As for my colleagues, I feel that these are less “policies” than “practices” (maybe I should make them more explicit?), and those without young children generally seem fine with things – a couple want more meetings & care more about face time, but it’s not seemingly a big deal to find a happy balance. Of course, I cannot speak for them.

And I hope you get tenure soon!

At Console-ing Passions, I started by highlighting how much one’s contexts matter in these issues. For me, the fact that I’m in a very small town, at a very small institution but with very large resources, makes a huge difference. The institution is very family-friendly overall, with generous parental leaves (for faculty – not great for staff), regular family events, and an emphasis on community that includes employee families. Middlebury has gotten grants to support innovations in faculty work/life balance, so it’s on many people’s minds. While I have made some concerted efforts to make my department family-friendly, we were starting from a much better place than most institutions we heard about. (So no, you don’t really want me as your department chair – I don’t want to be my own department chair!)

Another important aspect to this conversation is that it needs to focus on parenting rather than just mothering, but also acknowledge that for the majority of families that have two opposite-sex parents (academic and otherwise), parenting obligations & challenges are usually weighted more toward mothers. As a father, I think it’s important to be a visible and active parent, but I’ve never had to deal with pumping in awkward places, recovering from childbirth, or other biological (and cultural) travails of motherhood. And there is still the double standard often that a father with his kids at work is often seen as positively “involved,” while a mother is viewed as “distracted.” So how do we frame the issues in ways that highlight how gender differences matter, but not in a normative or prescriptive way, while still respecting the diversity of family situations and choices? (I think the Slaughter article you referenced hits on this point well, but I know many disagree.)

Child-free tenured professors are catered to all the time in my department – they live in different states and only want to come in two days a week, or they have vacation plans when we might like to have meetings or retreats (ptui!) to work on particular projects. It’s only fair to give faculty parents similar consideration.