Beginning a career and a family is an issue for many people in their 20s and 30s, but according to a recent survey, graduate students at research universities are having an unusually hard
time deciding how to balance the two.
Academe, the journal for the American Association of University Professors, surveyed thousands of doctoral students in the University of California system. Of them, only 29 percent of women thought research universities were family friendly work environments; 46 percent of men thought so.
One woman who responded to the survey said, “I could not have come in to graduate school more motivated to be a research-oriented professor. Now I feel that can only be a career possibility if I am willing to sacrifice having children.”
At the University, however, graduate students don’t seem to share the sentiment. Journalism third-year doctoral student Jessalynn Strauss said, “I think this university is pretty family friendly,” and especially the graduate school.
Jacob Dittmer, second-year journalism master’s student, agreed. He estimated that 40 percent of graduate students in the School of Journalism and Communication have families, and although he doesn’t, he thinks it would be workable.
Dittmer said the University exhibits the “right amount of respect for one’s personal life,” and added that it “seems like a fine place to raise a child.”
Karen Logvin, a University work and family services administrator, said the University makes an effort to accommodate not only graduate students but faculty and staff with children and families.
One of the most visible efforts, Logvin said, is the selection of child care facilities on and around campus. The Vivian Olum Child Development Center, the Moss Street Children’s Center and the Spencer Co-op Family Center cater to students, faculty and staff with children, she said.
Moss Street reserves spots for the children of students first, which is a boon to grad students with families, said Frances Scott, professor emerita in the College of Education and spokesperson at Moss Street.
Scott said that of the about 160 children at the center, many belong to members of the University. It’s nice for students with children to have a child-care center that is conveniently located, and said she knows that between work and children, “there’s just a lot to shuffle around.”
Logvin said another way the UO tries to accommodate University members who are starting families is to provide private lactating rooms for nursing mothers.
However, the University does encounter difficulty when it comes to scheduling around the needs of new families, Logvin said. It provides up to 12 weeks of parental leave for men and women, but changing schedules to be part-time or flexible to accommodate babies or small children can be a struggle, she said.
Logvin attributed that struggle mainly to funding and the economics of the University, but Dittmer and Strauss saw other possible reasons.
Strauss, who said 12 weeks of parental leave sounds pretty standard, said an ideal world would give more time. However, she realized that work still has to get done and staff and students need to be at the University.
Dittmer agreed. Classes simply need to be taught, he said. He wouldn’t necessarily take parental leave, he said, but would rather try to flex his schedule around such an issue, should it ever come up.
While many California students surveyed said they’d eschew a research university career for not being sufficiently family friendly, both Dittmer and Strauss had other criteria for where they’d like to work.
Dittmer said he’d like a large university for the balance between teaching and research it could provide. Strauss said she does not want to work at a research university because she loves to teach and whether she starts a family or not, for her that is the bottom line.
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