Moms in Academia: Will it be faculty or family?

A week after Anna Haley-Lock completed collecting data for her dissertation, she gave birth to daughter Eva.

The timing couldn't have been better. With the research concluded, she could spend the next two years reviewing her records and writing amid naps and changing diapers.

One hour she'd be feeding her baby, the next she'd be typing up analyses for her treatise on employment in non-profits. Eva became known as the "write-up baby."

"I didn't realize I would be cutting it (the birth and completion of her research) so quickly," said Haley-Lock, 36, now an assistant professor of social work at the University of Washington and the mother of a 2-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.

She planned both pregnancies. Haley-Lock wanted to work at her degree and career while raising her children, and she was concerned that if she waited too long, she might not conceive.

The decision to have children -- and when -- is a complicated one for young women pursing academic careers. Though women in many fields have to balance work and family, academics face a particular challenge: The same years that they're working to gain the job security that comes with tenure may be the last years they're most likely to become pregnant.

Local universities are trying to address the issues confronting campus moms.

Most allow new parents to take time off without hurting their careers. The UW provides five child care facilities for faculty, staff and students and seven lactation stations on campus so working moms can pump their breast milk between classes. Seattle Pacific University organizes support groups for female faculty.

Though most universities have become more open to women over the decades, some faculty members say that women who have children early in their careers still face scrutiny from colleagues -- particularly if they take time off from scholarship and research to raise a baby.

College officials say they are working to change the culture on campus so female faculty members feel supported.

"There's a moral imperative to make the university a wonderful, inclusive climate that makes it possible for everyone to succeed and thrive," said Ana Mari Cauce, the UW's executive vice provost. "But in addition to that, if we don't figure out how to keep highly talented women, how to attract and keep highly talented women faculty, we will not be as excellent a place."

Women on campus

Women make up 35 percent of the tenured or tenure-track faculty members in the country, according to the American Council on Education.

At the UW, the state's largest public university, women make up about 37 percent of the total faculty and about 29 percent of the tenured faculty.

Women make up more than half of the undergraduate and graduate populations there.

Women first entered academia in large numbers during World War II. The women's rights movement in the '70s and affirmative action in the '80s brought more women into the academy. By the end of the '90s, some women began bringing their babies to work.

Over time, more women moved into positions of leadership on campus. The UW hired provost Phyllis Wise to oversee academic affairs last year. She has since appointed at least five other women to top vice provost positions.

When hired by a university, a new faculty member is essentially on probation. The assistant professor must show that he or she will be a productive member of the faculty through scholarship, research, teaching and public service.

At the UW, a professor comes up for tenure review by senior faculty members after six years. Tenure basically guarantees the faculty member a position at the university for life. If a candidate is not tenured, that person must leave the university.

Those six years that a young assistant professor is working toward tenure may parallel prime childbearing and child-nurturing periods for women.

"Tenure is set up on a very male model," said Cynthia Price, associate vice president for academic affairs at Seattle Pacific University.

For Eve Riskin, her 20s and early 30s were a "rush, rush, rush" to gain tenure.

She made a conscious decision to focus on her career, earning her bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then a graduate degree from Stanford before taking a position at the UW.

She learned she received tenure as a professor of engineering in 1995 at the age of 32. A year later, she became a mother.

"It was very challenging, and I just remember I got very little done that first year," said Riskin, now an associate dean in the college of engineering. "I was just very grateful that I didn't have to get tenure."

Riskin said today she sees more young women choosing to have children before they become full professors.

Other women make a different decision, dropping out of the tenure track to focus on family.

Catherine Petroff ended her pursuit of tenure in 2000, seven years after joining the UW. At the time, the engineering professor had four children -- then ages 3, 6, 9 and 12 -- and a husband who traveled often for business.

"I really saw that I had to make a choice whether I was going to take care of everybody else's kids who were in college or I was going to take care of my four who I hoped would get there," she said.

Petroff, now 46 and an affiliate assistant professor at the UW, runs her own consulting firm and is developing a class for the UW. Given her family demands, she said that the university couldn't have done anything to make it easier for her to remain on the tenure track.

"My advice when people talk to me is if you're going to have kids (you're) going to need a support network at home, not necessarily at the university," she said.

Many universities -- including the UW, Seattle Pacific University and Seattle University -- allow faculty members to take a year off the tenure clock to care for a newborn. When a professor comes up for tenure review, that year is not included in the candidate's total body of work.

However, some women still don't take time off, fearing that it will be counted against them -- particularly in male-dominated fields -- even though a university's policies say otherwise.

Margaret Chon, a law professor at Seattle University, said she could not recall reviewing the file of a woman who had taken a year's leave.

"We do recognize that we will get penalized, so nobody ever does it," said Chon, 47.

That might change as more women fill junior faculty ranks, she said, but the prevailing institutional mindset is that, "You don't take time off. You separate work from family, and those norms are replacing and changing very slowly."

Gail Lasprogata asked for an additional year to gain tenure after the birth of her twins, who are now 5 years old. The extension didn't stop her promotion to associate business professor at Seattle University, she said. The 39-year-old, who also has an 8-year-old, got tenure earlier this year.

Her department also has accommodated her family schedule, enabling her to consolidate her classes to a couple of days a week.

"I never had any problem," she said. "If I asked for something like that I usually got it."

Grant aimed at support

Job satisfaction is another concern for some women with children.

Last year the UW surveyed faculty and staff on the university's working conditions and culture. While more than half of the staff said they thought those with young children could thrive professionally, less than a third of the faculty agreed.

The UW is trying to change that.

It received a grant several years ago in part to support engineering, math and science faculty members who want to reduce their course load to care for a child or hire a gradate student to conduct research while they are on leave.

Now it is seeking to offer similar support to the rest of the campus.

The university recently received a $250,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to improve faculty career flexibility.

University officials hope to use that money to expand child care on campus to accommodate some of the parents on its long waiting list and develop a support group for new moms.

They are redrafting a letter that informs tenure reviewers that a candidate who took a year off might not have work to show for the leave -- and that shouldn't be counted against the person. They are also studying how many faculty members take advantage of the UW's leave policy.

Seattle's other universities also have taken steps to improve conditions for working mothers.

Seattle University has experimented with a job share that lets two tenured faculty members work part time. Female faculty members at Seattle Pacific University met quarterly last year to discuss personal issues affecting them. Younger professors were able to ask their older colleagues for advice.

Universities are examining family-friendly policies that will help them recruit and retain women who juggle the pressures of academics and the demands of raising a family.

For some women, it can be tough.

"I have a mantra that I will just do what I can do," Haley-Lock said.

She gave birth to her second child the May of her first year at the UW -- another well-timed birth, since she didn't have to teach during the summer. She expects to be up for tenure in the fall of 2009.

Though teaching, research and raising a family can make for tiring days, Haley-Lock notes that academia provides a flexible schedule to accommodate sick kids. She also has the help of her husband, Eric Lock, a lecturer at the university.

The assistant professor is happy with her decision not to delay the start of her family.

"I didn't want to experience becoming a parent as I was experiencing becoming a faculty member," she said.

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