Winter 2004

Volume 33
Number 2

Balancing Act

Noreen, with her son Daniel and husband Rich, taking a break from writing to go hiking in the Nevada desert.

When my husband, Richard Hancuff, and I, both thirty-something "ABD" doctoral graduate students in English at George Washington University, decided we wanted to have a baby, we embarked on a journey that tested the limits of our endurance and creativity, our program director's patience, and the traditional definitions of academic success.

Both of us were researching our dissertations and teaching as adjuncts in multiple universities. Our graduate fellowships had only partially funded us through our coursework and exams, so my husband had also taken a demanding full-time job that provided us with health and retirement benefits, while I was working on a number of freelance projects. We knew we were extremely busy, but we also knew that we couldn't wait for years to achieve tenure before we had a baby, nor were we willing to do so. We will find a way, we said, with optimism.

Our transition to parenthood began successfully. We managed to time the pregnancy perfectly with the academic calendar so that the baby would be born in June. During the pregnancy, we worked, freelanced, taught, and researched. I even took a grant-paid research trip over spring break. Our schedule allowed us to finish the spring semester and turn in grades, then paint the baby's room, assemble the new furniture, and spend the summer adjusting to life with our new son. But we soon found that the transition to parenthood was not easily compatible with our former lives as graduate student teachers and researchers. We had to face the real demands on our time and finances that our new son brought into our lives.

Soon we had to make some very hard decisions. My husband changed jobs to work for the university in a full-time staff position that paid his tuition and part of mine, but did not allow him enough extra time to teach on an ongoing basis. And I soon realized that my earnings as an adjunct at Georgetown University would not cover the costs of daycare for our infant son; I had to give up the teaching job I had loved. By the time my son was one year old, both of us had almost completely stopped teaching, a situation we told ourselves was only temporary.

After more than a year of struggling with the exhausting and immediate demands of daily family life, we realized that our previous academic life had become a distant memory. Although our dissertation deadlines were approaching, we both had schedules that barely allowed us time to research, write, or even on some days think. Yet, after devoting years and over $100,000 to our studies, neither of us wanted to seriously consider giving up on finishing the Ph.D. We needed to find a way.

Student, Worker, Parent
My husband and I are certainly not alone among our peers. Many in graduate programs are now dealing with the life concerns that have more typically been associated in academia with the tenure track years--caring for children as well as aging or ill parents while meeting increasingly demanding research requirements and deadlines. Research about graduate student demographics reveals that over recent decades, the population of Ph.D. recipients and the conditions of graduate study itself have changed significantly.

According to the Council on Graduate Students, doctoral students are much older than they were even twenty years ago. The average Ph.D. student is now thirty-four years old, and more than 30 percent of all graduate students are now over the age of forty. In addition, an American graduate student is much more likely than at any time in the past to be a woman, to be married, and to have dependent children. Peter D. Syverson's research shows that the "average number of dependents is two for both master's and doctoral students. Graduate students with dependents tend to be women, and they are older than graduate students without dependents."

In addition, the time required to earn a degree has significantly increased in the past five decades. Cultural anthropologist Cynthia Gabriel explains, "Not only are graduate students coming to graduate school at later stages of life, they are also spending more time in graduate school....In 1954, the national average was four-five years; in 1972, the national average was six years; today, getting a Ph.D. averages 7.2 years." The lengthened time, especially pronounced (nine years) in humanities programs where teaching fellowships are the most common form of financial support, increases the financial and personal burdens associated with graduate studies.

While completing graduate studies, many students are also working. According to research from the Council on Graduate Students, over 75 percent of doctoral students are employed, many within the university as research assistants, teaching assistants, and adjuncts. However, most campus workplaces have not changed to adequately accommodate these new realities of graduate school life. As workers and as parents, graduate students today have specific needs during the long doctoral process that have yet to be fully addressed on campuses.

Failing to Welcome a New Student Population
While the demographics of American graduate students have changed dramatically, many graduate school practices have not. "Universities increasingly have accepted nontraditional students, including women and older students, into their graduate programs," says Joan C. Williams, director of the American University Program on Worklife Law, "but many institutions simply aren't prepared to deal with the fact that those students have families." This can make graduate school an unwelcoming place for students with care-giving responsibilities.

In some cases, universities barely acknowledge that students have children. "When I started the doctoral program," one doctoral student recalls, "I was informed of a welcoming barbecue at the dean's house, on a Saturday afternoon. I thought, 'How nice!' Then I asked if I could bring my ten-month-old and was told, 'Well, no.' The reasoning I was given was that [the dean] had fragile things in his house." This experience was, says the mother of three, "Not a good way to start the program."

In addition, some recent changes in doctoral programs have actually resulted in more obstacles for those with families. To accommodate the number of students who are now working during the day, most graduate programs offer the majority of their courses in the evening, a schedule that can either be a great help or a significant problem for students with young children. Institutions are faced with real challenges as they try to accommodate the varied needs of their students.

Evening classes worked very well for Cynthia Pollack, a doctoral student in education (curriculum theory) at Simon Fraser University. "At SFU," says Pollack, "faculty and staff offer pretty much every required course in late afternoon and evenings, usually as one long time block so that only one weekly trip across the city is required to attend a particular class." This schedule was ideal for Pollack, who was able to work around her children's needs to attend classes.

However, Tracey Perez Koehlmoos, a doctoral student and mother of three completing her doctorate in public health at the University of South Florida, points out that night classes don't work for everyone. "If you are trying to achieve the balance between going to school and parenting your children, night school seems like an ideal choice." However, these hours present real difficulties for many parents. "My university does have evening childcare hours, but I don't think that it is realistic to put children in childcare three nights a week from 5:00-9:30. Also, the price for three kids was over $13 per hour."

In particular, parents who are raising their children alone or who have spouses that travel have concerns about evening-only class schedules. "My classes were almost all held at night," says Gisela Berger, a mother of twin toddlers completing her dissertation in counselor education. "If I had had children at the time, I would not have been able to make the classes due to my husband's work schedule."

But for many afternoon classes present almost insurmountable difficulties. "I almost dropped out of my program," says Koehlmoos, "when a mandatory class was offered from 2:00-6:00 p.m., which meant finding someone to pick the little one up at preschool at 1 p.m. and the older boys up at elementary school at 2:15, do homework with the boys, and cook dinner. No one wanted that job because it was only one day a week! I ended up taking the gracious offer of an elderly couple at my gym--but paying the wife $10 an hour for her services." The best solution, it seems, is to offer classes during a range of times instead of only during the day or only in the evening. This way, students can find a schedule to accommodate the unique needs of their families.

For many cash-strapped doctoral student parents, finding flexible, affordable childcare to cover the hours required for graduate study also requires great creativity and endurance. "Child care has to be the biggest issue," says Diana Laulainen-Schein, who will graduate from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities at the end of the month with a Ph.D. in history. "Just recently, I had to explain to someone why I was turning down a teaching position. The salary was $3,000 for a semester, which would not have covered my childcare expenses for just two children even just for the time I would be required to be at school lecturing."

Koehlmoos and Laulainen-Schein are not alone, as evidenced by many graduate student union campaigns that have drawn attention to dependent health care and childcare demands. For example, graduate student teaching assistants bargaining for union contracts with the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor asked the university to build a separate childcare center for graduate students and to offer free childcare. Ultimately, the students reached a contract in 2002 in which the university increased the subsidies given to some graduate students to pay for childcare to $1,700 per semester for a first child and to $850 each for second and third children.

The High Cost for Women in Academia
Not surprisingly, researchers find that the current campus climate disproportionately affects women with young children. Overall, women graduate students are more likely to drop out of graduate programs than their male counterparts with similar undergraduate GPAs and GRE scores, and those who do complete their degree are less likely to advance to the rank of tenured professor.

As Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden argue, "We have done a better job of opening up the competition to women than we have of leveling the playing field. Merely opening up graduate education is not enough to assure equal opportunity in the long run for those women who choose to have children." Academic women, they contend, need better counseling and support as graduate students to ensure that they can effectively compete with their male counterparts. Institutions must address the unique issues that the new population of women graduate students face while completing degrees and moving into the job market in academia.

"I feel that trying to finish the Ph.D. and deal with spouses/partners and children all at the same time is much harder on women than on men," says Lyn Blanchfield, who earned her Ph.D. in history from Binghamton University, SUNY in January. "While I don't deny that some men feel the same kind of guilt that I did last semester, I think there is a lot more pressure on women to 'do it all.' We seem to pay a higher price for wanting both a career and a family and then trying to pursue our dreams. In addition, as many of us here have said, our biological clocks are ticking and we simply must take time off to have a child or children. I had my son at thirty-four, my second 'child'--the dissertation--was 'delivered' when I was thirty-eight and now we want another child and I am now thirty-nine. It is now or never. While I am glad that I 'took off' that year, I am sure there were people at my grad school who wondered what I was doing in my 'spare' time."

Even when they do complete their degrees, women with young children face significant barriers to crafting careers in academia. Women with families are more likely to be found in the non-tenured second tier of academic faculties, working as lecturers and adjuncts. But working in these positions has serious costs. Part-time and nontenured faculty earn lower wages, receive fewer or no benefits, and have fewer opportunities for advancement than full-time workers, even when they have similar backgrounds and work experience. Because of the rigid "up or out" policies of the tenure track, Mason and Goulden observe, a substantial number of women eventually leave academia altogether.