Family Responsibilities and Academic Work

The American Association of University Professors' "Statement of
Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work" gave rise
to the following discussion on WMST-L in November 2001.  Some people
expressed concern that many academics aren't covered by the AAUP's
Statement, while others questioned the fairness and/or wisdom of
the proposed policies.  Also of interest may be an earlier WMST-L
file, Maternity/Family Leave.  For additional WMST-L files available
on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Since I am on the national governing board of the American Association of
University Professors, I participated in this vote; it was approved without
controversy.

Rosie
+++++++


I'm delighted to inform you that on Saturday,
November 10, 2001, the AAUP Council, which is the Association's governing
board, unanimously approved the "Statement of Principles on Family
Responsibilities and Academic Work."  The statement is now official AAUP
policy, and will be included in the next edition of the "Redbook" (the
official
policy manual of the AAUP.)

Special thanks go to Marty West (U.C. Davis, School of Law), Chair of AAUP's
Subcommittee on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work, and Mary Gibson,
(Rutgers University), Chair of AAUP's Committee on the Status of Women in
the Academic Profession, who presented the statement to the Council.  The
final version of the statement will be available on the webpage later this
month. <http://www.aaup.org/index.htm> Donna Euben

Donna R. Euben
Counsel
American Association of University Professors
1012 14th Street, N.W., Suite 500
WDC 20005
202-737-5900
fax-202-737-5526

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rosa Maria Pegueros, J.D., Ph.D.
Women's Studies Program &       Washburn Hall, 217C
Department of History           E-mail:
University of Rhode Island      <rpe2836u  @  postoffice.uri.edu>
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3  Telephone: (401) 874-4092
Kingston, RI 02881                    Fax: (401) 874-2595
http://www.uri.edu/personal/rpe2836u/
http://nick.uri.edu/artsci/wms/pegueros.htm

"I have learned from my teachers and from my colleagues. But
I have learned the most from my students." --Rabbi Hanina

I was surprised by some of the hostility on the Chronicle's Colloquy on
this topic (along the lines of, "people who choose to have children know
what they're getting into and shouldn't get special privileges" as well as
some nasty throwing around of the word "breeder").  The responses there
make me curious to know what other WMST-L'ers think about this resolution
in favor of giving new parents extra time to achieve tenure.  It seems to
be a fundamental Women's Studies issue, though I would like to see this
generosity extended to those who aren't new parents but who have other
care-giving responsibilities (perhaps this, too, is a fundamental Women's
Studies issue?).
Jessica Nathanson

Jessica Nathanson
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies
Concentration in Women's Studies
State University of New York at Buffalo
janathanson  @  yahoo.com
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jan3

Hi.  Jessica Nathanson asked what other WMST-L'ers think about the
AAUP Council resolution in favor of giving new parents extra time to
achieve tenure. I haven't seen the resolution, so cannot speak to that
statement, however, I think that women working in academia should be
activists in seeking a more equitable workplace for all workers, not
just tenure-track and tenured workers.  The conditions of employment
for different groups in academia create a privilege structure that can
lead not only to morale problems within the university, but to a
significant misunderstanding of faculty work outside the university.
As long as most workers in the US do not have the work-related
benefits that already accrue to faculty members (including significant
autonomy, flexibility in hours of employment, a high level of job
security, and so on), calls for additional benefits--unless couched as
a call for attention to oppressive work conditions experienced by
other workers--may well appear t!  o be unwarranted.  While job
security may seem especially precarious to the untenured, as a group,
they probably experience less job insecurity than most US
workers--that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have more safeguards,
like recognition of parenting responsibilities, only that there is a
reason that calls for additional safeguards may not be
enthusiastically supported by individuals not in that situation.
JoAnn Castagna joann-castagna  @  uiowa.edu

Where can I get a copy of this document? I am finding it hard to follow this
discussion without having read the text.
Thanks.
Meryl Altman

I found a June 2001 version of it at http://www.aaup.org/re01fam.htm
This is the version that passed the Committee on the Status of Women
and the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee prior to final AAUP vote
- there are apparently few changes, but I haven't yet seen the final
document.

Betsy Eudey, PhD
Director, Center for Women's Studies and Programs
Horace C. Smith Bldg, Room 101
800 University Way,  Spartanburg, SC 29303
(864) 503-5724 (voice)   (864) 503-5709 (fax)
beudey  @  gw.uscs.edu      www.uscs.edu/~women

It will be posted within the next month- according to the original post.
I've looked at the aaup site and it isn't there, yet.
Janni

I haven't seen the text of the statement either, but I would tend to be
wary of anything that granted a benefits package to anyone based on a
privileged status.  Everyone does not have equal access to parenting
under law, nor via health insurance.  Adoption and second parent
adoption, as well as a host of other legal protections related to family
making (marriage chief amongst them) are not available to gay folks in
many states or at all in this country.  Subsidized fertility
technologies through health benefits generally require that one partner
has diminished fertility.  It may be that both partners in a lesbian or
gay couple are reproductively healthy and are therefore unable to use
benefits defined in heterocentric terms.  It is hard to imagine how a
resolution like this could be applied fairly.

Moreover, is what is at issue here really about responsibility sharing
in male/female households?  Is this a response to increasing numbers of
women in academia?  Just curious where this comes from-- if choosing not
to have a family is a choice, isn't choosing to have one a choice too?
Why should those who've elected _not_ to have children be penalized?  Is
there some benefit package in the works for them?

Jessica Nathanson wrote:
>
> I was surprised by some of the hostility on the Chronicle's Colloquy on
> this topic (along the lines of, "people who choose to have children know
> what they're getting into and shouldn't get special privileges" as well as
> some nasty throwing around of the word "breeder").  The responses there
> make me curious to know what other WMST-L'ers think about this resolution
> in favor of giving new parents extra time to achieve tenure.

scout
--
"clever quote here"
[test signature file]
scout,
informavore
scout  @  hoyden.org

--- scout <scout  @  HOYDEN.ORG> wrote:
> Moreover, is what is at issue here really about responsibility sharing
> in male/female households?  Is this a response to increasing numbers of
> women in academia?  Just curious where this comes from-- if choosing not
> to have a family is a choice, isn't choosing to have one a choice too?
> Why should those who've elected _not_ to have children be penalized?  Is
> there some benefit package in the works for them?

I can't address all of these questions, because I just don't have this
information.  But in responding to part of Scout's email, I'm also going
to try to characterize some of the discussion I've seen about this issue.
Both the resolution and the ensuing discussion on the Chronicle site seem
to beg a feminist response, and I'll be curious to see if Women's Studies
Depts and Programs make any formal response to either or both.  It seems
to me that much of this discussion is relevant to both the issues we
discuss in the Women's Studies classroom with students, as well as the
real circumstances under which we study and teach.

The way that the issue of "choice" has emerged as a focal point in the
discussion seems particularly ripe for critique from Women's Studies
circles (especially given its ramifications for discussion about
reproductive freedom).  It's one of the reasons I'm interested to know
what folks on WMST-L think about this, because while I do think it's
important to recognize agency, I also think that it's an
oversimplification to see child-bearing and rearing as merely a matter of
choice.  Obviously, some of us do indeed make choices to have or not have
children, but I'm not ready to say that every family with children or
without children has consciously chosen this.  Women can and do get
pregnant without necessarily choosing to do so; women may choose to go
through with a pregnancy, but many women don't have other options; couples
may not be able to conceive and for many reasons may not have access to
fertility treatments and/or artificial insemination.  For all of these
reasons and others like them (some of which, re. privilege and access to
it, Scout provides in the original email), I'm wary of statements such as
"having or not having children is a choice."  I think it's more
complicated than that, though certainly choice is part of it.

Another issue central to the discussion has been whether or not offering
this benefit to new parents acts as a penalty to those without children.
I suppose this depends on how you look at it.  Some have argued that if,
as apparently is the case, new parents, particularly women, are tenured
less often than those without children, this resolution would in fact be a
form of affirmative action, in the sense that it attempts to rectify a
situation in which women with children have as a group had difficulty
getting tenure.  If we look at it this way, it's unclear how those without
children are being penalized.  On the other hand, many have pointed out
that other care-giving responsibilities are just as demanding as
child-rearing, and that giving extra time to new parents does unfairly
single them out when many others could benefit from extra time.
(Interestingly, at least one person characterized these other care-giving
responsibilities as NOT being a choice, while having children WAS a choice
-- I thought this was odd, since if we follow this definition of "choice",
presumably an adult could decide NOT to be the care-taker for an eldery
parent or an ill partner.  I'm certainly not suggesting this would be a
reasonable "choice", just noting that the writer seemed to have compassion
for only one "choice".)

Another response that was common (and that has been expressed on WMST-L)
is that this resolution doesn't go far enough, that it needs to account
for other needs beyond child-bearing and rearing.  This certainly makes
sense in a feminist context (and I agree with it).  However, it seems that
there has been a lot of unwillingness to evaluate this resolution on its
own merit; in arguing for more benefits for all, it seems that many folks
are simultaneously resisting taking a stand on this particular issue.
Others have more or less rejected the resolution because of this; still
others have argued that it can be seen as a first step toward a tenure
process that would take these other needs into account.

Finally, the gist of the resolution can be found in an article on the
Chronicle site.  Someone else on this list posted the URL a week or so
ago; I'm sorry I don't have that address, but the site is searchable.  If
you go to last week's Colloquy, you should be able to link to at least one
of the two related articles.

Jessica Nathanson

Jessica Nathanson
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies
Concentration in Women's Studies
State University of New York at Buffalo
janathanson  @  yahoo.com
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jan3

Dear Women's Studies List,

I have just finished going through the tenure process, during which I had two
children.  In my experience, this is not an issue of equitable sharing of
household responsibilities.  Despite a very concerted effort on the part of my
husband and myself to share household and childrearing responsibilities,
giving birth and caring for toddlers had a very dramatic impact on my research
agenda. (My husband was already tenured so it did not affect him in the same
way.  The only way we remained sane was through his sabbatical, and my year
leave without pay.)
This is not an issue that can or should be addressed by individual
accommodation to sexist institutions (sharing of childcare etc.).  It requires
institutional change.

Regards,

Angela E. Hubler
Assistant Professor of Women's Studies
3 Leasure Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS  66506
(785)532-7274
fax: (785)532-3299

<< This is not an issue that can or should be addressed by individual
 accommodation to sexist institutions (sharing of childcare etc.).  It
requires
 institutional change. >> Angela Hubler

Then there would be the same institutional changes for males that experience
parenthood as well, correct?

Susan vanHoek

The intent of the resolution was to make that accomodation as well.

At 20:42 15/11/01 EST, you wrote:

>Then there would be the same institutional changes for males that experience
>parenthood as well, correct?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rosa Maria Pegueros, J.D., Ph.D.
Women's Studies Program &       Washburn Hall, 217C
Department of History           E-mail:
University of Rhode Island      <rpe2836u  @  postoffice.uri.edu>
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3  Telephone: (401) 874-4092
Kingston, RI 02881                    Fax: (401) 874-2595
<http://www.uri.edu/personal/rpe2836u/>
<http://nick.uri.edu/artsci/wms/pegueros.htm>

"I have learned from my teachers and from my colleagues. But
I have learned the most from my students." --Rabbi Hanina

Regarding the messages below, it seems to me that a number of previously
accepted practices -- overloading new instructors that hope for tenure,
making residents at hospitals work so many hours that they are nearly
sleepwalking, giving new members of legal firms so much work that their
health is nearly broken -- should be reconsidered.  Many of these practices
appear to be a professional version of hazing and continue for the same
reason hazing does.

It is interesting that the childbirth/childcare issue brought up so many
related issues.  Clearly most people need less pressure and more time to
complete the work that entitles them to consideration for tenure.  Since the
assumptions of administrators considering teachers for tenure and residents
and young lawyers for positions were that there would be a support person to
make this professional hazing something that the person desiring the
position could get through, and this is no longer true (and never was fair
and reasonable), it is time to consider new requirements that would place
quality over stamina and allow human needs to be considered.

Taking care of an elderly parent or a young child or a sick partner or one's
own health should not endanger a professional career.  The institution that
insists that a career be started by sacrificing family members may find
itself served by resentful people who are mean-spirited about considering
the needs of others, a situation benefiting no one.  No institution should
assume that it is entitled to the labor of the person being hired as well as
a "free of charge" support person or that the person being hired has no
responsibilities outside of service to the institution.

Some sacrifices are expected and even reasonable, great long-term sacrifice
should not be.


Earlier messages:

1) This is not an issue that can or should be addressed by individual
 accommodation to sexist institutions (sharing of childcare etc.).  It
requires
 institutional change. >> Angela Hubler

2) Then there would be the same institutional changes for males that
experience
parenthood as well, correct?

Marilyn Grotzky

I purposely posed those troubling questions as questions.  I agree with
Grotzky that overworking people is outdated and can be mean spirited.
But I am concerned about how the questions around this issue are
answered, for a number of reasons.

The legal and medical technologies of family making are not merely
"privileges" that gays and lesbians don't have; they are entitlements
and guarantees designed around heteronormativity that are kept from gays
through actual practices of discrimination.  To avoid strong terms like
that is to build heterosex families around the erasure of gay men and
lesbians.  Even if the proposal is expanded to include "care-giving,"
close relationships that are not legally protected (as married
heterosexuals can take for granted) would be difficult to recognize.  It
is not only those who are parenting or caring for parents who may find
themselves in a care-giving role; one could plausibly care for a friend,
a former lover, non-biological child, or beloved pet.  In fact, I'd
guess that at some point or another, everyone finds themselves in that
role, so it seems like a wash to me.

That's not all that troubles me.  Nathanson says that the proposal may
be designed to address the problem that women are not able to earn
tenure in the expected numbers.  It makes sense that this issue would
arise when critical numbers of women are in academia.  But in terms of
interpersonal equality and reproductive choice (and with very few
exceptions, I believe we must frame those who have borne children as
having exercised choice, or we remove women's agency), I believe this
measure may be counter-productive.

If in fact this measure is to address women's tenure problems vis-a-vis
child rearing [I don't doubt that there other barriers women face in
earning tenure besides child rearing], then either women can't hack it
in academia (which none of us would argue), or they are not getting help
from their partners (if they have them).  So what this actually could be
seen to do, first, is enshrine male prerogative to not be equal partners
in the home since the workplace has accommodated that refusal.  Second,
it could have the effect of reducing women's choice to not bear children
against the pressure of a culture that says they must in order to be
fully women (perhaps one of Nathanson's factors in women's reproductive
choices) because now an accommodation has been made that will assist in
the juggling act.  Lastly, unless the issues of household responsibility
sharing are resolved, it will still protect an unfair advantage for men
who will benefit from this proposal while their female partners continue
to do the bulk of the work.  (So far as I know, the latest studies still
show a large gap between men and women in terms of homemaking
responsibilities.)

It seems to me that the fairest thing, following Grotzky's remarks, is
to simply extend the time allowed to earn tenure for all.  It's not just
in the revered heterocentric nuclear family that care-giving
responsibilities exist.  The formulations of these bonds exceed easy
legal and medical definitions.

scout
--
"clever quote here"
[test signature file]
scout,
informavore
scout  @  hoyden.org

Why do you assume the worst?  The AAUP is the primary organization
standing up for academic freedom. The members and lawyers who worked on this
policy are real feminists; furthermore, you haven't read it yet.
Please read it; I'll let you know when it goes on the website.  Don't assume
that nothing can meet your standards.


At 19:17 16/11/01 -0800, you wrote:
>I purposely posed those troubling questions as questions.  I agree with
>Grotzky that overworking people is outdated and can be mean spirited.
>But I am concerned about how the questions around this issue are
>answered, for a number of reasons.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rosa Maria Pegueros, J.D., Ph.D.
Women's Studies Program &       Washburn Hall, 217C
Department of History           E-mail:
University of Rhode Island      <rpe2836u  @  postoffice.uri.edu>
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3  Telephone: (401) 874-4092
Kingston, RI 02881                    Fax: (401) 874-2595
<http://www.uri.edu/personal/rpe2836u/>
<http://nick.uri.edu/artsci/wms/pegueros.htm>

"I have learned from my teachers and from my colleagues. But
I have learned the most from my students." --Rabbi Hanina

Dr. Pegueros et al--

I have read the draft at the URL posted earlier.  It confirmed my
objections: that it is a response to tenure issues related to women's
role in caring for children, acknowledging that women bear a
disproportionate burden, but is recommended to be applied to men and
women without distinction.  It refered consistently to "spouses" and
contained only weak language regarding same-sex partnerships and does
not address permutations on situations when a partner may not have a
legal relationship to a child (or other cared-for person), leaving
institutions to "contemplate . . . the existence" of non-heteronormative
families.

Please don't misunderstand; clearly there is a need that requires
address.  I stated a very simple and I believe extremely fair means for
doing so at the end of my last email.

respectfully,
scout

> >It seems to me that the fairest thing, following Grotzky's remarks, is
> >to simply extend the time allowed to earn tenure for all.  It's not just
> >in the revered heterocentric nuclear family that care-giving
> >responsibilities exist.  The formulations of these bonds exceed easy
> >legal and medical definitions.

--
"clever quote here"
[test signature file]
scout,
informavore
scout  @  hoyden.org

Scout wrote:

> >It seems to me that the fairest thing, following Grotzky's remarks, is
> >to simply extend the time allowed to earn tenure for all.  It's not just
> >in the revered heterocentric nuclear family that care-giving
> >responsibilities exist.  The formulations of these bonds exceed easy
> >legal and medical definitions.

I suspect that exending the time allowed for getting tenure would not
resolve the  problems that now exist:  As the new dispensation  would become
a new norm,  people would cease to feel that they had "extra" time to make a
case for tenure and would, I believe, start to find the new schedule as
onerous or difficult as the old one. This would be followed by a  demand for
new accommodations.  Why is six years "not enough"?  Why would seven or
eight necessarily be "enough?"  My observation is that  "enough time" has
little to do with care-giving  responsibilities and much more to do with
individual efforts and perhaps abilities and even inclination toward
scholarship.  When I hear people complain about  pressure, or "publish or
perish," I wonder if they're in the right line of work.  Why is it any
different than complaining because they're "forced" to teach year after
year?  Presumably, if they didn't like those activities, they could have
pursued a different line of work.

 Even assuming everyone is fully occupied during a typical academic year,
most faculty members teach no more than eight months of the year, with
further time off during those eight months.  There would seem to be plenty
of time for a wide range of the activities of life, both personal and
professional.  But discrepancies in performance can be seen throughout
people's careers, at all stages, despite the waxing and waning of
"care-giving responsiblities."

D.
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

When I graduated from college, there were graduation requirements.  Now
there are graduation agreements.  I wonder about tenure agreements, which
would allow case-by-case consideration.  Granted that this would still not
be problem-proof, it might be a move in a reasonable direction.  For
example, if I am a 32 year old recently married woman, I might factor in
child-bearing.  If I were a gay man with a former lover in need of an AIDS
support person, I could factor in care giving.  One might factor in
different services to the school in different years, publication one year,
faculty committee work the next.

And, yes, I do see problems -- If I admit I plan to have a child, I might
not get a job.  If I admit I know someone with AIDS, I might be considered
at risk.  We'd have to invent a world where the dollar was not the prime
consideration.  I imagine that if I'm a 28 year old woman not intending to
have children and without anyone in need of care in the foreseeable future,
I'll have more time than the other examples and get ahead faster.  I don't
think the 28 year old should be penalized for her choices -- which is not
necessarily the right word -- a parent with cancer or a disabled child is
not a choice.  I wonder if the AIDS support person and the woman on
maternity leave would feel the 28 year old was unfairly advantaged.

While we search for better answers, I think we need to keep in mind that any
advance is an advance and should be treated as such, though not the final
answer.

Marilyn Grotzky

Marilyn Grotzky writes,

                     "When I graduated from college, there were
graduation requirements.  Now there are graduation agreements.  I
wonder about tenure agreements, which would allow case-by-case
consideration."

My first reaction to this idea is quite favorable: I think that it would be
interesting to try to open up the idea of when one's tenure decision is
made.  On one level, I like the idea of a move away from the university
standard which penalizes people who are ready "early" (a woman friend of
mine has explained that her request to go up for "early tenure" in year 5
instead of year 6 would be scrutinized much more rigorously than a "normal"
request, as if she were asking a favor rather than demonstrating
qualifications) as well as penalizing those who aren't ready by the Official
Date.  This would only work, of course, if the university/college really
_meant it_ when they said they would honor all agreements equally.
Otherwise, it would be no more helpful than a Family Leave policy that
nobody takes advantage of because they cannot afford the setbacks, financial
& political & otherwise.

My second reaction, though, is that if we support the argument that tenure
and all the kinds of stability & freedom it brings with it is not just a
bonus but a real necessity to good academic work, any policy that delays (or
allows the delayal of) the application for tenure delays a crucial element
in successful teaching/research/service.  Since it seems to me that people
from underrepresented or less-powerful social groups would be more likely to
be requesting delays, the end result might be that those who are fortunate
in the support they receive in their academic careers (having the time/money
to complete tenure requirements early) would once again be granted more
advantages earlier than those who are, though "choices" or not, less
fortunate in their resources.

The problem remains that university expectations of what someone must do
before "earning" tenure (a) originate from the model of the male professor
whose wife handles the rest of his life, (b) reflect the mythos of the
scholar who peaks at age 32 and goes downhill from there, and (c) have,
moreover, increased in the past 20 years due not to the needs of departments
or fields but due in large part to mostly-artificial shortages of
tenure-track jobs.  (Not to mention problems with continuing backlash or
other kinds of discrimination.)  These are root problems not addressed an
extension of pre-tenure years.

While I agree with Marilyn that "While we search for better answers, ... we
need to keep in mind that any advance is an advance and should be treated as
such," I'm not sure that allowing "needy" people to take extra time before
they ask to be granted one of academic workers' fundamental powers *is* an
advance.  Certainly, if at this moment my university offered me the _real_
option of taking an extra couple of years before facing tenure review, I
would take it.  But I would be putting myself at risk -- facing yet another
"reappointment review" at which any of a number of my teaching styles or
research approaches or "collegial relationships" could be called forth as
evidence that I should not be kept on staff.  A better choice would be to
redefine the requirements of tenure so that they match better what regular
humans can now be expected, in the midst of their various lives, to
accomplish, and to match what departments/fields really need people to
accomplish in the first 15-20% of their academic career.

Or, put another way, if we're going to argue that overuse of
non-tenure-track faculty is exploitation (often though not exclusively of
women), I think we also need to argue against routinely extending the number
of pre-tenure years required of nominally "tenure-track" professors.
Anything that moves tenure further away from a group of faculty -- even if
it's "voluntary," even if it seems to help out in the "right now" situation,
even if it is done to help "save" someone's career -- seems to me to be a
step back in the long run, particularly in our increasingly adjunct-ized
institutions.

shelley


E. Shelley Reid
Assoc. Director of Composition
English Department
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK  74075

esreid  @  hotmail.com
esreid  @  okstate.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------
All times are changing times....Archetypes turn into millstones,
large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and
what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people
used to think.  (Ursula LeGuin)
----------------------------------------------------------------




_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

AAUP National Council Endorses Statement of Principles on
Family Responsibilities and Academic Work
Washington, D.C.-The Council of the American Association of University
Professors unanimously voted to endorse the Statement of Principles on
Family Responsibilities and Academic Work, which addresses the dilemma
faced by junior faculty members whose pretenure years coincide with a time
when they might become new parents. The new policy builds on the 1974
statement, Leaves of Absence for Child-Bearing, Child-Rearing, and Family
Emergencies, which called for
[a]n institution's policies on faculty appointments [to be] sufficiently
flexible to permit faculty members to combine family and career
responsibilities in the manner best suited to them as professionals and
parents. This flexibility requires the availability of such alternatives as
longer- term leaves of absence, temporary reductions in workload with no
loss of professional status, and retention of full-time affiliation thro
ughout the child-bearing and child-rearing years.
The AAUP's Committee on the Status of Women in the Academic Profession
revisited the 1974 statement to address some of the issues still facing
faculty members as they seek to integrate their family obligations and
their work responsibilities in today's academic community. The committee
recommended modified teaching schedules, "stopping the tenure clock,"
(i.e., extending the probationary period before a tenure decision), and
institutional assistance for family responsibilities. These policies fall
into two categories: (1) general policies addressing family
responsibilities, including family-care leaves and institutional support
for child and elder care; and (2) more specific policies, such as stopping
the tenure clock, that specifically relate to pretenure faculty members who
are primary or coequal caregivers for newborn or newly adopted children.
The 1974 statement permitted a professor to stop the tenure clock while on
leave for the birth of a child or related purpose. The new statement
recommends that, upon request, a faculty member be entitled to stop the
clock or extend the probationary period, with or without taking a full or
partial leave of absence, if the faculty member (whether male or female) is
a primary or coequal caregiver of newborn or newly adopted children. This
would enable faculty members to stop the tenure clock while continuing to
perform faculty duties at full or partial salary. The statement also
recommends that institutions allow the probationary period to be extended
for up to one year for each child, and further recommends that faculty be
allowed to stop the clock only twice, resulting in no more than two
one-year extensions of the probationary period
"The Association has responded to the pressures experienced by many junior
faculty members between the tenure and biological clocks," says Donna
Euben, staff counsel of the AAUP. "This statement is a tool for faculty and
administration on their individual campuses to explore policies that best
meet their needs in balancing work-family issues."
The full Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic
Work can be found at [www.aaup.org/re01fam.htm]. For more information,
contact Robin Burns at 202-737-5900, ext. 3013; rburns  @  aaup.org.

The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable
and educational
organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic
due process, and
standards of quality in higher education. The AAUP has more than 45,000
members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
###


Robin Burns
rburns  @  aaup.org
American Association of University Professors
1012 Fourteenth Street, NW, #500
Washington, DC  20005
1-800-424-2973 or 202-737-5900 ext. 3013
Fax: 202-737-5526

Hi. I am sorry to be chiming into this late. I read the statement in the
Chronicle a few weeks ago, probably when the discussion was happening on the
list. What I felt then was, so what. What I mean, is, as an intentional
single mother, and the only woman who blatantly conceived and proceeded to
raise a child out of wedlock as it were, in the dept., it took me several
waves of shock to realize even how to begin to interpret the layers of
"unable to separate personal and professional life" in my fourth year review
write up by my PRC. Of course, a colleague (male) (married) (heterosexual) in
another dept (sciences) was reported by his wife to be sleeping with his
female graduate assistant, and although the university knew, including his
dept,.the dean, the universirsity lawyer, and the affirmative action officer,
not a word was mentioned in HIS review--of his inability to do the
same--sleeping with assigned grad student would reflect more of what I was
charged with than bringing child to office, so how does the statement even
help the person whose life style does not fit the form of the family that the
AAUP and academia reflects/supports? Batya Weinbaum batyawein  @  aol.com