Balancing Relationships, Children, Work, and Research

Let me distinguish, for the sake of argument, among three stylized attitudes toward one's academic (tenured) position.

• A: It pays the bills; work is work.
• B: It's a fun and challenging way to earn a decent salary, but there is more to living.
• C: It's the best form of escapism from the rest of reality (recall here) and (let's stipulate), luckily, it is also justified by way of the best available argument.

Most academics I know cluster around C (that's sort of where I am [recall, also, Virginia Woolf]), although the better adjusted ones learn to adopt aspects of B strategically or emotionally. I have never understood folk like A who end up in academic careers. (I also know that some of the dysfunctionality of academic life is due to folk like me who are near C end of the spectrum, believing that folk like A should become lawyers or computer software engineers.) Of course, as universities have become more bureaucratic and less well-funded the fun may sometimes be sucked-out of C. It's also the case that until one has advanced through the ranks one rarely fully grasps how bureaucratic and political one's university really is. But for many academics teaching and research are not mere work something to be confined to 9-to-5 hours. In addition, while many academics I know love teaching, few are fond of grading and of dealing with demanding, entitled students who seem more focused on their grades than learning. So, the best part of being an academic is doing research (and, then, sharing it with others).

Problem with philosophical research (thinking, reading, writing) is that it requires time and attention. (The latter is non-trivial element of the writing life. A lot of scientific experiments, while time-consuming, can be left alone.) Now, I happen to know some folk who can 'do research' in spurts and in between other stuff. For example, I can do focused reading in just about any environment (train, airplane, but not bus or car, where reading makes me nauseous). But if I am writing a first draft of a paper, then I need a lot of time before I make any genuine advance. These days, I don't even bother to start writing if I have less than three hours available, although I much prefer to write when I have blocks of 6-10 hours. Often I only see any progress in the third our fourth hour of writing. (To the best of my knowledge I don't suffer from writer's block.) It just takes my brain time to get warmed up, and really see the issues and find the words and distinctions to convey them. There are, in fact, days, where my brain  is so cluttered that I don't get any serious writing done.

While time is always scarce, it starts to become really scarce with children and a partner that wants to spend quality time with you! (Not to mention parents that may need care, etc.) Phenomenologically, one notices the absence of time especially the more sleep-deprived one is because one is restless in bed knowing that one really needs sleep but since one is awake one's time would be better used to work on the second paragraph of the new paper if only one could get out of bed without waking the child down the corridor or one's partner who one knows is almost awake because s/he is sensitive to one's present restlessness! Quite simply: there are not enough hours in the day to be a caring and loving parent, an attentive and loving partner, and a passionate and dutiful academic, and also leave time for quality research hours. Something has got to give, and the choice of what has to give is itself a source of great frustration. [Not to mention, the daily invitations to referee other people's journal articles or grant applications!]

This post is prompted by two lunch conversations last week with accomplished scholars who both have excellent, prestigious jobs. What they have in common is that they have young children, demanding professional environments, and partners that are loving yet (justifiably) demanding. In both cases these partners are professionals but not academics (and fall more in the B toward C spectrum).**

As an aside, in a lot of industries, this would be the place to say stuff about work-balance and scheduling issues. And, indeed, scheduling of seminars/colloquia can be very family-unfriendly; most of us recall that the APA was scheduled during family holidays (etc.). But the problem at hand does not go away with better scheduling. In some ways better scheduling only displaces the problem: for example, the more family friendly seminar schedules are, the more disrupted a given day otherwise free for one's very own research becomes.

Even after one has educated one's partner (and this is no easy matter) into the minimal professional time requirements one needs to succeed at one's job, there are no obvious solutions to the lack of time and the demands on one's time in my experience. I have heard it said that as one's kid(s) age(s), time demands become less, but in my opinion the jury is still out. There are stop-gaps (buying out teaching, sabbaticals, bundling teaching, etc.), but none of these are fully satisfactory or permanent or available. Obviously, if you could somehow change your comportment toward research (or the underlying  needs that make it such an important species of escapism), then you would be better off. But, that's like saying C to be -C. So, what follows are some of my imperfect coping mechanisms in the spirit of eliciting more suggestions.***

• Don't be a perfectionist (about parenting, philosophy, bureaucracy). Being good enough is often sufficient. (The previous sentence is an homage to good-enough-parenting.) Luckily, this fits with the changing understanding of the journal article; it's not written for the ages anymore, but a contribution to an existing discussion.+ Having said that, one's peers notice the lack of perfectionism (and judging by the referee reports I receive, hold it against you).
• Take on or move forward editing projects. Editing is often a thankless job. But it is necessary in the profession. It also can be chunked into smaller pieces without much loss of quality. The upside is you get to be gate-keeper and stay abreast of the latest developments in the field, and your CV does not develop empty years.
• Take on admin positions for a few years. Essentially, accept that one's research 'productivity/output' is a lost cause and so one may as well perform service.
• Learn to say no to some referee requests. (I am still very bad at this.) The profession has a collective action and free-riding problem and it is not up to you to solve it.
• Compartmentalize. I have ruined more family holidays than I care to admit by thinking that I could 'also do some research' on them--the only (entirely foreseeable) outcome was that attempts at mutual accommodation led to mutual recrimination (and guilt, etc.).
• Trade 'time-off' with one's partner. My wife can go on ski-holidays whenever she wishes (with advance notice), so I can accept invitations to guest lecture (with advance notice) or go seclude myself somewhere to do research. Of course, this does not work so well when what your partner really wants is spend more time with you (then you are stuck)!
• Co-author with child-less people or empty-nesters who can write the first draft.

 

+Obviously, this also generates lots of other problems.

 **I am deliberately abstracting away here from non-trivial gendered-issues/politics/patterns-of-exclusion.

 ***On facebook, Martin Lenz commented on the lack of a "political agenda" in this post. I plead guilty-as-charged. The post is not a call to arms, and maybe it ought to be!

Comments

[Fleur]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for this.
I wonder if you could elaborate on your last piece of advice (the justification/explanation for): "Co-author with child-less people or empty-nesters who can write the first draft."?

Thanks,
Fleur

[Bence Nanay]

Are A, B and C supposed to exhaust the options? Some of my best friends do academia out of vanity, for example - that would be D. And that really makes the very real and important problem you talk about even worse...

[Eric Schliesser]

Bence, you just outed me!

[Eric Schliesser]

Fleur, could you say more about your question? Is it a question about the practicalities of co-authoring (which can, in fact, be very time-consuming) or is there an ethical concern about (say) off-loading work to others lurking in your question?

[Fleur Jongepier]

The latter. I was wondering what would justify (c), if not the implicit idea that those who don't have / want children don't have an equal right to leisure?

[Fleur Jongepier]

Sorry, of course by (c) I meant the third bullet at the end.

[Eric Schliesser]

Fleur, I am unsure I am following your train of thought (along different dimensions), so I am unsure what to elaborate on. But for the record: I do not think leisure requires justification!

[Ingrid Robeyns]

I think Fleur's question could possibly be restated as: Isn't the last suggestion (co-authoring with childless scholars) free-riding on their work/effort? Or, put differently, why would childless academics have to do more work when co-authoring with a colleagues who is also a parent? I think that's a very valid question, and hence I think that last suggestion of your list, Eric, may be problematic.

However, I do not think that the right way to frame it, is to say that they have 'an equal right to leisure', except if one believes that unpaid family work is similar to 'leisure', to which I would vehemently object (and on which there is a large philosophical literature). For academics who are good academic citizens (e.g. not shirking on committee duties, refereeing, intensity of student/PhD supervision etc.) and who also have significant care duties, 'leisure' is an almost-empty category. That, to me, is the biggest problem, since it erodes our quality of life and cannot be sustainable.

And YES to the political agenda that's needed! The only way to really address this is by collective action. And it's also possible to free-ride on the collective action efforts of others. (if one agrees with their political goal, but is happy to let them do the work to get their, and in the meantime only care for one's own private interests). The least one could do, if one thinks work/life balance is currently unhealthy in academia, is to speak up and/or support those who speak up publicly.

[Eric Schliesser]

Ingrid and Fleur, let me start by stating that there are forms of co-authorship that are clearly problematic (and in the low countries context especially frequent: supervisors adding their names to their PhD students's efforts, or even effacing their students' efforts in their own publications). FWIW: to guard against that familiar temptation I basically never co-author with my own PhD students (during their PhD). So, I can see why you may worry. But that's not what I have in mind or recommending.
Moreover, I am making no claim that "childless academics *have* to do more work." I think that misreading is very revealing about the zero-sum, exploitative, and overworked environments we find ourselves in, in fact.
Rather, all I am assuming is that (i) some partnerships can have unequal division of labors and yet be non-exploitative, and (ii) that if you qua overworked academic parent/lover want an otherwise utterly equal child-less or non-parenting academic to co-author with you (and be willing to write a first draft especially), you need to make yourself an attractive co-author along some other dimension--that's not impossible because there may be all kinds of benefits of writing and publishing with you (established scholar that you are). I have not argued for (i) and maybe that's required.

I agree with what Ingrid says about leisure--a word I did not use in my original post.

[Ingrid Robeyns]

Thanks Eric. Just to be sure, I am not saying that my restatement is what Fleur actually thinks (I don't have special capacities to read her mind...) but rather that this is how someone could read that suggestion. So your clarification is very helpful, thanks.

Co-authoring with PhDs is very tricky but I don't think it is necessary to be rejected. Sometimes there is an occasion that is hugely advantageous to both parties, since both benefit from the expertise the other has. It also can be a a process whereby the PhD learns how to write an academic article. The PhDs I supervised with whom I co-authored have, I believe, all been quite eager to do so, for one (or both) of the above reasons. But this is probably something on which to devote another post...:)