CU #5: Are you my academic mother?
Conscious uncoupling from the ivory tower, Part 5
Note: This is the fifth part of a series of essays using the book “Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to a Happily Even After” by Katherine Woodward Thomas to stimulate conversation about academic careers. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4.
Today we continue my free association with Katherine Woodward Thomas’ influential book about divorce, Conscious Uncoupling. Thank you so much for your comments on the first four installments; I’ve learned so much from everyone!
There are five steps to a thoughtful divorce, writes Thomas. After honestly naming and accepting your emotions around the event, the next step towards creating meaning out of your divorce is “reclaim your power and your life.” No problem, right?
What KWH is talking about here is more straightforward than it sounds. She’s suggesting that you actively create a narrative around the breakup, one that is honest about your role in what happened. If we can “release unconscious and habitual patterns”, she says, the more likely we will learn from the experience rather than cycling right back into a similar relationship. Without self-awareness, we may repeat our most deeply engrained personal patterns over and over again throughout our lives and in different contexts.
I always have to remind people that “What the f—— is wrong with me?” is not a question that will ever lead to positive growth and change.
—KWT, Conscious Uncoupling
Understanding yourself as the source of your experience, and doing so in a kind and self-compassionate way, is an important step in any personal evolution—and the one I seem to be in as I publicly contemplate my divorce from academia.
Some of the deepest personal and cultural roles are those we learn as part of a family. Of course, a lab is not a family, it’s a professional workplace. But so many of the ways in which we’ve come to think of ourselves comes from our families and our family dynamics, and it’s hard to leave those formative relationships behind. I find it fascinating to consider how I have recreated family dynamics in my department, laboratory and even in the classroom.
In honor of Mother’s Day, let’s examine some of the ways that faculty, especially in the life sciences, subconsciously play the role of mothers in their professional lives.
Professor mom
This article from our students’ satirical newspaper (WUnderground):
has been making me laugh since it was published in 2015.
I called my PhD advisor, Erin O’Shea, “mom” once and I just about died from embarrassment. To her credit, she thought it was pretty funny, but I blush just writing about it. Some of that scar comes simply from making a mistake. But also it was an awkward demonstration of the extent to which I’d transferred my wish to please authority figures from my parents directly to my thesis advisor.
I’ve certainly experienced this from the other side, taking on some of the desire to protect a student—though I resisted it for a long time. Some years ago, one of my PhD students started dating a graduate student in another department while in my lab. I felt such a surge of highly inappropriate protective mama-bear energy that I’m not sure what I would have done if he had behaved badly. (Luckily he is a lovely person and they are now happily married.)
A more healthy manifestation of these parental feelings towards our students is the pride we feel when they get awards, and go on to do incredible things that we would have no idea how to do. I’ve been reluctant to share these feelings with my students in a possibly misguided attempt to keep things professional.
Department mom
We bring our family roles to the department, too. Early in my faculty career, I actively avoided being the department “mom”. I had seen women faculty do this as a graduate student and didn’t want to play such a gendered role. I was anxious not to fall into a pattern where women typically stepped in to provide emotional support to department members (not just those in their lab), losing that time to work on their own research and career advancement.
In retrospect, I regret not exploring my reluctance earlier. Yes, we should keep things professional, and there is real potential for harm when we bring anything else into a work relationship. But. Academia is so challenging, in ways that are personal as well as professional, and everyone needs emotional support. Being supporting and nurturing is not wrong, it’s part of our job as faculty. I found it a very delicate balance, and I think I too often erred on the unsupportive side.
One problematic aspect of this department “mom” work is that it’s unrewarded, and that it’s most often done by those with the least privilege—women, people of color, first-generation academics. Those who end up taking on more of this kind of work do so for a variety of reasons: personality traits, the desire to support non-majoritarian students, or pressure from within the department or from other communities. The issue is that department “moms” pay a career price, one that can be very steep. Solutions may include 1) expecting more men and white women to do this kind of supportive work and 2) valuing it in tenure decisions, in salary increases, and in respect.
How can we balance the problematic aspects of “mom” behavior with the ways that it humanizes our workplace?
Lab mom
I also actively resisted being a “lab mom”, someone who cleans up after others and organizes social events. Not that I’m not fastidious or good at organizing—I am—but because I hated the gendered aspect. This work is often taken on by women students or postdocs. In my own research lab, I tried to subvert this trend by hiring lab technicians to pick things up and keep us organized. I also tried to keep tabs on who was taking on the job of organizing social events, and at some point even made this a rotating lab job. In the end, these efforts distributed things a bit more equitably, but cleaning up and planning events still ended up being done by those who cared the most, not those to whom I’d assigned the task.
In the end, I have to agree with Science’s editor in chief, Holden Thorp, that “Scientists shouldn’t be afraid to acknowledge their humanity.” Being human makes science messy—but who better to help clean up a mess than a “mom”?
Discussion section
What family roles do you see yourself and others playing out in your department, classroom, or lab group?
How can we balance the problematic aspects of “mom” behavior with the ways that it humanizes our workplace?
Very true: "One problematic aspect of this department 'mom' work is that it’s unrewarded, and that it’s most often done by those with the least privilege—women, people of color, first-generation academics."
When I joined the English faculty at my former employer, I was young enough to be everyone's child (or grandchild). So it was a perfect glimpse of how these gender conventions worked for previous generations. There was a lot of infighting, and there was some shared leadership of the department, but really one motherly mentor was the longstanding chair. One senior professor even accused his nemesis at a department meeting of hiding behind her skirts. It was really something. She definitely mothered me through my tenure review. And then another female colleague took her place before I eventually completed a term as chair.
For that earlier generation, there was no doubt that female faculty predominantly served as committee secretary rather than chair and that the service load (particularly advising) fell more heavily upon those academic mothers. By my time, I think the service load and roles were more equitable, but my perception might be skewed. I was secretary just as often as I was chair (partly because I am a fast typist), and I took my mentorship role seriously when two junior colleagues were hired on my watch. In fact, one of them joked that I was trying to show them equal attention, the way I did with my two daughters.
Where I think female academics pay a steeper price if they choose not to conform to the motherly role is on student evaluations. It's something I was aware of when I reviewed tenure files. But I'm not sure every committee reflects deeply on that unfair expectation. And I think the expectations are particularly brutal for academics who are actual mothers of young children. In that case the pressure at home and at work must be relentless.
Liz, this blog post makes me think of the chapter I have just read in Tara Mohr's Playing Big (I highly recommend by the way!). I think it is Chapter 5 where she talks about the behaviors or language we use as women that undermine us. We often do this to show friendliness or good will, but we end up looking less confident. However, the solution (for women and probably also for anyone from a minoritized background) isn't to just say what you think, because the reality is, while for men this makes them look like a competent leader, for women, there is a price: being blunt and direct can make us look "bossy, arrogant" etc... So, Mohr (and other authors I have read) suggest that women should actually try to establish likability first (I know, so unfair) and THEN say what they think, without using the undermining language. The key thing is though, you establish likability via genuine and honest ways for you.
The reason why your blog post made me think about this is, I think, in trying to stay away from these gendered roles, a lot of women hide or repress their awesome emotional intelligence that would also naturally establish their likability. Then they try to be like men, be direct, because why not, and that doesn't work in their favor.
So, I have been thinking, bringing the nurturing side actually has two advantages (of course as long as you aren't overdoing it to hurt your career): 1) It helps the individual feel more emotionally satisfied, bring their full self, and feel good because helping others make us feel good. 2) Establish likability, so that way you get to be more straightforward and "men-like" in other areas.