Parenthood, Professorship, and Librarianship: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

Abstract

ABSTRACT:A survey of tenure-track and tenured librarians at ARL libraries provides data on the relationship between parenthood and professorship. Results analyze the impact of the promotion and tenure process on child-bearing and rearing decisions. Discrepancies are found based on gender, tenure status and family status.

The Joy of Combining Librarianship and Motherhood

“…Why should a librarian who looks to the literature for guidance find nothing that reflects her professional experience? Graves et al (2008) called upon librarians to break the silence and begin a dialogue, but years have passed and little has changed. Librarians have…”

“…The relatively small body of research in the area of librarianship and parenthood (e.g., Zemon & Bahr, 2005;Graves, et al, 2008;Connell, 2012) relies almost exclusively on survey methods and quantitative methods; the lived experiences of librarians who are mothers (or father) of young children is curiously absent from the literature, except in autobiographical essays or personal narratives. This study takes a constructivist, phenomenological approach to the examination of librarianship and motherhood, similar to the methods used in Trepal and Stinchfield (2012).…”

Maternity and Paternity Policies Available to Academic Librarians

“…Of the 30 who indicated extended leave is available, 19 had unpaid leave, eight had paid leave, and the remaining three had both paid and unpaid leave. Of those who answered "other," the answers in the order of frequency were that extended leave was available using vacation and/or sick time (5), did not know (4), sometimes (3), and individually negotiated (2). A Chi-square test rejects the null hypothesis that the option for extended leave is independent of tenure status: at a significance level of p = .005, institutions that grant tenure to librarians are more likely to offer extended maternity leave to librarians.…”

“…"Perhaps the controversial nature of tenure in librarianship is to blame… If the profession cannot agree on the issue of faculty status for librarians, it is unlikely to turn its attention toward issues such as balancing tenure requirements and parenthood." 2 Stephanie J. Graves, Jian Anna Xiong, and Ji-Hye Park's particularly relevant article surveyed tenured and tenure-track librarians in Association of Research Libraries about the relationship between the promotion and tenure (P&T) process and parenthood.…”

Negotiating career progression and parenthood: family-adaptiveness in an Australian university

“…For example, research on librarianship has highlighted difficulties faced in attempting to combine work and care, particularly for female employees who attempt to move to higher earning roles (Graves, Xiong, & Park, 2008). Computing occupations have been identified as having family unfriendly working patterns (Whitehouse & Preston, 2005) and some research has found that women chose routine technical roles over time-intensive consultancy roles as a means of managing work-family balance Whitehouse & Preston, 2005).…”