The View From Kalamazoo

Tell me, seriously – is it really, really, this hopeless? Is it just a great racket? The presence of children can be used to deny tenure, ignore a job or graduate program applicant…

How Babies Alter Careers for Academics

The Mommy Candidate

Singing the Grad School Baby Blues

Easing the Grad School Baby Blues

FWIW I think offering advice to women to, instead of having children too soon after landing a job (and before tenure), have the little critters in graduate school is poor advice, indeed. At least the woman with a full-time position worrying about tenure has some chance at getting it – the graduate student written off as too distracted by family responsibilities to ever be taken seriously who quits a masters or doctoral program mid-stream in frustration (or who makes it through the former only to be denied that magic key to the door of the latter) will never even be in the position to stuggle for tenure. In other words, at least those other mothers have a chance in hell, even if it’s only slightly more than that of a snowball…I’d love to be in the position of that snowball, personally.

No, I don’t think I have to worry about the glass ceiling or the missing rungs at the top of the ladders scaling the Ivory Tower…clearly I won’t even get far enough for the shadows of these to even begin to creep in my direction. I didn’t realize the moment my womb was first in use that I had permanently tied myself to the ground – able to make it up the lowest rungs of the ladder…close enough to see the rungs that lead farther up…but still prevented from taking that next step. Might someone have mentioned it sooner?