Do Babies Matter?
September 15th, 2006Of course they do.
Your humble editors have three between us (a fourth due in a couple of weeks) and those children have made a significant impact on our academic careers. Elrena has already written a bit about this in her essay for Literary Mama, “Birthing: A Process in Vignettes (you can also find her piece in the wonderful new anthology, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers) and of course she’ll have more to say in Mama, Ph.D. Meanwhile, Caroline landed a great job and discovered she was pregnant all in the same week, taught just long enough to earn 6 weeks maternity leave, and — 2 kids and 4+ years later — hasn’t been back. How she navigated her career crossroads will be described more fully in the book.
Babies mattered to us when we left the academy, and they matter to us even more now as we think about whether and when to return. That’s partly why we decided to organize this collection of essays. Now as we read the submissions that are pouring in, we’re learning dozens of other ways that babies have mattered in the career decisions of the amazing writers whose stories we’re gathering.
But if you have a head for numbers and really want to know exactly how much babies matter, please read the work of Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden, whose essays “Do Babies Matter: The Effect of Family Formation on the Life Long Careers of Academic Men and Women” and “Do Babies Matter: Closing the Baby Gap” offer the kinds of jaw-dropping statistics that make university administrators sit up and take notice.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Mary Ann Mason yesterday to discuss her research and the possibility of her contributing to Mama, Ph.D. Her writing is smart, clear, and — most importantly — it’s making a difference. Work like hers is helping to make higher education a more family-friendly environment. We expect the essays in Mama, Ph.D. will contribute to this important effort.
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