State of The Nation

In the May 23rd issue of The Nation, New York Times economics writer Louis Uchitelle reports on the decline in the number of dual-earner married couples between 2007 and 2010.

Uchitelle takes particular note of married couples who find themselves relying on what had been women's "second income" jobs after men lose their places as the primary bread winners:

Meanwhile, Rhonda's long working days - she leaves at around 5 am and is gone until early evening - have altered her role in the family, not to mention his. She still views him - and he views himself - as the chief provider, if not today then in the long run, when her income, they hope, will once again become secondary.

Uchitelle describes a shift in household responsibilities, but whether or not this constitutes a shift toward gender equality is another question:

When Ruth Millkman, a sociologist at the City University of New York, noticed this role reversal in data from the 1930s, she thought it was a move toward gender equality. "But because the role reversal was strongly associated with economic deprivation, it was not welcome," Milkman says. Seventy-five years later, Keith Baudendistel certainly does not welcome it. "I want to be the head of the household again," he says, "but until that can happen, we have to manage as best we can."

I have to wonder about the hope and the expectation that life can return to what it had been. Even when men like Keith find work again, they are likely to earn less (even considerably less) than what they earned before, and it is unlikely that Rhonda's income will be "secondary" again. Their home life has been and will be transformed.

I think there might have been a moment when it looked like the financial crisis might precipitate important and meaningful changes in the way things (and people) work. It seemed like crisis might precipitate a searching of our collective souls. Question the power of financial institutions. Question the work week. Question inequalities, including gender.

Did I miss the parade?

How much do I love Tina Fey?

Apparently, Tina Fey already got a lot of good love about her piece in The New Yorker last month - from New York magazine and from the Wall Street Journal - but I still am adding mine b/c a working mother really cannot receive enough of it.

If, like me, you missed the essay b/c your copy of the February 14 & 21 issue of The New Yorker sat under a heap of other Things You Might Enjoy, itself heaped under Things You Must Do, itself heaped under Now (i.e., turtles all the way down), then let me tell you to find it, turn to page 64, and read "Confessions of a Juggler: What's the rudest question you can ask a mother?"

I was thinking the answer might be: "What's wrong with her / him?" Which to a mother is like asking: "What's wrong with you?"

Fey's answer: "How do you juggle it all?" and "Are you going to have more kids?"

I have to agree with her about the first question especially. I realize that when people ask how a woman how she manages to Do It All, they mean to sympathize or even pay a compliment of sorts, but I am being honest when I say: "Well, I don't."

I cut corners. I borrow time and never pay it back: Mostly from myself, but also from my husband and my children. I have been known to suggest to Beanie and Bubbie that they might want to watch a Disney DVD, just so I can steal a few minutes more to finish prepping a class or answer a few more e-mails (or write this blog post).

It is not that I put my work ahead of my family, but to be honest, work is less yielding.

I resent that it intrudes into the time that I ought to have for my family.

On the other hand, I think the work that I do is meaningful and important: For myself, for my family, for my community (in the various ways in which I could define it).

"How do you juggle it all?" is not just rude: It is entirely uncivil. Asking this question is one of those unexamined practices of everyday life that constantly reproduces gender inequalities. Women are expected individually to make the efforts to bridge the divide between family and work. Whether they succeed or fail is entirely on them.

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What got the big buzz from Fey's essay was her comment that when women in Hollywood reach a certain age, they become labeled "crazy" and no longer receive work:

I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they're all "crazy." I have a suspicion - and hear me out, because this is a rough one - that the definition of crazy in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.

However, it was this part that resonated with me:

It seems to me the fastest remedy for this "women are crazy" situation is for more women to become producers and hire diverse women of various ages. That is why I feel obligated to stay in the business and try hard to get to a place where I can create opportunities for others, and that's why I can't possibly take time off for a second baby, unless I do, in which case that is nobody's business and I'll never regret it for a moment unless it ruins my life.

I want to believe that it is true that we are all not Just Doing Our Jobs, but trying to also to Make Change.

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BTW, there really is a book called My Working Mom, written by two men, with a cartoon witch on the cover! I was hoping that this was just Tina Fey's comic invention b/c it seems so over-the-top obvious to make the working mom a witch. In fact, the customer reviews on amazon are worth perusing b/c they are not especially favorable.

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On the second question - "Are you going to have more kids?" - StraightMan would like to let Tina and Jeff know that the gynecologist is correct: "Either way, everything will be fine."

The case against tenure

Over breakfast, I read Dana Goldstein's essay, "Grading 'Waiting for Superman,'" in the October 11th issue of The Nation. Goldstein, an education reporter, considers what "Waiting for Superman" - a much discussed documentary about the failures of public education - tells us and especially what it does not tell us. Her assessment is similar to Nicholas Lemann's recent comment in The New Yorker, about which I blogged recently: Both journalists note that the film celebrates charter schools as a solution, and teachers unions as the problem.

For my friends who are parents and / or who are concerned about public educations and have questions about charter schools (I confess that I probably know too little about the issue...), I think it would be smart of us to read the criticisms of "Waiting for Superman." I have not yet seen the film - not at the mall cineplex in my neck of the woods - but I certainly plan on it. My understanding is that the film, made by the director of "An Inconvenient Truth," is quite compelling. However. I know that I want to know the rest of the story, too.

What especially caught my eye is the brief comment on tenure for public school teachers, which I think gives insight to the brouhaha over tenure for faculty at colleges and universities. Goldstein quotes from an interview with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who apparently is singled out in the film as The Enemy:

The unions are hurt by public frustration with teacher tenure, a level of job security inconceivable to most American workers, who are barely hanging on during a recession with a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate.

"Only 7 percent of American workers are in unions," Weingarten says, adding matter-of-factly, "America looks at us as islands of privilege."

That is the case against tenure?! I call this the "sucks"-is-the-new-normal effect... Never mind that the real islands of privilege might lie located elsewhere...

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I think it ought to be noted, as Goldstein does, that unionized teachers themselves also want to see their profession do a better job at maintaining their own standards. "According to a 2003 Public Agenda poll, 47 percent of teachers believe 'the union sometimes fights to protect teachers who really should be out of the classroom," Goldstein notes.

So, why not enable, encourage, and support workers themselves to set the standards, and see that they are upheld - and to do so in a way that preserves the dignity of each individual? Which, unfortunately, "policing" too often fails to do. We might have more incentive not to bend the rules, were the rules themselves more resilient...

Stand up for your work

A link to this thoughtful op / ed piece in the NYT just circulated on a teaching listserv to which I belong, accompanied with a comment that it was relevant not just to elementary / secondary school, but also in higher ed.

In particular, author Susan Engel's concluding remark resonates with me - that testing ought to be "one tool among many for improving schools, rather than serving as a weapon that degrades the experience for teachers and students alike."

We are only in the first few weeks of first grade at our house, but already I have become aware of the long shadow that standardized testing casts over teachers and students. I think about Beanie's teacher, whom we already have come to respect and admire in just the few weeks that we have known her: I cannot imagine that assessments and measures are what motivated her to become a teacher in the first place. She seems like a caring and creative teacher with a lot to share, but the more that the "job" of teaching becomes degraded to test preparation, the less room there is for the exercise of talent.

The imperative to assess is being felt also in higher ed. The perceived recalcitrance of faculty, I think, ought to be understood, at least in part, as the stand we are taking on the importance and meaning of our work. We do not want it - and our students and ourselves - to be degraded.

Academic economics

How did I miss this Times opinion piece on tenure?

Author Christopher Shea describes the tempest in academia / higher ed's teapot over the economics of universities and colleges. In particular, whether or not tenure ought to be abolished, and the mission of academia / higher ed be rethought. This is in response to recent publications such as Mark C Taylor's new book, Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities, and his opinion pieces in the Times. Shea concludes his piece:

Here we have the frightening subtext of all the recent hand-wringing about higher education: the widening inequality among institutions of various types and the prospects of the students who attend them. While the financial crisis has demoted Ivy League institutions from super-rich to merely rich, public universities are being gutted. It is not news that America is a land of haves and have-nots. It is news that colleges are themselves dividing into haves and have-nots; they are becoming engines of inequality. And that — not whether some professors can afford to wear Marc Jacobs — is the real scandal.

From where I perch in higher education - a PhD who in fact is immersed in undergraduate education, teaching 4 / 3 (with no TAs) at a public college that is not a research center (and whose research career depends upon the amount of time I manage to steal, essentially, from myself...) and who cannot afford to wear Marc Jacobs - I do not think that private versus public is the only important division, and I do not see the division of haves and have-nots as news. Frankly, is it not for this reason that so many Americans today do pursue post-secondary education? B/c having a college degree might mean the difference having or not having a job. Not to mention why the competition for admission to institutions like Williams and Columbia (or faculty positions there, for that matter) is as stiff as it is?

What is broken needs to be fixed. I just worry that the fixes proposed for academia / higher education will make institutions like the one where I teach as broken as everything else seems to be? Is the new normal "broken"?

I am not tied to the tenure system - I can imagine reasons to abolish it - but in the current stream of rants, I seem to see a lot of suggestions to decrease the autonomy and security with work in academia / higher education.

When it comes to work, is the new normal "sucks"?

Having everyone participate equally in unfair conditions is not the same as banishing inequalities. It seems to me that we all need to feel that we put our energies and efforts to meaningful use in our work, and that we are as necessary to the work being accomplished as the work is for our ability to meet our own needs and wants.

That this is not true for too many people is what sucks and what is broken.