Gatta and Patricia Roos’s (2004) study, I felt marginalized due to a department culture in which I was compelled to separate public and private spheres and therefore forced to view the family–work tension as an individual problem rather than as something to be addressed collectively.
The university has an important role to play in creating an environment in which academic mothers have the support they need to succeed. Such a call for change occurred in 2001 when the American Association for University Professors (AAUP) published its revised Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work. The new version called for “substantial changes in policy and, more significantly, changes in academic culture” to transform the academic workplace into one that supports family life (2001, para. 8).
Yet to transform the academic workplace, there must be funding for research to determine which changes will be effective. In 1994, the Sloan Foundation created the Workplace, Work Force, and Working Families Giving program, which was related to its Economic Performance and Quality of Life program area. Since its inception, the foundation has awarded funding for six academic Centers on Working Families at the University of California (both Berkeley and Los Angeles), Cornell University, the University of Michigan, and Emory University, as well as for a combined center between the University of Chicago and Michigan State University. Sloan funded grants for other types of institutions and more than one hundred research projects related to work and family. The foundation’s funding enabled the collection of basic data on the lives of working parents that has since informed policy development.
To address the challenges of recruitment and retention of women in science and engineering, the National Science Foundation and the National Academies also began new funding programs. The National Science Foundation created the ADVANCE grant program in 2004 to fund research aimed to positively impact universities’ ability to recruit and retain women in science and engineering. In addition, the National Academies funded the project Women in Science and Engineering: A Guide to Maximizing Their Potential. Completed in 2006, the project generated two reports focusing on the necessary components for women to succeed in science and engineering. Both of these funding programs brought resources and attention to the work environment of women in the sciences with the aim of eliminating barriers and raising the profile of the need for family-friendly policies.
The University of California drew much attention to the need to change university policies and culture with the publication of its Sloan-funded 2002–2003 Faculty Work and Family Survey. The survey of 4,400 tenure-track faculty revealed, among other findings, that women between the ages of thirty and fifty put in the longest combined hours of professional, caregiving, and household responsibilities. The research led to the creation of the University of California Faculty Family Friend Edge to advance policies, programs, services, and benefits to improve the work–family environment. The University of California now leads the country with its adoption of family-friendly policies.
Since the passage of family-leave policies at the University of Massachusetts, attention has shifted to creating an environment that allows faculty to attain a work–family balance. The Joint Administration–MSP Work–Life Committee conducted a campuswide study funded by MSP, the Provost’s Office, and the Office of Faculty Development. The study led to recommendations for policy changes including modified duties, the extension of paid parental leave to all faculty (it is currently restricted to tenure-track and senior lecturers), and the expansion of on-campus child care (Lundquist et al. 2010). The study also addressed the need for cultural change so that participation in these policies becomes the norm rather than the exception. Strategies for culture change include educating deans, chairs, and personnel committees about family-friendly policies, publicly recognizing departments with faculty who utilize the policies, making tenure extensions for new parents automatic so that junior faculty are not forced to request them, normalizing parental leave by adding a category in the annual review that all faculty members submit, and featuring the university’s family-friendly environment in recruiting efforts (Lundquist et al. 2010). These recommendations are spot on for reducing the stress on families and on women faculty in particular, who are balancing work and family responsibilities.
When new mothers return to the workplace, they may have physically healed from childbirth, but they are still experiencing the intense demands of caring for infants. Many need a reprieve from a full academic research, teaching, and service load. There are some promising developments in the direction of creating “modified duties,” which can be permanent or temporary arrangements and include reduced teaching or part-time tenure-track appointments. The CEW survey found that all respondents with modified-leave policies provide them for tenured and tenure-track faculty and that 69 to 100 percent also provide the benefit for non-tenure-track faculty (2007, 13). Leading the country, the University of California allows part-time appointments on a temporary or permanent basis (Mason 2009b).
In the early years of my children’s lives and my tenure-track appointment, there were no options for part-time work or reduced teaching loads at the University of Massachusetts. If there had been a part-time option, it would have been the best choice for me. Trying to fulfill tenure expectation and motherhood pushed me to my breaking point. Part of the challenge for me was that I needed to start new research projects. Yet due to the complexities of child care, I was not able to attend academic conferences or undertake fieldwork to start a new research project. Without the networking required to launch my career, I missed a window of opportunity to build connections that could have led to collaborations, publication opportunities, and research projects, yet all of these things are crucial for career success (Prpic 2002; McBrier 2003). For me, the dual pressures of tenure track and motherhood were too much, and I needed to step away from the tenure process.
In the summer of 2003, when my children were two, I became acting director of the CPPA. In the fall, an opportunity arose for me to continue in an administrative capacity when the CPPA’s associate director took an extended medical leave. The CPPA needed the help, and I found that I needed the administrative position to stop the tenure clock and relieve me from the pressure to publish. The “administrative leave” essentially bought out one course per semester from the Department of Political Science, which effectively reduced my teaching load from the standard two–two to a one–one. In exchange, I provided administrative support and developed new programs. Even though I was still working full time, the administrative work allowed me to achieve some balance between work and home because it removed the nagging pressure to publish. During this time period, I fully engaged in the administrative work and seriously considered leaving my tenure-track position. It is important to note that I was still formally on the tenure track and that my department was not aware that I was considering leaving my appointment. It was not until the third semester of administrative leave, when the associate director returned to CPPA, that I needed to make a choice. By that time, my children were three, and I decided to restart my tenure clock.
The modified duties included in the CEW survey and other published sources do not encompass the type of administrative leave that I was able to utilize to stop and resume the tenure clock again. For many academic mothers, an administrative leave might not be desirable because it would reduce time available for their research. For me, it was a lifeline that allowed me space to breathe and regain perspective on my academic career.
THE CATCH-22 OF MODIFIED DUTIES
The challenge for a pretenure faculty member in taking a part-time option or other modified-duty arrangement is the risk to her tenure portfolio and its assessment. Pretenure faculty who choose a modified-duty option may be regarded as less committed to their research agendas. Because these policies are relatively unchartered territory, there are no comprehensive data on the number of tenure-track faculty who work part-time, but there is some evidence that pretenure faculty are reluctant to participate. A 2002–2003 University of California survey found that 75 percent of female professors with children said they were interested in part-time options; however, the reality was that few actually took the option after it became available in 2006 (Wilson 2008). Although assistant professors with children may need part-time appointments or other modified-duty arrangements, risk-averse faculty may not want to pioneer new paths to tenure (Mason 2009b).
The challenge for me when I returned from modified duties to a full-time faculty position was the belief among some of my department colleagues that my tenure clock had “gone long.” My administrative leave for CPPA, despite technically providing a release from research expectations, created a perception that I was not a committed scholar, as evidenced by my willingness to do administrative work and the gaps in my publishing record. It was unclear to me at the time whether my department would support my tenure case even if I managed to publish at a level expected for tenure. Because my trajectory did not mirror any other faculty in the department, and I would exceed the standard six-year tenure time frame, I felt considerable stress about my prospects. My experience of high stress levels in trying to balance tenure pressures and family responsibilities mirrors findings in published studies (Acker and Armenti 2004).
My tenure stress increased exponentially when I underwent my pretenure review in 2004 (in the fourth year of my tenure clock, but my sixth year at the university). The general guidance from the department was to shift from publishing articles to writing a book. Prior to that time, I had planned to publish only articles because my dissertation was not appropriate for a book. Yet colleagues who supported my case strongly encouraged me to acquiesce to department norms and publish a book. Based on their advice, I made the decision to shift to a new book project; this decision was particularly challenging because it would involve extensive field research and a tight deadline.
One of the reasons I undertook such an ambitious project was that I felt particularly passionate about the topic: the creation of state universal preschool policies. My passion for the topic was in direct response to the choices I faced as a parent. I was fortunate to have the income to purchase high-quality preschool for my children, but I knew that others did not, and I strongly believe that all children should have access to high-quality early education and care regardless of family income. Several states had passed legislation creating universal preschool programs, and I wanted to understand how they succeeded. With renewed enthusiasm for research, I was able to secure two internal grants that funded my fieldwork in six states (Georgia, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia). Although I had a full two–two teaching load, my department allowed me to experiment with a two-and-a-half-hour undergraduate course that met only once per week. Combined with my graduate CPPA course, I taught 2 two-and-a-half-hour courses on the same day, which provided flexibility for fieldwork, travel, and writing.
On the home front, several developments helped me focus my energy on my book project. My children were now in preschool, potty trained, and moving out of the constant-care phase of the infant and toddler years. The intense pull factors I felt when they were infants and toddlers were giving way to an appreciation of their need for socialization and education. I still felt tremendous guilt being separated from them, as so many working mothers do, but the feeling was less pervasive. My experience is mirrored by research by Mary Fox (2000) on the high productivity levels of women with pre-school-age children. Second, my husband had been awarded tenure, which both reduced the general household stress level and had an unexpected positive impact on my motivation to achieve tenure. Our dream since graduate school had been to achieve two tenured faculty positions in the same geographic location, and now the “holy grail” was within reach. I found myself invigorated and excited about my new research project and fully focused my energy on that goal. What had once seemed unattainable now seemed possible. Third, I had important support from family. My parents accompanied me on research trips to help with child care or came to my home when I traveled. While I worked late into the night for more nights than I care to remember, my husband took care of the children. My mother-in-law supported me extensively by reading drafts and providing moral support. With their assistance, I was able to concentrate my energy on completing the book project. But it is important to note that even with research funding, a concentrated teaching schedule, and supportive family, I sacrificed considerable sleep (and my health) to complete the project. Sandra Acker and Carmen Armenti’s (2004) study aptly titled “Sleepless in Academia” clearly indicates that I was not alone in this pattern. For the women surveyed in their study, sacrificing sleep was their main strategy to achieve their goals, as it was for me.
By my tenure decision year in 2006–2007, I was on track to complete the book and had secured an advance contract for publication with a good university press. However, in the course of my research, I realized that if I could have an additional year, I would be able to extend the analysis to include the role of foundation funding in advancing universal preschool policies. I knew this inclusion would significantly strengthen the book and wanted to pursue it, but the challenge was how to do it and not risk tenure. With the exception of my parental leave, I had been working full-time at the University of Massachusetts since 1998, which meant that I was technically due for sabbatical (applications for sabbatical may be filed every six years at the university). However, I was concerned about negative perceptions in my department if I took a sabbatical prior to tenure. It would have been the best option had the policy been in place and the culture been supportive.
Through a combination of serendipity and overt support from the CPPA director, I was granted a one-year administrative leave to assist CPPA in the transition to a new director. The founding director stepped down to become the chair of the Political Science Department, and the incoming director was relatively new to the university and agreed that additional administrative support would ease the transition. I was granted a one-course release in exchange for the administrative work. Because this release was counted as “administrative leave,” my tenure clock was stopped for the year.
During that same year, I was awarded a Center for Research on Families Faculty Fellowship that helped to launch my post-tenure research program. The fellowship provided a one-course reduction to enable the faculty member who received it to apply for grants. As part of that fellowship, I applied for several awards and was successful in two of my applications. One of the awards funded sabbatical research in New Zealand, and the other was a two-year, nonresidential fellowship that led to the development of a new research project. When I came up for tenure in 2007–2008, my book Universal Preschool: Policy Change, Stability, and the Pew Charitable Trusts was forthcoming with the State University of New York Press (Bushouse 2009); several of my articles had been published, and more were in the pipeline; and I had a new funded sabbatical research project and a fellowship that would lead to developing my second major research project.
Yet even with my research accomplishments, my tenure case could have turned out differently if I had not had advocates who could explain why my tenure-track appointment started in 1999 but my tenure decision year was not until 2007. Senior faculty in my department and in CPPA who provided a supporting tenure letter framed the additional time on the tenure clock as a positive rather than negative. They were able to do this in part because of published research on women faculty’s career trajectories that demonstrated the long-run productivity of women who become mothers. An example of research that was fundamental in making this case is John Long’s (1992) longitudinal study of scientific productivity differences between men and women professors, in which he found that whereas men start their careers with higher rates of productivity than women, the reverse occurs at the end of careers, with women’s productivity outpacing men’s.
In addition, my department had changed significantly in the years leading up to my tenure decision year. The generation of white males with wives at home and 1950s attitudes about women had largely retired and were replaced with junior faculty with small children and senior female faculty who fully understood the intense pressures that assistant professors who are mothers of young children experience. My department also had a chair that actively supported junior faculty, especially new parents. These changes and the additional support made all the difference in my tenure case. The reality is that my curriculum vitae did not look like the typical Research I university assistant professor’s CV. As Mary Ann Mason (2009b) persuasively argues, if we are committed to supporting women in academia, then we must be willing to accept that there are gaps in CVs, allow for tenure clocks to “go long” and be flexible with modified duties. The difficult task ahead is to alter university culture so that these changes are not interpreted as individual failings but rather expected accommodations for faculty with family responsibilities.
As academics, we move for jobs, and that often takes us far from extended family. Every working woman has to develop her support structure. Some hire college student babysitters, a nanny, or au pair; others have a stay-at-home spouse; and still others piece together a patchwork of arrangements (Jackson 2008). These fundamental structures in our lives allow us to function on a daily basis. However, although support outside of work is crucial, it is insufficient if the workplace does not allow us to succeed by creating policies that support parental leave and modified duties. Even with those policies in place, if the work culture does not welcome participation in those policies, mothers will be hesitant to use them to get the support they need.
Now that I have tenure, I am thankful to have been able to see my way through to the other side. My children are now nine years old, and I find that I can balance work and family much better at this stage of my career and their stage of development. I love my children, I love my work, and I am thankful for having both in my life. Yet at many points during those early years, I did not think I would get to this place. Without the family-leave policy at the University of Massachusetts, I could not have continued in a tenure-track position. But it is important to note that the family-leave policy was just the beginning of the support I needed to succeed. The administrative leaves with the CPPA were crucial in allowing me a reprieve from the pressure to publish. Without the option of an administrative leave, I have no doubt that I would have left my tenure-track position. And finally, when my case for tenure was presented, it was critically important that senior faculty who understood the dual demands of academia and motherhood presented my case to my department and to higher levels in the university to counteract negative perceptions of gaps in my publishing record, modified duties, and “going long.” Mothers need parental leave, but they also need support throughout their pretenure years to help them cope with the intense dual demands of academia and child rearing; otherwise, we will lose far too many of them to the “leaky pipeline” (Jackson 2008), and the academy will be the poorer for it.
