Balancing Work and Family for Faculty: Why It's Important

Academe, Nov/Dec 2004 by Curtis, John W

More satisfaction, progress toward gender equity, and an edge in recruiting the best faculty-helping faculty balance their careers and their family lives promises benefits for all.

We are defined by the work we do. In the United States, and in the twentyfirst century, there is no escaping that fact. We even define ourselves by our work, all of us to some degree. And yet we are more than the work we do. Each of us has multiple roles, and we interact together in groups: households, families, communities. And although we may define ourselves first by what we do, it is those personal relationships outside work that make us whole.

The success of faculty members in balancing their academic careers with family responsibilities is a matter of more than individual happiness: it is also a matter of addressing structural inequities and attracting the most qualified candidates to the academic profession. To make it possible for faculty members to balance work and family, institutions must introduce policy changes-and faculty must take a closer look at aspects of the academic culture that have traditionally made such a balance difficult.

As academics, we sometimes do not consider what we do to be "work." Our teaching is more of a vocation, in the sense of a calling, than simply a job. Our research and scholarship spring from deeply felt curiosity, a drive to find the answer, a commitment to make things better. We volunteer to serve because we care about our institutions, our students, and our communities. Although confounding reality often makes it difficult to live "a life of the mind," even the most exploited among us experience the moments of inspiration that remind us why we wanted to do this work in the first place. And as we look at the careers we have constructed thus far, it seems like a natural progression from student to teacher, from research assistant to research scientist, from volunteer to leader.

By its nature, academic work is potentially boundless: there is always one more question to answer; one more problem to solve; one more piece to read, to write, to see, or to create. Still, this unbounded activity occurs within a structure of jobs and households. We do a job to make a living; our work is part of our contribution to a household.

Our jobs are part of the activity of a larger institutionwhether we consider it to be a single college or university or higher education as a whole-and it is a "greedy institution," to use sociologist Lewis Coser's term. It increasingly attempts to appropriate the products of our academic work and offer them in the marketplace. In the process, it creates its own corporate imperative for growth and self-preservation-even if not for profit.

In an earlier time, this institutional imperative was the product of a collective effort, performed for the common good in a democratic society, and governed by members of the collective itself. In this context of a collectively defined mission, the interests of the faculty member and the institution generally coincided. But the relationship between college or university and academic worker has changed. The institution no longer receives the level of funding from public sources that it once did, and the drive to attract revenues from other sources has pushed institutions to pursue "bottom-line" strategies to achieve short-term goals-with little apparent consideration for broader or longterm goals. These strategies include a shift to research, service, and academic "products" that have market value, and changing relations with employees: outsourcing support iunctions, increasing use of faculty with contingent term appointments, and requiring researchers to obtain outside tunding even for their base salaries.

But we should not idealize the past situation, either. In earlier times, nearly all faculty members were men, and all were presumed to be committed entirely to their academic work. Careers did not include time for primary caregiving. Even when open discrimination against women faculty members eased, many women found the structure of academic careers too restrictive in a society that still expected them to bear the largest share of family caregiving and household work.

Structural Inequity

This expectation of total commitment to an academic career has been slow to change. One consequence is a continuing gender inequity in the faculty as a whole. Women now make up about 42 percent of all college and university faculty, but women are still disproportionately found in community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and lower academic ranks. They are also more likely than men to be in part- or full-time non-tenure-track positions.

Some would argue that the disproportionate representation of women in teaching colleges and contingent faculty positions results from a choice they made to balance their career aspirations with family obligations. But that is precisely the point. Whether such a choice is "voluntary" or a product of discouragement, it is based on a perception that the tenure track and children (or family) are not compatible. Men are not as likely to make this choice. They are certainly less inclined to let family obligations discourage them from pursuing their career goals. And if they voluntarily raise the possibility of cutting back on their work obligations to care for loved ones, they will probably be encouraged to pursue the tenure-track position instead-even if that would mean sacrifice on the part of a female partner.