February 21, 2006 UC Families Newsletter -- A new online newsletter and resource for faculty, staff and students at University of California campuses who are balancing academic goals or careers with family life. Circulation: 657 Moderator: Karie Frasch email: moderator_ucfam@parents.berkeley.edu Website: http://parents.berkeley.edu/ucfamilies Post a Message: http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html ---------------------------------------------- Contents ---------------------------------------------- *Responses Original post: Babies matter - academia and family Original post: Is your department family friendly? Original post: Sabbatical year questions *New postings Changes to family accommodation policies for all UC ladder-rank faculty, effective immediately New to UCI - seeking OB & pediatrician Repost: UCB grad students starting toddler playgroup Repost: Same sex families *News/media Betrayed by Your Adviser Are Your Parental-Leave Policies Legal? Many institutions' aren't, says a law professor, but a best-practices model is now available that is worth adopting *New members Since 2/10/06 ---------------------------------------------- *Responses ---------------------------------------------- You can post additional responses at: http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html Original post: Babies matter - academia and family -------------------------------------------------------- I am currently the Graduate Dean at Berkeley and a researcher on the effects of family formation on the careers of academics. I am also a mother of two grown children and navigated these issues while they were growing up. Despite intensive research in this area it is still difficult to answer the question often asked of me by my graduate students, "when is the best time to have a baby?" What do you think? Before women begin graduate programs should they be given more clear information about the challenges of managing family and career in academia? Should more be done to help graduate students make decisions about the timing of these issues? What can current professors do to better encourage promising young women to stay in the "pipeline" to satisfying tenured jobs? And finally, when do you think is the best time to have a baby? Mary Ann Mason Response: Babies matter - academia and family ------------------------------------------- Only just saw this post and the first set of responses. I agree that there is never a convenient time to have a child. In regards to getting a tenure track position, probably the very worst time is when you are just out of grad school, and in a temporary teaching or administration job. You are working full-time with little time to 'write', the universal tenure clock is already a year or two into its life span, and you show up pregnant at the interview for a tenure track position. There are at least a few of us who got derailed this way. Is there any reason to hope for (or to desire) re-entry programs? Martha Response: Babies matter ------------------------------------------- I read with interest the original responses to Dean Mason's post. I am a mother of a nine-year-old son who waited until I was pretty sure of tenure to get pregnant. At the time I was thirty-eight. Since then I have become aware of many women (a few of them close friends) who also waited until about that age and were unable to get pregnant despite invasive hormonal and other (often terribly expensive) procedures. This took a toll on their relationships and, more importantly, their own happiness. Subsequently I have read articles that suggest that even starting in her late twenties a woman's fertility can decrease substantially. I realized that I was incredibly lucky in being able to get pregnant easily. My pregnancy was also healthy and easy, but nothing prepared me for the first six months of my son's life. I adored him and was ready to do anything for him, but my thirty-nine-year-old body had real difficulty with the sleep deprivation and healing. I have since spoken to many women about this and it seems that those who waited until later to have children experienced much more difficulty -- women in their twenties or early thirties seemed much more able to cope. The combination of being older and feeling unable to cope is an interesting bind -- in my professional life I had come to feel enormously capable and strong, and now here was something that women throughout the ages had handled not just once, but multiple times, and I wasn't handling it well at all. My self-confidence as a mother was low, which made it harder to balance career and motherhood. Shouldn't I be trying harder as a mother to make up for my feelings of inadequacy? Long story short, I think that first of all we should not necessarily present the idea of motherhood after tenure as a given option. After thirty-five it might not happen for some women, and that should be made very clear in conversations with grad students of both genders. Women and their partners should consider whether adoption would be a good option, whether they are prepared to go through and pay for IVF or other procedures. Or whether it would be satisfactory not to have any children after all. Women and their partners should also be made aware of the kinds of psychological strain I mentioned above. When you get pregnant, everyone says casually ''Your life will change,'' but most people do not say ''You will become delusional with exhaustion,'' ''You will wonder what happened to your strong, capable self,'' ''Nursing doesn't come naturally to everyone,'' ''You won't want your partner to touch you for six months,'' or some of the other specific things that can happen. I'm not talking about what necessarily happens, only what can happen. I think that all working women and perhaps especially the older prospective mothers could be helped by conversation/therapy groups that combine prospective parents and experienced parents. Having said all of this, things are working out well with my nine-year-old, and my department is incredibly supportive. I am grateful to be a mom, but I hope that we can discuss our ''choices'' with one another more realistically. Original post: Is your department family friendly? ------------------------------------------ I have a young child, and with all of the recent talk of family friendliness I’m wondering what makes a department or workplace family friendly anyway? Do you think your department is family friendly? I think the administrators in my department generally follow the policies of my university but I wouldn’t say we are particularly family friendly. Staff at UC wondering if I’m missing out Response: family-friendly department ------------------------------------------- I am a faculty member in a small department at Cal (five ladder-faculty members, three of them women). All five of us have children; three have grown-up kids and two of us have kids at home. Further, we have one lecturer with four children (three grown-up), and a number of babies among our grad students -- in the last five years, eight children have been born to grad student families. As grad adviser I am particularly conscious of the needs of grad students with children. Schedules are made around childcare times, students are urged to get extensions on normative time, children are welcome in many one-on-one meetings, grad student meetings, and parties, teaching schedules are made up with childcare issues in mind, etc. When a grad student is expecting a birth in the family and presents what I think is probably an overchallenging time- line toward finishing the dissertation, I urge him/her to take more time, take time off if s/he likes, etc. Most important is, I think, the general message that we like children (we like to see them), children are important, children deserve extra consideration, children are not necessarily incompatible with work. Both staff and faculty make much over kids and make them feel at home when they show up in the department. I was disturbed to read the post from the woman who was asked to remove photos of her family as ''unprofessional.'' I am a professor and I have a picture of my family on my desk that often attracts the interest of visitors. It is important to me that my students see that a serious professional can also value her family. We have always scheduled faculty meetings, etc. around each other's other obligations, including family obligations. Why should family obligations be excepted? I hope that other units on campus will work toward putting aside the ''business is interrupted by kids'' attitude. happy to be here Response: what is family friendly ------------------------------------------- hi, here are some examples that are not: the colloquium series in my dept ends at 5:30 pm, half an hour after i need to leave to pick up my child from the uc child care (which wants us there by 5:15 pm). so i cannot attend and have not been able to for 5 years now. attending the first half hour is not very useful, though i tried several times, it is too frustrating to hear half of a seminar! my husband's department regularly schedules meetings/qualifying exams for students, etc. on saturdays or after business hours and well outside the daycare hours of the university. there is no reason these things (e.g. the qualifying exams for the students) could not be scheduled the first week of term when there are no classes. but they are not. i have tried to get the colloquium time changed several times and keep hearing that they cannot get the room earlier, that some group meetings will conflict, etc. i have given up, i have no time to fight this one. anon Original post: Sabbatical Year Questions ------------------------------------------- My family is going on sabbatical staring in June 2006 to the Geneva area. We have never gone on sabbatical before, and need advice about the following issues: 1. Health Insurance. What do families do about health insurance while on sabbatical? We could either select the (expensive) plans that cover you out-of-network? Did you find insurance in the country you were visiting? 2. Moving Overseas. Did you use a relocation company? Did you ship things? 3. Renting out your Berkeley house. Did you rent out your house in Berkeley while you were away? Did you use a realtor or rental agency? Karen Response: Regarding sabbatical year questions ------------------------------------------- I'll just address what we've had experience with: 1. Health insurance: The decision depends on the current health of your family members, the availability of care in your sabbatical country, and the provisions of any fellowship you may have. Even the UC HMO plans will provide some coverage for emergency care away from home, but then you may not need even that in some countries that have national health insurance. 3. We rent because we can't afford not to. If you do rent, list it with campus housing - services.housing.berkeley.edu/calrentals/sabbat_hous.html and with sabbaticalhomes.com - we've had some luck with them. Accept that the house will show wear and tear, some plants will die, at least one appliance will break down, the plumbing will fail.... and line up some trustworthy people to make repairs as needed. Enjoy your sabbatical! ---------------------------------------------- *New postings ---------------------------------------------- You can post a response message: http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html Changes to family accommodation policies for all UC ladder-rank faculty, effective immediately -------------------------------------------------- On February 8, 2006, the President of the University of California announced major changes to family accommodation policies for ladder-rank faculty throughout the system. These changes, effective retroactively to January 1, 2006, provide for the first time, a comprehensive package of family friendly policies for women and men with caregiving responsibilities. One of the most significant changes to the family friendly package is the unambiguous message that faculty men and women, with substantial caregiving responsibilities, are entitled to the use of family accommodation policies, and may not be disadvantaged or prejudiced in promotions or advancement. The new family accommodations package is designed to support faculty over their life course. Birth mothers receive fully-paid childbearing leave. New parent caregivers, birth or adoptive, are entitled to a full term of ASMD; biological mothers receive a second term. The cost of replacement teachers is centralized to eliminate hardship for individual departments. Assistant professors who are new parents can automatically stop the tenure clock for one year (up to two years during the probationary period). All parents may at any time request up to a year of unpaid parental leave. And all faculty, pre- and post-tenure, may negotiate with their department to work part-time, temporarily or permanently, to accommodate their family needs. UC is now the leader among institutions of higher education in the United States on family friendly policies. While many other universities offer some of these policies, or additional ones we don’t have (such as a formal dual career program), none provide as comprehensive a package. What do you think about these changes? Do they go far enough? Will faculty feel safe using them when tenure and promotion are at stake? What must UC do to encourage faculty with caregiving responsibilities to take advantage of these policies? Will this persuade more women and men graduate students to pursue academic jobs at UC? Here is the link to the letter from President Dynes announcing the policies, and to the policy changes (the UC Families Newsletter is highlighted in his letter): http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/PP020806APMs.pdf -UC Families Moderator New to UCI - seeking OB & pediatrician ------------------------------------------- I'm joining UC Irvine in May and I'll be 31 weeks into my pregnancy. Can anyone recommend an obstetrician and/or a pediatrician around Costa Mesa? Rebecca New posting from last newsletter, no responses: UCB grad students starting toddler playgroup ------------------------------------------- We are 2 Berkeley PhD grad students (psychology and bioengineering) looking to start up a playgroup/parents group on the weekends. We dont seem to have many local acquaintances in similar life stages as us (that is, trying to keep up with a toddler and the pace of academia at the same time), and were hoping to change that! We have a 19-month-old son, plus a daughter arriving in June, and we live in Albany. We dont have a specific group format in mind we could rotate houses, meet at parks, whatever works. Just looking to establish an environment where we can relax about our applesauce-covered offspring and neglected research. Its not necessary that you be a grad student also postdocs, faculty, staff, non- academics also welcome. If interested, email melissa@berkeley.edu. Melissa New posting from last newsletter, no responses: SAME-SEX FAMILIES ------------------------------------------- I applaud the progressive initiatives to make UC a more humane and family-friendly environment for faculty and staff employees as well as student parents. But I'm concerned that a distinctive population -- same-sex families (couples whether with children or without) -- has received so little attention. Yes, registered domestic partners and their children are eligible to benefit from UC health coverage, family leave policies, etc. Yet I've read nothing in the various recent work-and-family research papers or policy statements that acknowledge that LGBT people often face special challenges on the job and in balancing work and family. Such additional challenges cannot possibly be addressed so long as GLBT people remain institutionally invisible. UC is presumed to be a non-homophobic environment -- is that true across the board? Shouldn't we be asking the same questions about non-straight women and men that are being asked about women and men in traditional heterosexual families? How can we collect and examine the experiences and wisdom of UC LGBT faculty, staff, and grad students? On the most basic level, who are we, how many of us are there, across what ranks and levels and units do we work and study? Are there places or circumstances within UC where GLBT people hit a 'glass ceiling' or 'closet wall' in their careers? In what ways do personally-held and/or institutionally-supported 'closets' dampen our voices or push our careers and/or families to the margins? Do LGBT people access formally-entitled family benefits equally or differentially compared to their heterosexual peers? How do the ''dual career'' problems affect LGBT couples in making career choices? Do GLBT graduate students ''leak out of the pipeline'' (or concentrate) in certain academic disciplines more than others? I hope to spark some discussion in this forum and perhaps inspire UC to recognize and incorporate this important element of difference into work-and-family research and policy making. Sharon ------------------------------------------ *Articles and media ------------------------------------------ You can post comments or discussion points about any of these, or offer new ones - http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html Betrayed by Your Adviser, By David D. Perlmutter Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Careers, February 20, 2006 http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/02/2006022001c/careers.html Subscription required Are Your Parental-Leave Policies Legal? Many institutions' aren't, says a law professor, but a best-practices model is now available that is worth adopting, By Joan Williams Chronicle of Higher Education, February 11, 2005 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i23/23c00101.htm Subscription required --------------------------------------------------------------------- - Post a message * http://parents.berkeley.edu/post.html - Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Address Changes, Help * http://parents.berkeley.edu/subscribers.html