Last night, we were woken twice by a five year who had to use the potty. Both boys were up at 6:00. Steve fed them breakfast and made Jonah's sandwich. At 7:15, Steve ran to catch the bus. I dressed the kids, finished packing the lunch, and wrote a note to Jonah's teacher to find out why Jack's desk was moved far from Jonah. At 8:30, we ran down the block and Jonah boarded the bus. I packed up a diaper bag and head to DMV to register the car. Ian was bribed with donuts as he sat in the stroller. Then over to my parents, where I tried to install Norton anti-virus on dad's computer. Back home to put Ian down for his nap. Shower. E-mail. Organize papers for tonight's lecture at Hunter. Baby wakes up. Feed him lunch. Change my outfits two or three times. Pants or skirt? Then my mom arrived at 2:40 and I ran to catch my bus to the city. (Yes, we only run for buses in this house.)
What was the lecture on? Ann Crittenden discussed her latest book, If You'Ve Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything: Leadership Begins at Home, for a small group of faculty around a seminar table. (See this Times article on her.) Crittenden says that mothers/parents/ok, really mostly mothers gain all sorts of skills by parenting that can be translated into management later on. All that multi-tasking and prioritizing that I did before the lecture are the very skills that top managers use.
After her short discription of the book, the discussion was thrown out into the audience. There was some discussion about security moms. And then I raised my hand. All red in the face, I said that instead of just looking at all the barriers mothers face in other places, perhaps we should first examine our own profession. Academia is one of the worst places for mothers. I told them my story. And said that other mothers and academic mothers were discussing these issues on line and we were very angry.
Ann and the other academics were very interested in these on line discussions. They all wanted more information. Everyone handed me a business card. Instead of just giving them links to my posts and to other posts at the Invisible Adjunct. I thought that I would organize a one-time-only one week conversation about these issues on the blog next week and notify these writers and scholars about our discussion. Details will follow.
UPDATE: I'm closing comments on this post, because I want everyone to hold their thoughts until next week.