Ship of Fools: Breastfeeding in University Classrooms

Thread: Breastfeeding in University Classrooms Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

This story about a professor at American University who brought her sick baby to class and breastfed her during class is making the rounds.

I have a lot of sympathy for the mother, but I do think she crossed a line here. Like everyone else I went to college with, I had to sit through the occasional lecture that included the professor's child, although in those cases the child was old enough that they made it through the entire class only disrupting it once or twice (knocking all their crayons over and needing help to pick them up, for example). While I tend to sit next to parents (especially single parents) so they can hand their kid off to me if need be in weddings and at church, I found it incredibly distracting in class; I couldn't concentrate on what the professor was saying if there was a kid I could be making faces at or playing peek-a-boo with.

quote:
In the Sept. 5 essay, Pine wrote that she was “shocked and annoyed that this would be considered newsworthy.” She lamented that her workplace had suddenly become “a hostile environment.” She also upbraided journalists at the Eagle student newspaper — which, as of Tuesday afternoon, had not published any article on the matter — and wrote that the tone of a reporter’s questions implied an “anti-woman” view.

I don't think the professor is helping her case at all by describing people objecting as creating "a hostile environment" or that the reporter's questions implied an "anti-woman" view.

What say shipmates?

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

I agree with you. University professors do not need to bring their sick children to work with them; they have paid leave, and she should have just cancelled class and considered herself fortunate to have that option.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I agree with you. University professors do not need to bring their sick children to work with them; they have paid leave, and she should have just cancelled class and considered herself fortunate to have that option.

We don't know she had paid sick leave; she could have been an adjunct. This story doesn't say.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

She's an assistant professor -- so she's on the tenure track and gets paid leave.

Read her article here.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I agree with you. University professors do not need to bring their sick children to work with them; they have paid leave, and she should have just cancelled class and considered herself fortunate to have that option.

As an adjunct, I can tell you, canceling class is not as easy as you suggest. We can do it-- our pay is the same either way, there is no penalty to us as faculty. But generally we have a well-planned out curricula, intended to prepare students and teach the material they will be responsible for learning. If we are absent it usually is not possible to find someone to fill in, especially at the last minute. While students may rejoice at a sudden free day, as faculty we regret that they will be missing vital material and interrupting the flow of the course. Since, again, generally there is no financial hit for canceling class, I would imagine the professor here had exactly that motive in mind-- how to best prepare her students. Breastfeeding may be distracting, but the students will have a better chance at learning the material even in that distracting environment than they will with no class at all.

The prof. may have hurt her case by some of her strong words, but in general, I agree with her. As a mom, I found the barriers to breastfeeding daunting. And yes, for the most part, I think those barriers, when unnecessary, constitute a "hostile work environment". By breastfeeding in the classroom she sent a powerful, and I believe positive, message that breastfeeding children is a normal, natural part of life. And, sadly, the ruckus sent an equally powerful and sadly true message re: how our society still views the practice.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

I was an assistant professor at a Cal State University, and I never had any trouble cancelling class when necessary. It's disruptive, yes, but sometimes you have to do it.

Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :

I don't see what the problem is. No reason the professor couldn't lecture and feed her baby at the same time. On the other hand, Pine needs to get a grip if she thinks her breastfeeding being covered by student journalists constitutes a hostile work environment.

Posted by Antisocial Alto (# 13810) on :

According to the article she does have a TA for the course. Depending on AU's policies, maybe she could have stayed home with the baby and let the TA teach that session, instead of canceling class outright.

A+++ breastfeeding; F- taking a sick baby into a classroom full of germy students and letting it play on a dirty floor.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I was an assistant professor at a Cal State University, and I never had any trouble cancelling class when necessary. It's disruptive, yes, but sometimes you have to do it.

Sure, but that is your call as a prof. She made the call not to do so, in part because there really was no need to cancel. Again, precisely because there is not a financial hit for canceling class, I think it is fair to assume she decided to go ahead w/ class because she believed it would be most advantageous to her students.

Her handling of the (I'm guessing very young) reporter was a bit rough, I think, but overall, I agree with her point.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

It's good to see that an Anthro prof doesn't pass up any opportunity to be a victim. And double props for casting the students as the oppressors.

--Tom Clune

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

cliffdweller, I was disputing your claim that cancelling class isn't easy, when in fact it is. Whether there was a need to cancel is a matter for discussion. I have a friend who is a tenured professor at a community college, and a single parent as well, and when her daughter was an infant and got sick, she cancelled class and stayed home with her.

I think the real problem is that parents of young children have few childcare options, especially when their kids are sick. Daycares won't take kids who are sick, so parents get stuck using their sick days when they aren't sick -- and then going to work when they catch whatever their kids had.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

I can't help feeling that the fact that this was a feminist anthropology class is relevant. It seems rather ironic to want to study feminist anthropology but to get offended over public breast-feeding, as some of the students seem to have.

(Not that I'd want to extend that principle to criminology or nuclear physics)

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Breastfeeding may be distracting, but the students will have a better chance at learning the material even in that distracting environment than they will with no class at all.

Except the most significant part of the story to me is the fact that the child was sick. Why would she think the students would learn more in that distracting environment than they would learn if they wound up having to stay home from all their classes because they became sick?

quote:
And, sadly, the ruckus sent an equally powerful and sadly true message re: how our society still views the practice.

I'm not persuaded that the ruckus was about breastfeeding and how society still views the practice. I mean, we live with the vagina monologues on campus at least once a year in spite of my strenuous objections. When most people see a woman breastfeeding in public they avert their eyes to avoid making her uncomfortable. The professor created a situation in which her students found it very difficult to do that because most students are taught that they are supposed to be watching and listening to the professor and doing otherwise is a sign of disrespect.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
By breastfeeding in the classroom she sent a powerful, and I believe positive, message that breastfeeding children is a normal, natural part of life.

Who doubts that? The only problem I see is that she is obviously multitasking in front of a class that deserves a teacher's undivided attention. If she can get away with it, can others? According to the way some people are arguing, there is no reason this shouldn't become routine. I'm unclear what the baby's illness has to do with it. Who breast feeds the baby when he or she is not sick?

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

You need proper recognised paid parental responsibilities leave to cover things like this.

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

We used to have eccentric philosophy lecturers who brought their entertaining dogs to class (one prone to farting, the other to playing with its now squeakless squeaky toy and coming up to sit on our laps to our great enjoyment). Provided the baby's not squawling its head off, what's the problem?

I'm with the guy who said “We’re college students, things go on all the time. Whatever. We’ll survive.”

I think there's no harm in the odd bit of human non-corporate behaviour.

[ 12. September 2012, 19:55: Message edited by: Louise ]

Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
... I mean, we live with the vagina monologues on campus at least once a year in spite of my strenuous objections. ...

Why do you feel the need to object strenuously?

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
When most people see a woman breastfeeding in public they avert their eyes to avoid making her uncomfortable.

Why would anyone assume that a woman would be "uncomfortable" if people treated her normally while breastfeeding?

I think there's an issue here about taking a sick child to work, rather than tucking it up in its bed, but I don't see an issue with breastfeeding.

Slight tangent - a Muslim visitor to our house, in full hijab, was about to breast feed her baby and I asked if she'd like to do it in another room. She said no, she'd no problem with breast feeding in mixed company.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I think there is a tension in that, people prefer you not to stare at their breasts whilst they are talking - but babies tend to capture one's attention. Which leaves you worrying that the person you are talking to, who is breast feeding, is going to think you are leching at them - and once you are trying deliberately not to look in a particular direction you get caught in a loop of self-fulfilling self-conciousness.

This happens less with people you know well, or are family members.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

I'm inclined to agree with Louise, though mdijon also makes a good point. Surely this is no big deal? By all accounts a one-off, driven by circumstance. But having read Prof. Pine's thoughts on the matter, I feel there's an element of her painting herself into a previously non-existent corner.

Posted by Magic Wand (# 4227) on :

I can't but help to think that Dr Pine was being fairly naive in thinking that this might not have been of interest to the wider student body, and her characterization of the newspaper article as harassment is too much by far. The Counterpunch post reads as more than a little hysterical, and cost her any sympathy that I would have had for her otherwise.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
She's an assistant professor -- so she's on the tenure track and gets paid leave.

Read her article here.

I stand corrected.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I can't help feeling that the fact that this was a feminist anthropology class is relevant. It seems rather ironic to want to study feminist anthropology but to get offended over public breast-feeding, as some of the students seem to have.

(Not that I'd want to extend that principle to criminology or nuclear physics)

And that a professor teaching said class would be surprised that someone might be uncomfortable with it.
I've no problem with her breastfeeding in class, but do with bringing a sick child. And her whinging. Perfect, real world teaching opportunity and she handled it poorly.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
... I mean, we live with the vagina monologues on campus at least once a year in spite of my strenuous objections. ...
Why do you feel the need to object strenuously?

Because the advertising many people do for the Vagina Monologues is incredibly explicit and not only sexually explicit but explicit in the link between sex and violence. Even I don't want to see that when I'm walking across campus first thing in the morning, and it makes it impossible for people to bring their young child to or through campus without having some uncomfortable conversations about sex and sexual violence that both parent and child may not be prepared for. It seems to be getting better, but for a while you weren't allowed to criticize anything about the Vagina Monologues (including the advertising) without also defending yourself against accusations of misogyny.

Posted by HelsBells (# 16051) on :

I guess it depends on how the tutor conducted herself in class, as to whether or not it's an issue.
I'm a strong believer in women being able to breastfeed wherever and whenever they need to - and we have to remember that it's about the needs of the baby here. I've breastfed in parks, shopping centres, pubs, churches, trains and car parks and believe I have the right to meet my child's needs where I happen to be at the time.
Still, I think that the breastfeeding woman has to recognise that others may be a bit uncomfortable and to do what she can to be discreet (loose fitting top with baby snuggling down & actually hiding everything), and in this circumstance, to maybe chat to her class in advance about what she was going to do and why.
Also, presumably the alternative was to cancel the class, as you can't give the baby to anyone else to feed when you're breastfeeding. Perhaps she may have discussed this with her students too.
What she then said in the argument with the paper afterwards is, I feel a separate issue and she can reflect on how she comported herself at her leisure.

Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
... it makes it impossible for people to bring their young child to or through campus without having some uncomfortable conversations about sex and sexual violence that both parent and child may not be prepared for. ...

What kind of campus is this, and why would parents bring children to it? After all, you started this thread to criticise someone for bringing a child on campus ... Do you seriously believe university campuses should be sanitized for children?

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

It's easy enough to see both sides of this matter.

I'm a teacher, and I have occasionally had students bring a child to class. I can't remember it being a problem.

It's easy enough to say this woman could have canceled her class, but it is true that teachers often have schedules and plans for each class meeting. Canceling a class may be an uncomfortable option for her. She may have a teaching assistant, but a TA is by no means necessarily able to step in and teach the class instead.

One issue here is that some people feel uncomfortable with public breastfeeding, and some who have no such objection might nonetheless find it distracting. Perhaps a good answer to that is "Get over it".

The students in the class can reasonably expect the teacher's attention during the class to be on her job and not on her child. They have presumably not paid their tuition for the privilege of observing her skill at child care. Suppose she had brought the child to class and fed the child applesauce with a spoon; would that not face the same objection?

I hope her sick child is well soon.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Suppose she had brought the child to class and fed the child applesauce with a spoon; would that not face the same objection?

It seems so unlikely as to beggar the imagination. Public breastfeeding is such a contentious issue in the United States right now.

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I can't help feeling that the fact that this was a feminist anthropology class is relevant. It seems rather ironic to want to study feminist anthropology but to get offended over public breast-feeding, as some of the students seem to have.

(Not that I'd want to extend that principle to criminology or nuclear physics)

I believe that breastfeeding in public is a basic right. What I object to here is that she was doing childcare-including breastfeeding whilst being paid to do her job so a student bringing in a bub to breastfeed I fully support but not the teacher during teaching/lecturing time.

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

Originally posted by Evangeline:

quote:
a student bringing in a bub to breastfeed I fully support but not the teacher during teaching/lecturing time.

Is there any reason to believe that she was unable to discharge her duties as an employee?

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
What kind of campus is this, and why would parents bring children to it?

To babysit them, it would seem.
-----------

I'm a little shocked. College teachers bringing their kids to work? When did this happen? Is there a cut off age? Can toddlers bring their finger paints and men bring their sons and help them set up train sets while lecturing? How about bringing your elderly parents with dementia?

Everyone would save a lot of money if they didn't have to pay babysitters or caregivers, but unless it's understood that all the employees get to do this, and that the job is easy enough to allow for the distractions, then it seems like this woman is expecting special privileges.

I'm all for breast feeding, I did it, but I never expected to do it at work. It's not what I was being paid for. If the minimum wage worker at Walmart can find, and pay for, childcare so can this woman.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
What kind of campus is this, and why would parents bring children to it?

I've had the same fight at both public and private universities. Many college campuses in the US are not organized such that there's a clear demarcation of "on campus" and "off campus" and people not affiliated with the university do in fact sometime have to pass through areas of campus to get from their house to the place they need to go. Also, the universities I've been affiliated with have frequently run cultural events that are appropriate for children which are free and open to the public. Not to mention that they have fields and other open spaces where people (including the children of faculty, staff, and students) can organize games. Also, while the public library system has gotten a lot better and a lot of information is available online, for serious research a lot of people do in fact need to use the university library. And as I said in my OP, professors who were in a bind did sometimes bring their children to class or a meeting with them. There are lots of reasons for children to be on campus.

quote:
After all, you started this thread to criticise someone for bringing a child on campus ...

I most certainly did not start this thread to criticize someone for bringing a child on campus.

quote:
Do you seriously believe university campuses should be sanitized for children?

Sanitized for children, as in, anything that happens anywhere on them is appropriate for a child of any age? No, I don't believe that at all. Sanitized such that people (including children) walking through them do not happen upon what I once would have described as violent pornographic images? Yes.

Do you seriously believe that women who have children should simply stay home with them until the children are old enough to handle anything anyone might throw at them?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
If the minimum wage worker at Walmart can find, and pay for, childcare so can this woman.

You missed the part where the daycare wouldn't take her kid because it was sick.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
cliffdweller, I was disputing your claim that cancelling class isn't easy, when in fact it is. Whether there was a need to cancel is a matter for discussion. I have a friend who is a tenured professor at a community college, and a single parent as well, and when her daughter was an infant and got sick, she cancelled class and stayed home with her.

Yes, I was pointing out that it's "hard" in a different way. I really, really hate to cancel class, for any reason, because I already feel pressed to present all the material in enough depth to truly be useful, while allowing some breathing room for discussion/ interaction. Losing a day creates a problem. So, as I pointed out, it's *hard* not because we're not allowed sick days (we are) or because it impacts us financially (it doesn't). It's hard because we care about our students and giving them the best possible education.

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

I think the real problem is that parents of young children have few childcare options, especially when their kids are sick. Daycares won't take kids who are sick, so parents get stuck using their sick days when they aren't sick -- and then going to work when they catch whatever their kids had.

Totally agree-- although that doesn't appear to be the issue here. (And the prof. herself acknowledges that and the fact that she is privileged to be able to have a choice).

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
... it makes it impossible for people to bring their young child to or through campus without having some uncomfortable conversations about sex and sexual violence that both parent and child may not be prepared for. ...
What kind of campus is this, and why would parents bring children to it? After all, you started this thread to criticise someone for bringing a child on campus ... Do you seriously believe university campuses should be sanitized for children?

Leaving aside the question of whether university campuses should be sanitized for children, universities have on-site daycare facilities for faculty, staff and students, or they do if the people running them have half a clue. One university I worked at also had a high school on its campus.

ETA: Also, to be fair, saysay's objection was to the professor bringing her sick child to work.

[ 12. September 2012, 22:00: Message edited by: RuthW ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:

quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I can't help feeling that the fact that this was a feminist anthropology class is relevant. It seems rather ironic to want to study feminist anthropology but to get offended over public breast-feeding, as some of the students seem to have.

(Not that I'd want to extend that principle to criminology or nuclear physics)
I believe that breastfeeding in public is a basic right. What I object to here is that she was doing childcare-including breastfeeding whilst being paid to do her job so a student bringing in a bub to breastfeed I fully support but not the teacher during teaching/lecturing time.

But again, had she chosen the easier option of canceling class and just staying home with her child, she still would have been paid, so it's not like she's ripping off the university. Sick leave is part of her compensation package. She didn't bring her child to class every day-- she didn't even bring her to the very next class period, but rather paid for very expensive sick-baby care. She took an unusual step in a last minute crisis, presumably because she believed it was the "least bad" option in a less than ideal situation.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
I'm inclined to agree with Louise, though mdijon also makes a good point. Surely this is no big deal? By all accounts a one-off, driven by circumstance. But having read Prof. Pine's thoughts on the matter, I feel there's an element of her painting herself into a previously non-existent corner.

I would agree it does seem she heightened the issue with a somewhat exaggerated response. Perhaps an occupational hazard for a "feminist anthropology" prof.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
What kind of campus is this, and why would parents bring children to it?
To babysit them, it would seem.
-----------

I'm a little shocked. College teachers bringing their kids to work? When did this happen? Is there a cut off age? Can toddlers bring their finger paints and men bring their sons and help them set up train sets while lecturing.

I don't know when exactly. It existed back in the mid 90s, but it was the kind of thing that was acceptable only once in a while and only if your child was old enough/capable of playing quietly by themselves or with each other for the space of the lecture.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
If the minimum wage worker at Walmart can find, and pay for, childcare so can this woman.
You missed the part where the daycare wouldn't take her kid because it was sick.

And you apparently missed the part when you learned that 'daycare' and 'childcare' are not necessarily the same thing. Children are going to get sick and parents need to work out some system for dealing with that. Personally I can't figure out why she didn't have a single friend on the faculty or staff (or hell, even a student) willing to watch her child while she gave her lecture.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

sorry for the multiple posts-- trying to get caught up on the discussion:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

I've no problem with her breastfeeding in class, but do with bringing a sick child.

I admit I do have concerns about the germs there-- especially when I hear of students having to point out "baby has a paper clip in her mouth"... But these are the sorts of calls parents have to make all the time, and we all make them uneasily, so I'm not ready to second guess her w/o at least knowing the exact nature of the illness.

Same with exposing the students to baby's illness. It's a concern, but don't really have enough to go on. And really, being in a college environment means constantly being exposed to all sorts of nasty germ warfare. During a particularly nasty H1N1 epidemic, our univ. set up a separate dorm to house quarantined students. My students seemed to expect I'd find it a badge of honor when they tried to bypass the quarantine and show up in class anyway. Which is a point for keeping baby home for her own good though-- so again, difficult judgment call.

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
And her whinging. Perfect, real world teaching opportunity and she handled it poorly.

I gotta agree with you completely there.

[ 12. September 2012, 22:23: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
... Do you seriously believe that women who have children should simply stay home with them until the children are old enough to handle anything anyone might throw at them?

No, and the assumption that women are the only people responsible for or accompanied by young children is quite telling.

And in an era when many children are spend long hours watching sexy violent TV, playing sexy violent video games, and soaking up sexy violent advertising, is there any point in objecting to posters for a play that is put on once a year?

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:

I think there's an issue here about taking a sick child to work, rather than tucking it up in its bed, but I don't see an issue with breastfeeding.

I agree. I don't think people should assume they can bring their children to work with them, and certainly not teachers. Pupils should be entitled to expect their teacher's undivided attention.

The two things that are odd are:-

a. Why is the issue suckling the baby rather than taking him or her to work in the first place? Is there some cross-cultural issue I'm not picking up?

b. Why the fuss about whether a disgruntled student was out of turn and infringing the teacher's rights for criticising her? If the teacher has got a sound case, she's entitled to say 'you may think that but I disagree with you and I'll carry on bringing my baby in until my Head of Department says I mustn't'.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I agree. I don't think people should assume they can bring their children to work with them, and certainly not teachers. Pupils should be entitled to expect their teacher's undivided attention.

But again, she doesn't regularly bring her baby. Again, she didn't even bring her still-sick baby the next class period. So the choice in this particular situation was not "teacher's divided attention" v. "teacher's undivided attention". The choice was "teacher's divided attention" v. "no attention/instruction at all". Again, arguably she made the "least bad" choice for her students in a less-than-ideal circumstance.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
And you apparently missed the part when you learned that 'daycare' and 'childcare' are not necessarily the same thing.

I'd say for millions of workers they most assuredly are.

quote:
Children are going to get sick and parents need to work out some system for dealing with that. Personally I can't figure out why she didn't have a single friend on the faculty or staff (or hell, even a student) willing to watch her child while she gave her lecture.

Gee, pity she didn't ask you for advice, isn't it?

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
No, and the assumption that women are the only people responsible for or accompanied by young children is quite telling.

And, pray tell, just what does it tell you?

quote:
And in an era when many children are spend long hours watching sexy violent TV, playing sexy violent video games, and soaking up sexy violent advertising, is there any point in objecting to posters for a play that is put on once a year?

Yes. Many children are not the children who I am primarily responsible for protecting as they are the children of my family and friends. They do not watch sexy violent TV, play sexy violent video games, and soak up sexy violent advertising. Do I tell others that they shouldn't let their children do those things and they should seriously limit the amount of media exposure their children get? Yes. Do people always listen? No. Can I do anything about it if they don't? No, not really. Just because some people in the world are irresponsible parents does not mean that all parents have to be irresponsible.

Posted by Antisocial Alto (# 13810) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
So the choice in this particular situation was not "teacher's divided attention" v. "teacher's undivided attention". The choice was "teacher's divided attention" v. "no attention/instruction at all".

No. She has a TA. She said in her Counterpunch article that she didn't feel it was fair to her students to have the TA teach that day, because the TA was new and it was the first session of the course.

Would it have been ideal to have a new TA do the teaching that day? No, of course not. But I think it's at least arguable whether it's more detrimental to students' learning to have an inexperienced teacher for one day, or to have a distractingly cute baby crawling around the classroom for one day. This particular baby was old enough to be awake, mobile, and very likely babbling a bit- it's not the same as bringing a younger baby who might (might!) sleep.

I agree with other posters that the prof's whining is annoying, given that she's better off (in terms of flexibility and a family-supportive environment) than probably three-quarters of working American parents. The fact that she even considered it was feasible to bring the baby is proof of that. Breastfeeding... There are many, many workplaces where, despite all the legal protections, there's not even a decent place to pump.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
And you apparently missed the part when you learned that 'daycare' and 'childcare' are not necessarily the same thing.
I'd say for millions of workers they most assuredly are.

Hey, we set up sick child care in my area. Not sure why other people didn't.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
Hey, we set up sick child care in my area. Not sure why other people didn't.

They were afraid it would make them self-righteous and judgmental?

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

I suppose I do have to consider that as a possibility. I think it's more likely that it would disrupt certain people's attempts to create a completely arbitrary hierarchy that places them at the top of the hierarchy, but I've been known to be wrong before.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
So the choice in this particular situation was not "teacher's divided attention" v. "teacher's undivided attention". The choice was "teacher's divided attention" v. "no attention/instruction at all".
No. She has a TA. She said in her Counterpunch article that she didn't feel it was fair to her students to have the TA teach that day, because the TA was new and it was the first session of the course.

Would it have been ideal to have a new TA do the teaching that day? No, of course not. But I think it's at least arguable whether it's more detrimental to students' learning to have an inexperienced teacher for one day, or to have a distractingly cute baby crawling around the classroom for one day.

Arguably. It's a judgment call, one she as a professional made.

And, as has already noted, TAs vary greatly in ability and expertise, and in the expectations. Institutions vary in terms of the latitude they give profs in use of TAs. I have had TAs who were graduate students fully capable of taking on a class-- although doing so on very little notice, perhaps not. I have also had TAs who were really bright undergrads hired to help with clerical tasks such as recording grades. They would not be an appropriate choice to lead class.

The point being, there are just so many unknown variables here in what clearly is a case of choosing the "least bad" among several less than ideal options.

quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:

I agree with other posters that the prof's whining is annoying, given that she's better off (in terms of flexibility and a family-supportive environment) than probably three-quarters of working American parents. The fact that she even considered it was feasible to bring the baby is proof of that. Breastfeeding... There are many, many workplaces where, despite all the legal protections, there's not even a decent place to pump.

Well, to be fair, she herself made that point.

But I would agree that the way she handled the controversy was poor. It was an excellent opportunity to step up to the plate as an educator and, you know, educate. Instead, she came off as rather bullying toward a presumably young, less aware student.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

Sounds like earnest undergraduates, fresh out of highschool. Nothing to see here. Oh sorry, tits. And children, one of the hazards of sex. Good heavens, they are parasites aren't they, needing mummy and all! The prof is right, there isn't really anything newsworthy except the immature responses of those who object. The prof doesn't make it a habit, and life happens.

As for getting a TA to teach for you, that only works if you've got fully prepared powerpoint and lecture notes. Some of us actually come prepared to teach from an outline, don't make slides of every sentence or point and don't read lectures from notes. I'd have never done that any TA.

If you've got a fall term of 16 lectures, and one is cancelled, that's a problem. Less worrisome later in the term but what if the baby is sick twice or 4 times? What then? We've found students pretty resistant to scheduling an extra Saturday morning class to make up, or a weekday at 5 p.m.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Sounds like earnest undergraduates, fresh out of highschool. Nothing to see here. Oh sorry, tits. And children, one of the hazards of sex. Good heavens, they are parasites aren't they, needing mummy and all! The prof is right, there isn't really anything newsworthy except the immature responses of those who object. The prof doesn't make it a habit, and life happens.

I was trying to put my thoughts on this into words, you did it.

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

What no prophet said.

And - there's plenty of degrees of 'sick' and 'baby' that would encompass 'basically OK but not accepted at daycare' to 'on the verge of needing immediate medical attention'. As for friends/students to look after said child, well, perhaps they also work or study and just couldn't help that period? A crazy thought I know.

As a parent there are things that occasionally happen that you just have to deal with when they happen.

There's also plenty of degrees of breastfeeding that encompass anything from 'everything out' to 'nothing to see'. A Muslim colleague would occasionally breastfeed in the office (whenever her girls came into the office it was never a problem, just as whenever it's school holidays my girls often come in and are very welcome. It's an informal environment & the work gets done). She had a blanket over her shoulder, baby & breast under the blanket. We knew she was breastfeeding because of the blanket & position of the baby, not because we saw bare flesh.

Buy yes, she could have handled it better & explained to her students at the start of class why she was there to teach instead of cancelling.

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Garasu:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
quote:
a student bringing in a bub to breastfeed I fully support but not the teacher during teaching/lecturing time.
Is there any reason to believe that she was unable to discharge her duties as an employee?

I think most people who've looked after an infant would agree that it's impossible to give one's full attention to something else, like giving a lecture while adequately attending to the child's needs. If you could discharge your duties as an employee whilst looking after a child there wouldn't be any need for childcare.

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

Originally posted by Evangeline:

quote:
I think most people who've looked after an infant would agree that it's impossible to give one's full attention to something else, like giving a lecture while adequately attending to the child's needs.

I suspect an awful lot of parents spend an awful lot of time getting on with things while simultaneously attending to the needs of their children...

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
I think most people who've looked after an infant would agree that it's impossible to give one's full attention to something else, like giving a lecture while adequately attending to the child's needs. If you could discharge your duties as an employee whilst looking after a child there wouldn't be any need for childcare.

I think that's one of the things I most dislike about this woman's attitude. She seems to be saying that her job doesn't require much effort and neither does child care. She's in such a rare elitist and priviledged position she should be the last person making a statement about the need for more daycare options.

I worked in banks with hundreds of women and men who had the same problems she had and never once brought their children to work. Most of them, knowing that daycares don't take sick children, had a back-up neighbor or relative in place for the occasional call. Otherwise, they took one of their five day per year sick days or, sometimes, they had to use their vacation days, but they all managed. None of them ever had the option of saying, "It's just this one time and it's not hurting anything. You all just don't like breastfeeders!"

Another option, one that I, and thousands of other women choose, is to not work at all during the first few years of the baby's life. Sometimes it's because they want to spend as much time as possible during those early years with their child but probably, just as often, because low wage women find that they can't afford to work because the cost of child care is almost more than they earn.

This woman, with her relatively high income, her built in substitute teacher and, no doubt a long list in the teachers lounge of students willing to babysit, is whining about a situation that for her, had many other options, while for some women is a really rather desperate issue.

I'm all for free, government paid childcare for everyone. It, like free K-12 education is beneficial for all, but ultimately, I believe parents still are responsible for raising their own children.

Posted by Niteowl (# 15841) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I think that's one of the things I most dislike about this woman's attitude. She seems to be saying that her job doesn't require much effort and neither does child care. She's in such a rare elitist and priviledged position she should be the last person making a statement about the need for more daycare options.

Actually, I've been at at least one job where a baby was sick last minute and the child was brought to my place of employment and calling in was frowned on or there was an urgent project that had to be done. Employers then had the choice of sending the employee home or allowing the child to stay with the understanding that it was a one time deal not a regular occurrance. As far as I know this was for the one day as the TA was inexperienced and it was the first day of classes. It says nothing about arrogance on her part, though as others have said, the whining about a hostile work environment is over the top. Her income has nothing to do with a last minutte baby with the sniffles. Many childcare providers refuse to watch a sick baby and that roster of students willing to babysit requires advance notice of baby having sniffles, not to mention with it being the first day of classes she wouldn't have had access to that list.

Posted by Antisocial Alto (# 13810) on :

It would be one thing if she'd previously arranged with her department that it was OK to bring the baby in occasionally. But... kids get sick a lot. Especially babies. The child is a year old at least- has this situation never come up before? What has her sick child care plan been in the past? She doesn't mention having a relative or friend, or a sick-child carer, who usually helps out.

Posted by Higgs Bosun (# 16582) on :

One thing puzzles me about this. She brought the child into the class because it was sick, and then breastfed during the class. What would have happened had the child not been sick? If the child was not with her during the class, she would not have been able to breastfeed. Would she normally have breastfed the child before the class? In which case why not have done so this time - in which case the child would have been nicely quiet during the class (unless needing a burp, I guess). She could not be operating a "feed on demand" regime, as clearly there would normally be times when the child was not with her.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:
I think most people who've looked after an infant would agree that it's impossible to give one's full attention to something else, like giving a lecture while adequately attending to the child's needs. If you could discharge your duties as an employee whilst looking after a child there wouldn't be any need for childcare.
I think that's one of the things I most dislike about this woman's attitude. She seems to be saying that her job doesn't require much effort and neither does child care.

I don't see how you could possibly construe that from her comments. It is precisely because teaching requires some effort-- some preparation-- that you can't simply hand off a lecture to a TA at the last minute.

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
She's in such a rare elitist and priviledged position she should be the last person making a statement about the need for more daycare options.

...This woman, with her relatively high income, her built in substitute teacher and, no doubt a long list in the teachers lounge of students willing to babysit, is whining about a situation that for her, had many other options, while for some women is a really rather desperate issue.

But again, these are points she made. She understood she is in a rare and privileged situation to be able to make that choice, and said as much. That was one of the reason she did not want a big deal made of it. (Again, I agree that after the fact she DID "make a big deal of it", foolishly so).

oh, and fyi: Again, I've been teaching univ. for more than 10 years. There is no "built-in substitute teacher", nor for that matter a "teacher's lounge" or a "list of babysitters". This is univ., not Glee.

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

Another option, one that I, and thousands of other women choose, is to not work at all during the first few years of the baby's life. Sometimes it's because they want to spend as much time as possible during those early years with their child but probably, just as often, because low wage women find that they can't afford to work because the cost of child care is almost more than they earn.

Ah! Yes, we've been waiting for that shoe to drop. This is what it's really about, isn't it. Yet another tiresome mommy war because this woman chose a different path than you.

[ 13. September 2012, 14:04: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
It would be one thing if she'd previously arranged with her department that it was OK to bring the baby in occasionally. But... kids get sick a lot. Especially babies. The child is a year old at least- has this situation never come up before? What has her sick child care plan been in the past? She doesn't mention having a relative or friend, or a sick-child carer, who usually helps out.

Actually she does.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:
One thing puzzles me about this. She brought the child into the class because it was sick, and then breastfed during the class. What would have happened had the child not been sick? If the child was not with her during the class, she would not have been able to breastfeed. Would she normally have breastfed the child before the class? In which case why not have done so this time - in which case the child would have been nicely quiet during the class (unless needing a burp, I guess). She could not be operating a "feed on demand" regime, as clearly there would normally be times when the child was not with her.

As mentioned in unthread, and in at least two links, the child is normally in child care. Likely they feed her as necessary.
Never heard of a breast pump or formula?

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Here's another thing. This got in the press. Would it have done so, if she'd brought her baby into class without feeding him/her and one of the students had texted someone with the message 'Hey. What next? Dr X has brought her gurgling/whinging/winnocking/whatever baby into class with her'?

Is it something to do with her suckling the baby while teaching that has turned this into a story that makes the press? If so. why? In terms of conduct proper to university lecturers, that's an incidental.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

Another option, one that I, and thousands of other women choose, is to not work at all during the first few years of the baby's life. Sometimes it's because they want to spend as much time as possible during those early years with their child but probably, just as often, because low wage women find that they can't afford to work because the cost of child care is almost more than they earn.
Ah! Yes, we've been waiting for that shoe to drop. This is what it's really about, isn't it. Yet another tiresome mommy war because this woman chose a different path than you.

How interesting that mentioning the women who can't earn enough to pay for child care or the women who choose to stay home, has become so unmentionable, that it's "the other shoe dropping," and an entirely false assumption that we think all women should stay home with their babies. It's a choice and it's too bad that some people, who probably think of themselves as feminists, want to deny that choice to other women and demonize the women who choose it.

Posted by Higgs Bosun (# 16582) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
As mentioned in unthread, and in at least two links, the child is normally in child care. Likely they feed her as necessary.
Never heard of a breast pump or formula?

Then why could she not feed the child in the same way as the child care would feed her?

It seems to me as if she was actually wanting to make a point and did this deliberately.

Now, I don't have a problem at all with women breastfeeding in public. However, doing so when their attention should be on something else is another matter*. So, I think the appropriateness of the action does rather depend upon the nature of the class, and what part she was playing. If it were a lecture, then it would not be appropriate to do this. If it were a general discussion among the students which she was observing, then it could be appropriate. So, roughly the same as checking twitter or taking a phone call during the class.

*To breastfeed but to behave as if this is not going on and to give no attention to the child would seem to me to very odd!

Posted by Antisocial Alto (# 13810) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Actually she does.

She says that the next day she found a friend to watch the baby- not that she already had someone lined up for emergencies and that person couldn't do it for some reason. I know plans can fall through (especially child care plans!) but it sounds from the prof's article like she had no plan.

cliffdweller, you and I are both parents, so I hope you believe me that I'm not trying to turn this into a working-mommy war or an anti-parenting war. But I am saying that it sounds like this particular parent dropped the ball (as we all do sometimes) and then tried to make it her workplace's fault, not her own.

If Prof. Pine's plan was to bring the baby in with her on a teaching day, she should have cleared that with her department in advance. And then if any of her students had a problem with it, she could have told them to buzz off.

It's dumb and awful that one of her students chose to make the breastfeeding the main issue, and dime her out to the newspaper. And it's dumb and awful that the newspaper decided it was worth following up.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
the advertising many people do for the Vagina Monologues is incredibly explicit and not only sexually explicit but explicit in the link between sex and violence... for a while you weren't allowed to criticize anything about the Vagina Monologues (including the advertising) without also defending yourself against accusations of misogyny.

I know. Controversy should flourish on college campuses. The first time-- wonderful! Once every few years, so that every undergraduate has a chance to experience it, ok-- although in the 2500+ history of great drama, one would think that a few others might be found equally worthy of that honor even on-topic (Lysistrata, perhaps?) But here it is a well-established and jealously guarded annual ritual. In a letter to the campus paper once, I wondered in print what feminism is, if its crowning achievement after two decades on campus is a yearly event with such a crude and disobliging title. And I also wondered whether a hypothetical production entitled "Penis monologues" could ever post the equivalent publicity. (Perhaps it could-- you never know until you try-- although some places have prohibited the actual play Cock Tales even while giving VM the usual green light. Part of the fun is rubbing a double standard in everyone's nose.)

Of course, a furious reply accused me of being censorious and shocked, when my point had clearly been more like oy, here we go again...

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:

quote:
Then why could she not feed the child in the same way as the child care would feed her?

My experience is that breast feeding is a lot less hassle than any other form of feeding; you only need one arm to hold the baby, and thus have an arm free to click on a powerpoint etc, and there's less eye contact with the baby needed too. I don't think it says what age the baby was, but old enough to crawl anyway. By the time my second was that age, I could wear her in a sling while feeding and have both arms free; which was hugely convenient.

I would have thought her students would have had more cause for complaint if she'd started faffing about with bottle feeding.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Is it something to do with her suckling the baby while teaching that has turned this into a story that makes the press? If so. why? In terms of conduct proper to university lecturers, that's an incidental.

I recall from pedagogy courses in the 1960s that part of the student-teacher relationship is that (1) teachers give students their undivided attention when they are supposed to be teaching;
(2) students work like dogs for the teacher.

There's no reason to expect (2) without (1).

Pity if things have changed since.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

Another option, one that I, and thousands of other women choose, is to not work at all during the first few years of the baby's life. Sometimes it's because they want to spend as much time as possible during those early years with their child but probably, just as often, because low wage women find that they can't afford to work because the cost of child care is almost more than they earn.
Ah! Yes, we've been waiting for that shoe to drop. This is what it's really about, isn't it. Yet another tiresome mommy war because this woman chose a different path than you.
How interesting that mentioning the women who can't earn enough to pay for child care or the women who choose to stay home, has become so unmentionable, that it's "the other shoe dropping," and an entirely false assumption that we think all women should stay home with their babies. It's a choice and it's too bad that some people, who probably think of themselves as feminists, want to deny that choice to other women and demonize the women who choose it.

Sorry, Twilight, but that is the clear implication of your statement. I didn't criticize women who choose to stay home (Why would I? I made that choice myself.) Even the snappish prof. didn't criticize women who choose to stay home. In fact, it was never even part of the conversation. It was you and you alone who chose to 2nd guess the choice she made and explicitly suggest that she would have done better to choose what you chose. That, my friend, is what it looks like to attempt to "deny that choice to other women and demonize the women who choose it."

Of course, had the snappish prof. followed your august example and chosen to stay home with her child, as a single mother, she no doubt would have had to reply on public assistance. And that would probably cause her to run afoul of the equally sharp judgment in your next paragraph:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

I'm all for free, government paid childcare for everyone. It, like free K-12 education is beneficial for all, but ultimately, I believe parents still are responsible for raising their own children.

[ 14. September 2012, 01:05: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Is it something to do with her suckling the baby while teaching that has turned this into a story that makes the press? If so. why? In terms of conduct proper to university lecturers, that's an incidental.
I recall from pedagogy courses in the 1960s that part of the student-teacher relationship is that (1) teachers give students their undivided attention when they are supposed to be teaching;
(2) students work like dogs for the teacher.

There's no reason to expect (2) without (1).

Pity if things have changed since.

But again, the prof. giving her undivided attention was not an option on this particular day. That happens. She DID give her undivided attention the next class and presumably every class thereafter.

Her choices on that particular day were:
1. Cancel class-- no undivided attention, no attention at all.
2. Ask her TA to lead class-- w/o out any notice or preparation. Undivided attention, but from someone ill-equipped to present the material, at least at that point in time.
3. Take baby to class and proceed to give the best you can w/ divided attention.

NONE of those choices are "professor's undivided attention". That option is not on the table. From my personal experience-- which is pretty close to this situation-- any of the three options are generally acceptable from an institutional standpoint (no advance permission needed as some have suggested). None are ideal, all three are probably fairly even in outcome. fwiw, I would most likely make the same choice she did in that circumstance, which again, is not all that outside my current experience. The only exceptions would be I probably wouldn't let my baby crawl around on a dirty paper-clip ridden floor, and I would hope I would respond to the young reporter with a greater degree of patience and grace. But then again, I've been know to be snappish myself at times, especially when tired or stressed.

[ 14. September 2012, 01:32: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
But again, the prof. giving her undivided attention was not an option on this particular day. That happens. She DID give her undivided attention the next class and presumably every class thereafter.

I don't know how you know that she did devote her undivided attention to subsequent classs, but let's assume that that is true. The basic problem that I have with this story is that the prof imposed on her students and then denied the reality of it by whining about being victimized. That is stunningly manipulative and depressingly common among academics. It's foul and worthy of censure.

--Tom Clune

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

How exactly did she "impose" on her students?

(whining? yes.)

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
How exactly did she "impose" on her students?

(whining? yes.)

By bringing her baby to the class. This isn't difficult.

--Tom Clune

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
How exactly did she "impose" on her students?

(whining? yes.)
By bringing her baby to the class. This isn't difficult.

--Tom Clune

It shouldn't be.

Again, she had three options-- none of which involved the students getting her undivided attention. Through no fault of her own, that was not an option available at the time. Among the three less than perfect options available to her, she chose the one that seemed best to her. Given that there was no financial motive for her to choose to come to class with her baby, it seems reasonable to conclude that she chose that because she believed it to be in her students best interests, given the limited options available.

The students were adults, the doors presumably were not locked. They were free to go. How again is she "imposing" on them?

Posted by Antisocial Alto (# 13810) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Through no fault of her own, that was not an option available at the time.

If she didn't make any arrangements for sick child care ahead of time, it *was* her fault. For pete's sake, she's a grown-ass woman and a college professor- is she too dumb to know that kids unexpectedly get sick? This is a problem that every working parent has to deal with.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
I don't know how you know that she did devote her undivided attention to subsequent classs, but let's assume that that is true. The basic problem that I have with this story is that the prof imposed on her students and then denied the reality of it by whining about being victimized. That is stunningly manipulative and depressingly common among academics. It's foul and worthy of censure.

--Tom Clune

Nonsense. No one devotes undivided attention to anything.

Let's turn this around to gain some perspective. Perhaps you haven't been to a univ class lately. The students impose all the time, they talk amongst themselves, send text messages to each other and others not at the class, cruise websites, go to facebook etc. That sounds foul and worthy of censure doesn't it? The situation has been bad enough in many classes that some profs have tried to ban all electronic devices. Maybe if students didn't bring electronic gadgets, smarty phones and computers, we could have a trade and profs will never bring babies. Okay, sarcasm mode off.

My read is that the prof only talked of the situation because she was asked. Incessantly. The whining started with the students.

Your final sentence - " That is stunningly manipulative and depressingly common among academics." - is a tarring of all academics with the same brush isn't it? one could replace the word academic with just about any profession, and it would sound whiny in itself would it not? Do you want her fired or something?

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
If she didn't make any arrangements for sick child care ahead of time, it *was* her fault. For pete's sake, she's a grown-ass woman and a college professor- is she too dumb to know that kids unexpectedly get sick? This is a problem that every working parent has to deal with.

I don't know about you, but in my part of the world, the choices for a sick child are really only one: stay home from work. It is very difficult to get adequate daycare, let alone alternative daycare. Or maybe you have readily available daycare and alternative daycare where you live. If so, you are very very lucky.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:

quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
If she didn't make any arrangements for sick child care ahead of time, it *was* her fault. For pete's sake, she's a grown-ass woman and a college professor- is she too dumb to know that kids unexpectedly get sick? This is a problem that every working parent has to deal with.
I don't know about you, but in my part of the world, the choices for a sick child are really only one: stay home from work. It is very difficult to get adequate daycare, let alone alternative daycare. Or maybe you have readily available daycare and alternative daycare where you live. If so, you are very very lucky.

Seriously-- sick kids are the very definition of "scramble". Daycare may be available most places, but sick baby daycare? Pretty much unheard of. Which leaves you with-- if you're lucky-- friends or family. But friends & family are in my experience stubbornly unwillingly to commit to keeping all their working hours open "just in case" you need a back up sick baby care. So you do what all parents do-- scramble. Run through a variety of options, none of them good, and pick the "least bad". Which is, again, precisely what the prof did. While she may (or may not) have been the first prof to breastfeed in class, I guarantee you she was not the first to bring a sick child, nor will she be the last.

And yes, again, that makes her privileged-- many woman don't have that option. Again, she recognized that in the article. But apparently that privilege doesn't make her immune to the same tiresome mommy wars.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Sounds like a slow news day to me (would that it were slower) [Frown]

but we get a steady diet of shock-horror-breastfeeding stories here, and the mommy wars, and "teh feminists R taking over the world with PCness" as well. It was rather too much to hope for that this WOULDN'T get splashed all over the media, having all three angles to play. I wish everybody involved would pull up their big girl panties and deal with it privately, as they doubtless would have done if a male professor of something dull--literature? [Devil]

had brought his sick toddler to class with a formula bottle and baggie of Cheerios. But that wouldn't be interesting.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
the advertising many people do for the Vagina Monologues is incredibly explicit and not only sexually explicit but explicit in the link between sex and violence... for a while you weren't allowed to criticize anything about the Vagina Monologues (including the advertising) without also defending yourself against accusations of misogyny.
I know. Controversy should flourish on college campuses. The first time-- wonderful! Once every few years, so that every undergraduate has a chance to experience it, ok-- although in the 2500+ history of great drama, one would think that a few others might be found equally worthy of that honor even on-topic (Lysistrata, perhaps?) But here it is a well-established and jealously guarded annual ritual. In a letter to the campus paper once, I wondered in print what feminism is, if its crowning achievement after two decades on campus is a yearly event with such a crude and disobliging title. And I also wondered whether a hypothetical production entitled "Penis monologues" could ever post the equivalent publicity. (Perhaps it could-- you never know until you try-- although some places have prohibited the actual play Cock Tales even while giving VM the usual green light. Part of the fun is rubbing a double standard in everyone's nose.)

Of course, a furious reply accused me of being censorious and shocked, when my point had clearly been more like oy, here we go again...

The play is made up of monologues about vaginas. How is the title inappropriate? Vagina is simply a name for a body part, and shouldn't be any more taboo than arm or leg, or indeed penis. Women embracing their bodies, including their vaginas, IS rather a key point of feminism. Seeing as how penises have been celebrated in Western culture from Classical times onwards, I don't see the need for The Penis Monologues but I certainly wouldn't object to it on the basis that penis is some kind of dirty word. It's not. It's a body part, not profanity.

With regard to posters displaying images alluding to sexual violence, the sexual violence of the patriarchy is kind of relevant to the play itself.

On topic, my issue is not the breastfeeding but I do have issues with the fact that the baby was sick. Babies get sick fairly often, did this situation not occur before...?

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

OK, now I"m curious: Jade and Antisocial Alto: how exactly do YOU deal with sick child care? Do YOU have some mysterious nanny willing and available to drop everything at a moment's notice to swoop in and care for your ailing young 'uns?

I'm serious. I know of no one-- no one!-- who doesn't have to scramble when this happens. And yes, it happens all the time, and we all curse and scramble. It's something you should expect-- it's gonna happen sooner or later-- but it's not really something you can plan or prepare for unless baby happens to come with a helpful build-in calendar alerting you in advance to his/her planned sick days.

Life isn't like that in my world, and I am really, really curious about what life is like in your apparently perfectly ordered universe.

[ 14. September 2012, 03:52: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Through no fault of her own, that was not an option available at the time.
If she didn't make any arrangements for sick child care ahead of time, it *was* her fault. For pete's sake, she's a grown-ass woman and a college professor- is she too dumb to know that kids unexpectedly get sick? This is a problem that every working parent has to deal with.

I'm really curious about this--What choices are out there? Because we live in a major metro area and our relatives are 2000 miles away (and working). There is no sick daycare here, I went looking-- and for a while entertained the idea of starting one just to rake in the bucks (there being no competition), only to conclude reluctantly that I couldn't afford the liability. My boss wouldn't let me use sick days (being a sadist--fear not, HR finally spanked him) and I have no trustworthy willing nonworking friends or neighbors. We finally took to calculating on a case by case basis which of us, me or Mr Lamb, was most likely to lose our job if we stayed home that day. My own mother didn't have even that choice and used to leave us home alone with soup and TV, just hoping nothing would happen. We have some parents who pull older children out of school to watch sick babies. Are there other choices we missed? Because these all suck.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

And of course, even the sad trade-off-with-spouse option isn't available to single parents. So every illness becomes a calculation-- is this one serious enough to take a sick day? If I take a sick day today, what happens if baby comes up with something more serious/long term?

When I was a single mom, I remember stashing my sick toddler with a blanket and a lovie in behind the choir loft while I preached one Sunday, just praying she would nap.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Dull-and-boring-warning//

The marriage bar in teaching (women giving up work on marriage) was introduced in Scotland after the First World War, to create jobs for returning servicemen. Prior to that, it was possible (though unusual) for women to combine marriage and teaching. I assume that any woman who had a baby while teaching full time took it into the classroom and breastfed as and when necessary. (I'm basing this assumption on the high mortality rate amongst non-breastfed children in the C19th, and the low mortality rate amongst teachers' babies). As families were larger then, any pupils who were older siblings would have seen their mothers breast feed younger siblings, and any pupils who were younger siblings would have seen their nieces / nephews breastfed. So presumably it was no big deal.

//End of dull-and-boring warning.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
OK, now I"m curious: Jade and Antisocial Alto: how exactly do YOU deal with sick child care? Do YOU have some mysterious nanny willing and available to drop everything at a moment's notice to swoop in and care for your ailing young 'uns?

I'm serious. I know of no one-- no one!-- who doesn't have to scramble when this happens. And yes, it happens all the time, and we all curse and scramble. It's something you should expect-- it's gonna happen sooner or later-- but it's not really something you can plan or prepare for unless baby happens to come with a helpful build-in calendar alerting you in advance to his/her planned sick days.

Life isn't like that in my world, and I am really, really curious about what life is like in your apparently perfectly ordered universe.

I am not a parent, however I have been a university student and taught by professors who had young children at the time, some of whom must have been sick during that time. They didn't bring the child into the lecture because it's a health hazard for the students (not to mention highly distracting). There surely must be a plan of action most responsible parents have for this kind of event? From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby. It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that?

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Your final sentence - " That is stunningly manipulative and depressingly common among academics." - is a tarring of all academics with the same brush isn't it? one could replace the word academic with just about any profession, and it would sound whiny in itself would it not? Do you want her fired or something?

How you get from absolutely anything that I have posted to a desire to see her fired is beyond my ability to discern. Is it possible that you are trying to be manipulative here? [Big Grin]

I spent a couple of decades in academia and the rest of my career in business. There is a real difference. I suspect that much of it is related to spending so much time in the presence of adolescents. I certainly do not want to suggest that every academic is emotionally stunted, and I have not done so. But the extent to which this kind of thing is seen as appropriate is markedly higher in academia than in any other social context with which I am familiar.

--Tom Clune

[ 14. September 2012, 12:55: Message edited by: tclune ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Well, neither would I. But when you live in a less than ideal world filled with neighbors/ fellow people in less than ideal circumstances, sometimes simple compassion and decency requires sucking it up.

As for why you don't remember similar incidents among your own professors, university women are notorious for low rates of marriage, and I suspect motherhood. If you want to succeed in that field as in many others, you (female you) will face pressure to sacrifice having a family. The social supports simply don't exist to allow many women (most?) to do both. As this story illustrates. And you'll get very little sympathy from people who see you as privileged and therefore not in need of help at all.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
[I am not a parent, however I have been a university student and taught by professors who had young children at the time, some of whom must have been sick during that time. They didn't bring the child into the lecture because it's a health hazard for the students (not to mention highly distracting). There surely must be a plan of action most responsible parents have for this kind of event?

No, there is not. Unless you are so fortunate as to have a willing, nonworking, nearby grandparent (and what's the odds on that?). Or possessed of an extraordinarily progressive employer who provides sick care (ha). Or wealthy enough to have a nanny. Or unfortunate enough to have an unemployed spouse.

For the ordinary employed peon there is no choice but to scramble. Which means that someone, somewhere, is going to feel put-upon. Which is why you spend the early childhood years apologizing to everybody you meet, even though you've done no wrong.

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby.

It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that?

Why should anybody suffer for anything? It's immature to bring a "customer is always right" attitude into the real world where fallible human beings have to make the least lousy choice among several very sucky ones. Your professor (co-worker, preacher, etc.) is your neighbor; do unto others and all that. If and when you ARE a parent some day, you'll be grateful for all the slack decent people cut you for situations you can't help, much as you wish you could. Particularly if they assume the best about your motives instead of assuming you are irresponsible and foolish.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
[I am not a parent, however I have been a university student and taught by professors who had young children at the time, some of whom must have been sick during that time. They didn't bring the child into the lecture because it's a health hazard for the students (not to mention highly distracting). There surely must be a plan of action most responsible parents have for this kind of event?
No, there is not. Unless you are so fortunate as to have a willing, nonworking, nearby grandparent (and what's the odds on that?). Or possessed of an extraordinarily progressive employer who provides sick care (ha). Or wealthy enough to have a nanny. Or unfortunate enough to have an unemployed spouse.

For the ordinary employed peon there is no choice but to scramble. Which means that someone, somewhere, is going to feel put-upon. Which is why you spend the early childhood years apologizing to everybody you meet, even though you've done no wrong.

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby.

It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that?
Why should anybody suffer for anything? It's immature to bring a "customer is always right" attitude into the real world where fallible human beings have to make the least lousy choice among several very sucky ones. Your professor (co-worker, preacher, etc.) is your neighbor; do unto others and all that. If and when you ARE a parent some day, you'll be grateful for all the slack decent people cut you for situations you can't help, much as you wish you could. Particularly if they assume the best about your motives instead of assuming you are irresponsible and foolish.

Only, I would have paid handsomely for my degree course and would expect a minimum standard of teaching standards. Bringing in a sick baby violates that. It's not a 'customer is always right' attitude, it's the professor not upholding her side of the contract. A distracting student would be dismissed from the lecture theatre, and rightly so. Why not the professor? A professor is not a low-paid job and WILL have sick care benefits, much more so than the students they are teaching. To me this just smacks of a professor abusing the privileges of the job and delivering a substandard service because of it. That's not fair on those who are paying through the nose for it. Being a parent doesn't mean you get to shirk your responsibilities towards people other than your child.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
OK, now I"m curious: Jade and Antisocial Alto: how exactly do YOU deal with sick child care? Do YOU have some mysterious nanny willing and available to drop everything at a moment's notice to swoop in and care for your ailing young 'uns?

I am not a parent, however I have been a university student and taught by professors who had young children at the time, some of whom must have been sick during that time. They didn't bring the child into the lecture because it's a health hazard for the students (not to mention highly distracting). There surely must be a plan of action most responsible parents have for this kind of event? From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby. It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that?

Ah! Yes, that explains a lot.

Well, I do have children, and I am a univ. prof. And no, there are no "action plans". Life happens, and you deal. As has already been demonstrated, there really is no way to make an "action plan" for a sick baby unless you have some way of knowing in advance precisely when your baby will get sick and how sick and for how long. You don't. So you scramble. Lamb Chopped and I have outlined what the options look like, and again, they're not pretty, but that's the reality for all working parents, everywhere. The fact that the struggles of your working parent profs. weren't visible to you doesn't mean they weren't real.

Since you are an advocate of distraction-free teaching, I'm going to assume then that you never text, check facebook, or make weekend plans while in class...

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby.

It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that? ... Only, I would have paid handsomely for my degree course and would expect a minimum standard of teaching standards. Bringing in a sick baby violates that. It's not a 'customer is always right' attitude, it's the professor not upholding her side of the contract. A distracting student would be dismissed from the lecture theatre, and rightly so. Why not the professor? A professor is not a low-paid job and WILL have sick care benefits, much more so than the students they are teaching. To me this just smacks of a professor abusing the privileges of the job and delivering a substandard service because of it. That's not fair on those who are paying through the nose for it. Being a parent doesn't mean you get to shirk your responsibilities towards people other than your child.

This simply doesn't make sense.

Again, in this situation, having the professor present with full attention is not an option. It's not your fault, but it's not the professor's fault either. It is simply one of those nasty facts of life-- stuff happens, and you deal. While we can expect babies will get sick, we can't predict when or where, making it impossible to have the "action plan" you and others naively and blithely assume. Seeing how a mature, professional woman juggles those real world realities is part of your education. And learning to focus on what's important even with the distraction of a cute and/or whiny baby is a useful skill to learn, btw.

Again, the fact that professors have sick leave and have the option of canceling class is a clue as to why she chose not to do so. It would obviously be an easier route to go-- call up your TA, but a sign on the door, stay home in your pjs and take care of your baby. Collect your check at the end of the day. Easy. So why didn't she do that?

Precisely because she cares about your education. Because, from a pedagogical pov, having a well-prepared but distracted professor is better than no professor at all or an ill-equipped and unprepared TA. Precisely because you paid handsomely for your education and she wants to ensure you get good value for your dollar, or at least the best value feasible in a less than desirable situation.

Lamb Chopped said it well: your prof. is your neighbor. Your prof.'s baby is your neighbor. Jesus had something to say to us about that.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Try this Jade:

One day in the future-- but we can't say when or where-- your car will break down. You will be on your way to a very important appt., but we can't say what. You might be in your hometown, or you might be in an unfamiliar place. You might be able to call roadside service, but they'll probably take an hour to get there, and your appt is in 20 min. There might be public transit available where you are, there might not. You might be in cell phone range to call a friend, you might not. We can't tell you if this will happen next week, next month, or 3 years from now, or if it will happen on a Tuesday at 8 am or a Sunday at 2 am.

Car breakdowns are a known risk so you should have an action plan, right? How are you going to get to your appt?

This is what it's like to suggest that every working parent should have an "action plan" for a sick baby.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
But again, the prof. giving her undivided attention was not an option on this particular day. That happens. She DID give her undivided attention the next class and presumably every class thereafter.

True. I was merely responding to Enoch's strange suggestion that nursing a baby in front of a class is "incidental" to the conduct of a lecturer.

quote:
Jade Constable writes:
The play is made up of monologues about vaginas. How is the title inappropriate?
Vagina is simply a name for a body part, and shouldn't be any more taboo than arm or leg, or indeed penis.

So the title is a clinically accurate description. How intriguing.

quote:

Women embracing their bodies, including their vaginas, IS rather a key point of feminism. Seeing as how penises have been celebrated in Western culture from Classical times onwards, I don't see the need for The Penis Monologues

On a university campus, I don't either, since in the nearest gay bar, with any luck one could hear all the talk about penises one wants and more. I think it's a jejune and boring fixation, myself.

It seems to me that the female form has always received just as much admiring attention from artists as the male.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The students were adults, the doors presumably were not locked. They were free to go. How again is she "imposing" on them?

I'm sorry, but we weren't. Both in middle, high school, and college, they sometimes did lock (and chain) the doors in spite of our protests that we were all going to die. They also penalized us heavily (either with grades or handing out fines or prison time to our parents) for not being in class. I've worked at a university in DC. I haven't seen her syllabus or grading policy or the curriculum guidelines or accreditation rules at that university, but it's entirely possible that her students were not entirely free to leave.

quote:
Lamb Chopped and I have outlined what the options look like, and again, they're not pretty, but that's the reality for all working parents, everywhere.

No, that's not the reality for all working parents, everywhere.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The students were adults, the doors presumably were not locked. They were free to go. How again is she "imposing" on them?
I'm sorry, but we weren't. Both in middle, high school, and college, they sometimes did lock (and chain) the doors in spite of our protests that we were all going to die. They also penalized us heavily (either with grades or handing out fines or prison time to our parents) for not being in class. I've worked at a university in DC. I haven't seen her syllabus or grading policy or the curriculum guidelines or accreditation rules at that university, but it's entirely possible that her students were not entirely free to leave.[/i]

College is quite a bit different from middle and high school in this regard.

While I have seen locked and chained front gates in many inner-city schools, I have never seen locked and chained classroom doors. They most certainly would be a danger, and a serious violation of fire code. A call to your local fire chief should take care of that.

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Lamb Chopped and I have outlined what the options look like, and again, they're not pretty, but that's the reality for all working parents, everywhere.
No, that's not the reality for all working parents, everywhere.

Really? There's some mythical group of working parents who's kids never get sick?

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
College is quite a bit different from middle and high school in this regard.

While I have seen locked and chained front gates in many inner-city schools, I have never seen locked and chained classroom doors. They most certainly would be a danger, and a serious violation of fire code. A call to your local fire chief should take care of that.

I have seen locked college classroom doors. I've also seen grading policies that penalize students for being late to class, missing class, or leaving class early.

Like we even have a local fire chief to call. The fire department is volunteer and you're lucky if they even show up. I mean, we have a fire code, but I don't think we have a fire chief anymore.

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Lamb Chopped and I have outlined what the options look like, and again, they're not pretty, but that's the reality for all working parents, everywhere.
No, that's not the reality for all working parents, everywhere.

quote:
Really? There's some mythical group of working parents who's kids never get sick?

No, like I pointed out upthread, we set up a system for sick child care. But we're not necessarily going to volunteer to help someone who deliberately set out to become a single mother, which of course you can't tell from the fact that someone is a single mother, but it is one of the possibilities.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Lamb Chopped and I have outlined what the options look like, and again, they're not pretty, but that's the reality for all working parents, everywhere.
No, that's not the reality for all working parents, everywhere.
quote:
Really? There's some mythical group of working parents who's kids never get sick?
No, like I pointed out upthread, we set up a system for sick child care. But we're not necessarily going to volunteer to help someone who deliberately set out to become a single mother, which of course you can't tell from the fact that someone is a single mother, but it is one of the possibilities.

Which is precisely what Lamb Chopped and I said.

Every working parent has to deal with sick children, and none of us can predict when/where that will happen. There is a limited range of options to deal with that: Lamb Chopped mentioned some, I mentioned some, and you provided a single example. My point was that there are a some options but none are ideal, but that is a reality every working parent deals with.

Again, this is sounding very much like the tiresome mommy wars where anyone who chooses a different path than you is deserving of condemnation. Apparently I failed to notice that asterisk next to the "love your neighbor" thing.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
]I'm sorry, but we weren't. Both in middle, high school, and college, they sometimes did lock (and chain) the doors in spite of our protests that we were all going to die.

Really? College? Post-compulsory education? Adult students? Physically prevented from leaving the room if they wanted to? Did you get your education in the army or in prison?

Seriously, where was this? Can you tell us what institution? And can you explain why it hasn't been sued into the ground by angry students?

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Which is precisely what Lamb Chopped and I said. <snip>

Again, this is sounding very much like the tiresome mommy wars where anyone who chooses a different path than you is deserving of condemnation. Apparently I failed to notice that asterisk next to the "love your neighbor" thing.

That is not what you said upthread. That might have been what Lamb Chopped said, but that is not what you said.

And to me this is sounding like the tiresome race, class, and gender wars where middle or upper class white women assume that the options available to them are available to everyone everywhere in the entire world and that all people (not just in this country but everywhere in the world) are all the same and have the same resources and the same needs.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Which is precisely what Lamb Chopped and I said. <snip>

Again, this is sounding very much like the tiresome mommy wars where anyone who chooses a different path than you is deserving of condemnation. Apparently I failed to notice that asterisk next to the "love your neighbor" thing.
That is not what you said upthread. That might have been what Lamb Chopped said, but that is not what you said

It is. You are wrong.

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

And to me this is sounding like the tiresome race, class, and gender wars where middle or upper class white women assume that the options available to them are available to everyone everywhere in the entire world and that all people (not just in this country but everywhere in the world) are all the same and have the same resources and the same needs.

Really? Because it sounds to me like it is you who is saying "we worked out it out so everyone else can do just what we did"-- in fact, you said precisely that upthread. Whereas Lamb Chopped and I are demonstrating how there is no easy solution, the possibilities vary greatly depending on circumstances. Both of us (as well as Prof. Pike) have mentioned how the challenges are greater and/or different for many other women. Lamb Chopped and I have actively resisted the "one-size-fits-all/ it-worked-for-me-it-will-work-for-you" solutions that you seem to favor.

otoh, the discussion here is not what options were available to all women, but what options were available to this woman: a college professor, with all the responsibilities as well as privileges that entails.

[ 14. September 2012, 16:16: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Really? College? Post-compulsory education? Adult students? Physically prevented from leaving the room if they wanted to? Did you get your education in the army or in prison?

Seriously, where was this? Can you tell us what institution? And can you explain why it hasn't been sued into the ground by angry students?

University of Delaware. In the mid-nineties. Some would argue that the entire state was a prison. There was a math professor who was sick of students showing up late and leaving early from his class, and he was sick of students who didn't care whether or not they failed because they didn't want to learn math in the first place. He used to lock the door. I think it was more to keep people out than to keep people in. Some people could figure out how the lock worked, unlock the door, and leave, but others couldn't. There may have been others. The chains were earlier in my schooling.

The school wasn't sued into the ground by angry students because we thought it was funny. We couldn't figure out how to get our peers to put the slightest bit of effort into their education and with all the emphasis on group work and collaboration it was pissing us off that we were paying wealthy white women to volunteer us to provide free tutoring to drunk frat boys who couldn't even be bothered to read the book or show up to class.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Really? Because it sounds to me like it is you who is saying "we worked out it out so everyone else can do just what we did"-- in fact, you said precisely that upthread.

Why on earth would anyone ever think that because I said we worked out a system I think "everyone else can do just what we did". That makes no sense. That we accepted that children get sick and they get sick unpredictably and we worked out a system that seems to work for the people around here (at least for now) and that other people need to work out their own system that works for the people in their area, yes. Do I support government day care? Hell no. I went to public school. I know what it's like and what the idiots in charge of the education system are trying to do.

quote:
Both of us (as well as Prof. Pike) have mentioned how the challenges are greater and/or different for many other women. Lamb Chopped and I have actively resisted the "one-size-fits-all/ it-worked-for-me-it-will-work-for-you" solutions that you seem to favor.

Why would you think that I favor one-size-fits-all solutions when you seem to favor having the federal government (not even the state government) provide day care?

quote:
otoh, the discussion here is not what options were available to all women, but what options were available to this woman: a college professor, with all the responsibilities as well as privileges that entails.

Yes, and we are discussing whether or not she had other options available to her. She did. She could have asked someone else to take care of her child. She could have asked her TA to take care of her. She refused that option right off the bat for no particular reason I can see, since even she admits that the TA wound up watching the baby anyway.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Really? Because it sounds to me like it is you who is saying "we worked out it out so everyone else can do just what we did"-- in fact, you said precisely that upthread.
Why on earth would anyone ever think that because I said we worked out a system I think "everyone else can do just what we did".

because that's what you said:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
Hey, we set up sick child care in my area. Not sure why other people didn't.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
True. I was merely responding to Enoch's strange suggestion that nursing a baby in front of a class is "incidental" to the conduct of a lecturer.

I wasn't saying that. I was saying it was incidental to bringing a baby into the lecture room whether, once there, he or she is fed or not, and if so whether from a bottle or as nature intended.

On the other hand, I assume most of us wouldn't regard it as incidental if the lecturer herself had been sucking chewing gum or had taken a bar of chocolate out of her handbag and eaten it. That would be uncouth, unprofessional and discourteous to her class.

Would shipmates regard it as appropriate for the mother to have brought in a high chair, and proceeded, while discoursing on the social practices of the Samoans, to have fed the child with a spoon, 'here's one for mummy, one for the paramount chief and one for the collateral kinship group'?

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
[QUOTE] That we accepted that children get sick and they get sick unpredictably and we worked out a system that seems to work for the people around here (at least for now) and that other people need to work out their own system that works for the people in their area, yes. Do I support government day care? Hell no. I went to public school. I know what it's like and what the idiots in charge of the education system are trying to do.

...Why would you think that I favor one-size-fits-all solutions when you seem to favor having the federal government (not even the state government) provide day care?

Wow. Now you're inventing things outta clear blue sky.

Not once have I even mentioned government-provided child care, either state or federal, either positively or negatively. That would be a whole different conversation than the one we're having here. Although this one seems to be devolving into hellish territory.

[ 14. September 2012, 16:35: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
She could have asked her TA to take care of her.

No, absolutely not. This is way out of bounds. Had a professor for whom I was a TA asked me to provide babysitting services, I would have flatly refused, and if it happened more than once, I'd have reported it to the department chair.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
She could have asked her TA to take care of her.
No, absolutely not. This is way out of bounds. Had a professor for whom I was a TA asked me to provide babysitting services, I would have flatly refused, and if it happened more than once, I'd have reported it to the department chair.

But would you have found it offensive if she had asked? If she had asked "would you be willing to provide babysitting during my class?" and allowed you the option of saying yes or no?

Because one of the things that pisses me off about the world is that when I was in school, there was a woman in charge of the writing fellows program. And she wanted to take a year or two off to adopt some children from South America or somewhere, and they let her, and they temporarily put another woman in charge of the program but they didn't give her the salary she deserved; they just told her it would look good on her resume. And then when woman A came back and wound up bringing her kid to meetings I was the one who wound up watching her. And I wanted to know when they were going to start paying me to do that; I could handle the male professors having their kids in class because they would allow me to move around, while the women wouldn't; they tended to insist that I sit next to their child, which meant I wound up taking care of them and I almost quit the program and quit college altogether because of it.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

I've been reading through a good deal of this discussion, and I am led to wonder: What was the nature of the child's illness? Allergy, injury, influenza, indigestion? Would the answer affect anyone's reaction? (Someone did mention a concern about communicable diseases.)

In all of this, the child seems to be ignored, treated as a mere detail.

In a less irrelevant vein: suppose you were asked to baby-sit and then learned the baby is ill. You might reasonably decline on the grounds that tending a sick baby would require greater expertise than you possessed. Finding a last-minute baby-sitter might not be easy.

As I said in my earlier post, it is not hard to see both sides of this matter.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
She could have asked her TA to take care of her.
No, absolutely not. This is way out of bounds. Had a professor for whom I was a TA asked me to provide babysitting services, I would have flatly refused, and if it happened more than once, I'd have reported it to the department chair.
But would you have found it offensive if she had asked? If she had asked "would you be willing to provide babysitting during my class?" and allowed you the option of saying yes or no?

I wouldn't have been offended so much as dumbfounded. It's a completely unprofessional request, and I can't imagine any professor I ever knew making such a request. TA's are not there to provide personal services.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
She could have asked her TA to take care of her.
No, absolutely not. This is way out of bounds. Had a professor for whom I was a TA asked me to provide babysitting services, I would have flatly refused, and if it happened more than once, I'd have reported it to the department chair.

Yes.

As it turns out (seems few people actually read the article) the TA volunteered to hold the baby and did so, even though the prof. explicitly assured her that it was not part of her job description. She did it not because she's a TA but simply because, luckily enough, she's a nice person.

Which IS the sort of thing I and Lamb Chopped are advocating. Contrary to saysay's invention, I have never suggested govt-provided sick baby care. What I have instead argued for is simply having a bit of grace and compassion for working parents dealing as best they can with a less-than-ideal situation that all working parents will face sooner or later.

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Would shipmates regard it as appropriate for the mother to have brought in a high chair, and proceeded, while discoursing on the social practices of the Samoans, to have fed the child with a spoon, 'here's one for mummy, one for the paramount chief and one for the collateral kinship group'?

I can think of several lectures I had to sit throught where this would have made it much more bearable...

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
OK, now I"m curious: Jade and Antisocial Alto: how exactly do YOU deal with sick child care? Do YOU have some mysterious nanny willing and available to drop everything at a moment's notice to swoop in and care for your ailing young 'uns?

I am not a parent, however I have been a university student and taught by professors who had young children at the time, some of whom must have been sick during that time. They didn't bring the child into the lecture because it's a health hazard for the students (not to mention highly distracting). There surely must be a plan of action most responsible parents have for this kind of event? From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby. It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that?
Ah! Yes, that explains a lot.

Well, I do have children, and I am a univ. prof. And no, there are no "action plans". Life happens, and you deal. As has already been demonstrated, there really is no way to make an "action plan" for a sick baby unless you have some way of knowing in advance precisely when your baby will get sick and how sick and for how long. You don't. So you scramble. Lamb Chopped and I have outlined what the options look like, and again, they're not pretty, but that's the reality for all working parents, everywhere. The fact that the struggles of your working parent profs. weren't visible to you doesn't mean they weren't real.

Since you are an advocate of distraction-free teaching, I'm going to assume then that you never text, check facebook, or make weekend plans while in class...

I don't do any of those things - I write my notes by hand and don't have my laptop with me in class. This is the norm for the other students in my classes, and since I don't have a smartphone I don't check Facebook with that. I certainly don't socialise in class, why would I when it's a learning environment and not a social one?

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
From the student's point of view, I would not want my lecturer to be there if they were sick, let alone a sick baby.

It's not the students' fault the baby is sick and the professor hasn't got a backup plan, why should they suffer because of that? ... Only, I would have paid handsomely for my degree course and would expect a minimum standard of teaching standards. Bringing in a sick baby violates that. It's not a 'customer is always right' attitude, it's the professor not upholding her side of the contract. A distracting student would be dismissed from the lecture theatre, and rightly so. Why not the professor? A professor is not a low-paid job and WILL have sick care benefits, much more so than the students they are teaching. To me this just smacks of a professor abusing the privileges of the job and delivering a substandard service because of it. That's not fair on those who are paying through the nose for it. Being a parent doesn't mean you get to shirk your responsibilities towards people other than your child.
This simply doesn't make sense.

Again, in this situation, having the professor present with full attention is not an option. It's not your fault, but it's not the professor's fault either. It is simply one of those nasty facts of life-- stuff happens, and you deal. While we can expect babies will get sick, we can't predict when or where, making it impossible to have the "action plan" you and others naively and blithely assume. Seeing how a mature, professional woman juggles those real world realities is part of your education. And learning to focus on what's important even with the distraction of a cute and/or whiny baby is a useful skill to learn, btw.

Again, the fact that professors have sick leave and have the option of canceling class is a clue as to why she chose not to do so. It would obviously be an easier route to go-- call up your TA, but a sign on the door, stay home in your pjs and take care of your baby. Collect your check at the end of the day. Easy. So why didn't she do that?

Precisely because she cares about your education. Because, from a pedagogical pov, having a well-prepared but distracted professor is better than no professor at all or an ill-equipped and unprepared TA. Precisely because you paid handsomely for your education and she wants to ensure you get good value for your dollar, or at least the best value feasible in a less than desirable situation.

Lamb Chopped said it well: your prof. is your neighbor. Your prof.'s baby is your neighbor. Jesus had something to say to us about that.

The prof and her baby being my neighbours has nothing to do with the situation - it doesn't mean the prof suddenly doesn't have to do her job. Obviously, it isn't the baby's fault they're sick but I personally would find a distracted professor extremely distracting and would work better with the lecture powerpoint (the normal format over here!) being on the university intranet and studying on my own.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

glad to hear it.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
But again, the prof. giving her undivided attention was not an option on this particular day. That happens. She DID give her undivided attention the next class and presumably every class thereafter.
True. I was merely responding to Enoch's strange suggestion that nursing a baby in front of a class is "incidental" to the conduct of a lecturer.

quote:
Jade Constable writes:
The play is made up of monologues about vaginas. How is the title inappropriate?
Vagina is simply a name for a body part, and shouldn't be any more taboo than arm or leg, or indeed penis.

So the title is a clinically accurate description. How intriguing.

quote:

Women embracing their bodies, including their vaginas, IS rather a key point of feminism. Seeing as how penises have been celebrated in Western culture from Classical times onwards, I don't see the need for The Penis Monologues
On a university campus, I don't either, since in the nearest gay bar, with any luck one could hear all the talk about penises one wants and more. I think it's a jejune and boring fixation, myself.

It seems to me that the female form has always received just as much admiring attention from artists as the male.

Why is the word vagina clinical? Would 'The Arm Monologues' be a 'clinically accurate title'? No. But vagina is generally used by medical professionals more often than laypeople because it's considered a dirty word, not the other way around. If you can say arm or nose, you can say vagina. You won't die from icky girl cooties.

And the female form has received admiring attention from MEN - that's kind of the point. It's the male gaze, whilst feminism is about women reclaiming their bodies for themselves.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
glad to hear it.

Re studying on my own, I would not be able to unless class was cancelled. Over here universities tend to have 100% lecture attendance requirements.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I wouldn't have been offended so much as dumbfounded. It's a completely unprofessional request, and I can't imagine any professor I ever knew making such a request. TA's are not there to provide personal services.

I agree that it's a completely unprofessional request and that TA's are not there to provide personal services (although confusingly personal assistants are).

But we used to keep lists. The Red Cross used to run a babysitting course, and it was before people were crazy about privacy, and we used to have lists with the names and phone numbers of all the accredited babysitters in the area and you could call them and just keep going down the list until you found someone who was available. But now in some states such as WV babysitting - or at least babysitting under a certain age - is illegal. And in other states running daycares without some kind of state accreditation is illegal and people are getting arrested for watching their friends' kids for half an hour before they catch the bus to school. And I'm really struggling to even come up with suggestions that are even going to work for people given all the rules and absurdities we have created.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Try this Jade:

One day in the future-- but we can't say when or where-- your car will break down. You will be on your way to a very important appt., but we can't say what. You might be in your hometown, or you might be in an unfamiliar place. You might be able to call roadside service, but they'll probably take an hour to get there, and your appt is in 20 min. There might be public transit available where you are, there might not. You might be in cell phone range to call a friend, you might not. We can't tell you if this will happen next week, next month, or 3 years from now, or if it will happen on a Tuesday at 8 am or a Sunday at 2 am.

Car breakdowns are a known risk so you should have an action plan, right? How are you going to get to your appt?

This is what it's like to suggest that every working parent should have an "action plan" for a sick baby.

Sorry but what about that situation would make an 'action plan' impossible? It seems pretty simple to me - call your roadside assistance company (sorry, not sure of the general term since I am not a driver) and then call whoever your meeting is with to explain. Considering that I'm in the UK, the likelihood of me not having access to public transport, a phone box, a mobile phone or skype is pretty non-existent. Of course I would have an action plan for that, is that not just being sensible and forward planning? I mean, that's why you keep water and blankets and torches and hi-vis jackets in the car, right?

Sorry, if you know that a sick child cannot stay home by themselves or cannot be cared for easily in an emergency, you put your career and child at risk. Maybe that person should not be a working mother. My mother was a working mother right from after I was born (because she had no choice) and was 19 years old but somehow still knew she had to have a list of people to look after me in an emergency.

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

Originally posted by Jade Constable:

quote:
Considering that I'm in the UK, the likelihood of me not having access to public transport, a phone box, a mobile phone or skype is pretty non-existent.

Er... different UK from me...

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Garasu:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Considering that I'm in the UK, the likelihood of me not having access to public transport, a phone box, a mobile phone or skype is pretty non-existent.
Er... different UK from me...

Me too. In my rural fastness (pop. 400), you won't get any mobile signal at all, save along the main road about 5 miles away. The bus runs once into town on Tuesday, then back 3 hours later. Then again on Friday. You could Skype from the local pub, about 4 miles away as they do free WiFi. The only phone box was taken away 3 or 4 years ago by BT "because everyone is using mobile phones these days" (Ha!). Of course, you'll also need to factor in time for working this all out, as there are unlikely to be any people around much during working hours. It would likely be well over an hour before you could re-establish contact with anyone, let alone get your car picked up.

I'm only pointing all this stuff out to illustrate why even if somebody thinks they have all the bases covered, it's all too easy to find that they don't.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I am a little confused as to why race is being raised as an issue on this thread - how is it relevant saysay ?

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

Sorry Doublethink, missed that one?

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

Again, this is sounding very much like the tiresome mommy wars where anyone who chooses a different path than you is deserving of condemnation. Apparently I failed to notice that asterisk next to the "love your neighbor" thing.

So, those of us who mentioned staying at home with the baby as one of several options are shrilly accused of starting mommy wars, but you have actually, unbelievably turned this into a case of anyone who criticizes this teacher is not a good Christian.

I'm not totally unfeeling and I have done last minute babysitting for sick neighbor children, whose daycares wouldn't take them, many times, but I didn't know that being a Christian required that I look at the disorganized and spoiled people of the world with an indulgent smile, while I know that just about everyone else is managing to cope.

Cliffdweller, how do you and Lambchopped explain all the millions of business women, bank tellers, waitresses, store clerks and Burger King employees who manage to never, ever take their children to work? Why is it only the college professors and ministers who can't cope and require our Christian indulgence?

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

@ Garasu

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
And to me this is sounding like the tiresome race, class, and gender wars where middle or upper class white women assume that the options available to them are available to everyone everywhere in the entire world and that all people (not just in this country but everywhere in the world) are all the same and have the same resources and the same needs.

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
... it was pissing us off that we were paying wealthy white women to volunteer us to provide free tutoring to drunk frat boys who couldn't even be bothered to read the book or show up to class.

(Italics are my emphasis.)

Are wealthy hispanic women, for example, not going to make careless assumptions that everyone has the same resources as them ?

[ 14. September 2012, 19:30: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Sorry, if you know that a sick child cannot stay home by themselves or cannot be cared for easily in an emergency, you put your career and child at risk.

This is of course nonsense and totally out of step with European employment law. It is the same principle as not sacking someone because they become ill and can't work at short notice. They might break their leg, and in theory be able to sit behind a desk, but if they can't get in to work because they can't drive and have few alternatives you aren't entitled to sack them over it.

In the car breakdown example described the point wasn't to get into an argument about telephone signals and telephone boxes, the point was that such an occurrence might prevent you making a lecture. You might phone in saying "sorry I'm on the hard shoulder, the lecture won't happen today". You wouldn't expect your job to be at risk over that. So why should it be at risk because your child is sick and you don't have an alternative?

According to European law it shouldn't be.

An unsupportive approach to working mothers costs us a lot in terms of talent, work force, and economic potential.

[ 14. September 2012, 19:48: Message edited by: mdijon ]

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I am a little confused as to why race is being raised as an issue on this thread - how is it relevant saysay ?

It's the race, class, and gender trifecta that tends to be a feature in a lot of academic discourse.

quote:
Are wealthy hispanic women, for example, not going to make careless assumptions that everyone has the same resources as them ?

I'm not saying it's impossible or it never happens, but it has not been my experience as a person in the US. Most people of other races still have working class relatives and relatives in other countries. I don't know why (though I suspect it is related to a decline in church attendance), but it's white women (and in particular college professors) who tend to not have any contact with the working class (and sometimes men in general).

Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :

@Doublethink
Thank you. Hadn't looked far enough up thread!

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

So you are generalizing a fair bit there then, or to put it another way - stereotyping.

[Cross-posted in reply to saysay.]

[ 14. September 2012, 20:06: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
It's the race, class, and gender trifecta that tends to be a feature in a lot of academic discourse....

Most people of other races still have working class relatives... but it's white women (and in particular college professors) who tend to not have any contact with the working class (and sometimes men in general).

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
So you are generalizing a fair bit there

I think there's a teaching post for you in the international diplomatic school of diplomatic understatement if you ever want it.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

[tact off]

I believe there is a word for stereotyping on the basis of race, I'm sure it'll come back to me ...

[tact on]

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

Yes, I am generalizing a little bit. I don't know how you can live in the world without generalizing at least somewhat from your own experience (and of course also listening when people tell you that their experience is different). If I could meet a white woman in the US who is from the US, particularly if she were a college professor, who actually has contact with the working class and doesn't spend almost all her time dealing with adolescents, I might be less inclined to do that. Have they created that person yet?

(Also, we are talking about a particular person here, and whether or not she chose the best option in this case, aren't we?)

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
[tact off]

I believe there is a word for stereotyping on the basis of race, I'm sure it'll come back to me ...

[tact on]

What's the word for simultaneously stereotyping on the basis of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation? As in, you're forming an opinion based on all of those factors not just one of them. Is there a word for that yet?

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

Indeed, why not go for a full house.

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

Oh, and nationality, too. Can't forget that.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
What's the word for simultaneously stereotyping on the basis of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation? As in, you're forming an opinion based on all of those factors not just one of them. Is there a word for that yet?

Yes. It's "bigot."

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
[QUOTE]
Cliffdweller, how do you and Lambchopped explain all the millions of business women, bank tellers, waitresses, store clerks and Burger King employees who manage to never, ever take their children to work? Why is it only the college professors and ministers who can't cope and require our Christian indulgence?

Once again, quite missing the point.

As we have said-- as Prof. Pike has said-- many, many women don't have the option of taking a sick child to work with them. LambChopped has detailed from 1st person experience what the very limited and mostly not-very-good options are for a woman in that situation. That they manage not to take their child to work because they can't is not to suggest that they are necessarily happy about the choice they did make in that circumstance, simply that they did what they had to do.

But, while it's a worthwhile discussion, it's not what this discussion is about. This discussion is about the choice made by this particular woman with the particular options she did have. And this particular woman, a college prof., had a different set of options than those available to other women in other jobs. That is not to suggest that her life is harder-- it's not (as she herself said). Simply that the choice is different.

In a very real and obvious way, her situation was easier, because she did have the option of simply not going to work, without fear of termination or financial loss. Many of the women you mention would not have that choice. But the decision was more complicated in that her particular profession means that she is not easily replaced on a moment's notice. With some notice, easily (we're all replaceable) --but not w/o some planning and prep. that is not possible unless you know in advance when baby will become ill.

Again, precisely because she had the very easy option of canceling class & staying home w/o threat to either position or salary, we can assume her decision not to cancel class was probably made from motives other than selfish ones. Again, the most likely explanation is she believed that among the limited options available, having the divided attention of a well-prepared instructor was better than having no instruction at all or a class led by an ill-prepared TA.

And, of course, YMMV. Different students learn differently, in different environments (I just rec'd a "learning accommodation" plan for one of my students, outlining his particular needs). One shipmate has said she would learn better going over a powerpoint posted online (presuming this was a ppt lecture) than being distracted by a baby. Fair enough-- but that's probably not true of everyone. I can't imagine, however, that either way the difference between any of the available less-than-ideal options would be significant enough to justify the sorts of self-righteous indignation we've seen here.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
A professor is not a low-paid job and WILL have sick care benefits, much more so than the students they are teaching. To me this just smacks of a professor abusing the privileges of the job and delivering a substandard service because of it.

Man are you out of touch with reality here. I've taught at three colleges/universities, and if you factor the course cost against hours put in, I made less than minimum wage. I've known full professors who are making less than the proofreaders at the publisher's down the way (yes, I've talked to both about their salaries, I'm not making this up).
When I taught I had a small child--I was fortunate enough to be at a huge school which actually had a tiny daycare, which you paid through the nose for, did not accept sick children, and could only be used during class hours only (screw office hours, then). What's with the privilege you speak of?

By the way, you may not abuse a TA by requiring them to provide childcare unless you want your own employment on the line. (Yes, I've been a TA as well.) Moreover, in a great many cases the TA is contractually NOT PERMITTED to teach classes (particularly on the first day, of all stressful and unprepared times!) and is basically a glorified clerical assistant. Those who do teach (I did) may be required to do so under close supervision--which rules out staying home while the TA teaches.

Truly, I think student would have been pissed off either way. For a professor to fail to show on the first day of classes for any cause less than major surgery is just.not.done. Better to show up in your underwear than leave a brand new batch of students in the lurch. I had one who taught a whole semester with mononucleosis. He could barely stay upright. Very alarming. But you don't desert your post, if you can find any other way. Would I have brought my child to class, if I were caught in that bind? Hell yes. I would have been very apologetic, but it would have been worse to leave them teacherless on such a day.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

<snip> enough to justify the sorts of self-righteous indignation we've seen here.

Self-righteous indignation? Where? I've seen people who think the woman's best choice was to stay home with the baby and others who think she was right to take it to work, but the only self-righteous indignation I've seen is you thumping your Bible at anyone who disagrees with you.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Sorry, if you know that a sick child cannot stay home by themselves or cannot be cared for easily in an emergency, you put your career and child at risk. Maybe that person should not be a working mother.

All right. THIS is what I thought you were driving at, but really didn't want to suggest until you popped out with it yourself.

What the hell gives you the idea that most women have a choice in the matter?

I am a mother, and have NO option of being nonworking. Unless you count voluntary homelessness an option, which I don't.

Or perhaps it's the motherhood you think should be forbidden? In which case you can reference all the so-tedious "anti-breeder" threads from years gone by and see why it matters to YOU, you personally, if your country does or does not have a sufficient birth rate. I'll not recap those arguments here, it will take us so far away we'll be waving at Pluto as we pass.

But even if I granted your morally abhorrent stance (that it is more important that you as a student should have uninterrupted and undistracted teaching every single session than that a woman should be able to parent a child)...

even if I granted that, have you never heard of contraceptive failure? Or pregnancy resulting from rape?

Damn, this is selfish. Let the woman do her job as best she can, and pray that you will never face the tough choices that the rest of the world does.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
[directed at Cliffdweller] the only self-righteous indignation I've seen is you thumping your Bible at anyone who disagrees with you.

I correct myself. (see above)

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

quote:
What the hell gives you the idea that most women have a choice in the matter?

I think you raise a good point LC in relation to most women not having a choice either as to the need to be in paid employment or indeed, in childcare options. Those who are most economically vulnerable and really need the income would be fired so quickly it would make your head spin if they brought a child to work-imagine a checkout chic, McDs kitchen hand or a waitress breastfeeding her infant while she worked.

The entitled woman referred to in the OP has more than one option though it seems to me: She could have cancelled the class or had her assistant teach it; on her income she could employ a nanny instead of using daycare in which case childcare arrangements remain unchanged even if the child is sick. It is true that for most women neither of these options is available, just as it isn't possible to take your infant to work with you.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Cliffdweller, how do you and Lambchopped explain all the millions of business women, bank tellers, waitresses, store clerks and Burger King employees who manage to never, ever take their children to work? Why is it only the college professors and ministers who can't cope and require our Christian indulgence?

Twilight, I truly thought you knew better than that. They leave them home unattended, that's what they do.

Seriously. My congregation is made up of these people. I am one of these people. And if you cannot find sick childcare (very very very difficult for most of us) and know you will certainly lose your job for taking the kid in (which is the case for most people, at least where I live), AND know that your job is the only thing keeping bread on your table and heat in the house--

why, you leave the child home alone and pray like mad. Or you leave the child at the local library and hope for the best. Or you park them in your car outside your job, if you have one. Or you tell them to sit on the front steps or round the back of the building, and nip out to look at them on break. Or if they're of school age, you give them tons of fever reducers and pack them off contrary to rules in the hopes that they will go unobserved long enough, and then be kept by the school nurse long enough, that you can phone to say "I'm on my way now" (though you aren't, there's still an hour left on the clock) till you can somehow make it through to the end of work.

Yes, it's shitty. But it happens.

Yes, it should NOT happen. But as long as wages are so low, and childcare so spotty and expensive, and work conditions so inflexible, it'll happen.

The sick childcare thing was my biggest fear through pregnancy and the first ten years.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Evangeline, you're right about the specific situation, I'm sure. She probably had more options than the average Burger King worker (or me, for that matter). And I think cliffdweller has addressed the quality-of-instruction issue beautifully and I won't add to it except to say that in a class on feminism, she might have thought the real-life object lesson would have been of benefit to the students.

What chaps my hide here is the semi-tangent about working mothers in general (Heck, working fathers with childcare problems as well, I know some of those). And it's a hot issue for me precisely because I see so many children I know and care about being endangered in just this way,* and so many parents I care about being forced into these choices by the need to keep bread on the table. They have it hard enough, without others piling on them.

(and before someone asks, yes, of course I've put my effort where my mouth is. I will gladly mind sick children at any time so Mom or Dad can keep their job. Provided that I don't lose my own. [Frown]

)

Posted by Egeria (# 4517) on :

Originally posted by saysay:\

quote:
If I could meet a white woman in the US who is from the US, particularly if she were a college professor, who actually has contact with the working class and doesn't spend almost all her time dealing with adolescents, I might be less inclined to do that.

Not a professor here--although that's my dream job and I do have the qualifications--but I have taught at the University as a graduate student assistant in charge of my own class and as a lecturer. I also teach in the Extension (continuing education) from time to time. Do I have contact with the working class? Well, my parents (both of Northern and Central European descent) are not with us any longer, but they count, and so do a lot of my other family members. One of my closest friends comes from a similar background and has an academic staff job while finishing up her Ph.D. Some of my students are or were late adolescents (and there's a huge gap between sixteen and eighteen); many are in their twenties; my Extension students have come from all kinds of backgrounds (religious, economic, ethnic) and range in age from late teens to eighty-something. And all but a very few of them really want to learn, so I have missed class only when I really am physically unable to be there.
Do you ever actually spend time on university campuses?
And what's this about white women having no contact with men?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Well, I'm from the US, born here, and have taught college (though not at the moment). And my nonwork life is immersed in the working poor immigrant community.

As for the last one, well, I'm white. Heck, I'm other things too! [Devil]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evangeline:

quote:
What the hell gives you the idea that most women have a choice in the matter?
I think you raise a good point LC in relation to most women not having a choice either as to the need to be in paid employment or indeed, in childcare options. Those who are most economically vulnerable and really need the income would be fired so quickly it would make your head spin if they brought a child to work-imagine a checkout chic, McDs kitchen hand or a waitress breastfeeding her infant while she worked.

The entitled woman referred to in the OP has more than one option though it seems to me: She could have cancelled the class or had her assistant teach it; on her income she could employ a nanny instead of using daycare in which case childcare arrangements remain unchanged even if the child is sick. It is true that for most women neither of these options is available, just as it isn't possible to take your infant to work with you.

But again, that's the point. Yes, she was fortunate to have a range of options that are not available to many/most working women. Yes, she was fortunate and privileged that she had the option of staying home w/o penalty. Which is why it is hard to justify the repeated charge that she was "imposing" or "depriving" her students when she didn't take the easy option of staying home, but instead choose what seems to be the least bad option under the circumstances-- not "least bad" for her, but "least bad" for her students. It's hard to see how her choice to give them a somewhat distracted lesson by a well-prepared instructor is not at least comparable, if not superior to, no lesson at all or a lesson presented by an ill-equipped and unprepared TA.

fyi: If you think hiring a nanny is a viable possibility on a prof's salary, you are sadly mistaken. And nannies will get sick, too, so not really the magic bullet you're suggesting. Bottom line is: stuff happens, even to the "privileged".

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
[QUOTE][qb]
Why is it only the college professors and ministers who can't cope and require our Christian indulgence?

It isn't. But that's the amazing thing about compassion-- it's not a zero-sum commodity.

Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
Yes, I am generalizing a little bit. I don't know how you can live in the world without generalizing at least somewhat from your own experience (and of course also listening when people tell you that their experience is different). If I could meet a white woman in the US who is from the US, particularly if she were a college professor, who actually has contact with the working class and doesn't spend almost all her time dealing with adolescents, I might be less inclined to do that. Have they created that person yet?

(Also, we are talking about a particular person here, and whether or not she chose the best option in this case, aren't we?)

Sarcasm alert.

Well I'm a white Australian born woman and I have plenty of contact with the adult white and non-white working classes, I mean there's the pool boy, the cleaners and the gardener for a start.

Posted by Haydee (# 14734) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
No, like I pointed out upthread, we set up a system for sick child care. But we're not necessarily going to volunteer to help someone who deliberately set out to become a single mother, which of course you can't tell from the fact that someone is a single mother, but it is one of the possibilities.

Guilty as charged. I deliberately set out to be a single mother. If I hadn't fostered my girls then they would have grown up in a children's home or remained in a situation of abuse. But I obviously can't be cut any slack after making such a stupid decision.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
But we're not necessarily going to volunteer to help someone who deliberately set out to become a single mother, which of course you can't tell from the fact that someone is a single mother, but it is one of the possibilities.

What a dreadful thing to say! A single mother is a single mother. Two of my friends 'deliberately' became single Mums by AID (Artificial Insemination by Donor) - they are great Mums and the children have grown up to be fine young men.

I think you have a very strange attitude to single parenthood. Reasons for becoming a single parent are many and varied, and shouldn't be subject to judgement by anyone imo.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

Why is it only the college professors and ministers who can't cope and require our Christian indulgence?
It isn't. But that's the amazing thing about compassion-- it's not a zero-sum commodity.

You keep avoiding the real question and using it as an opportunity for more self-righteous, holier-than-thou opportunities so I'll rephrase it: Why is it only certain, rare people like this college prof who can't manage child care while the huge majority of less educated, poorer women do manage?

I'm not buying the idea that all the bank tellers and store clerks have left their babies home alone. During forty years of low-income jobs in over twenty different places (we moved a lot) I never heard a breath of any such thing. I think they planned ahead.

Neither do I believe that anyone in the UK or America has to leave their kids home alone to "put bread on the table." Good workers aren't fired that easily. Welfare and foodstamps are out there to be used. Even without using welfare, I've read many articles by financial experts who say that unless a woman earns a certain amount per year she is better off staying home rather than pay for work clothes, transportation and childcare. That was my situation for years. I didn't have a car, or nice clothes so I stayed home and raised my child. This is not a "mommy war" position, it was one of those "put food on the table," decisions that working women always seem to claim for themselves.

Last year, I heard a group of young mothers talking in the local food pantry while waiting to get food. They all agreed that they would rather swallow their pride a little for basic needs than leave their preschool children in questionalbe childcare. Seemed like a smart decision to me.

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

I apologise for not having read al the posts so this may have been covered. If breast feeding in university classromms during lectures is quite normal, then I also propose masturbating as well.

Posted by Clafoutis (# 17275) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
If breast feeding in university classromms during lectures is quite normal, then I also propose masturbating as well.

Won't you find the two functions difficult to perform at the same time ? I mean technically…

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
If breast feeding in university classromms during lectures is quite normal, then I also propose masturbating as well.

You equate feeding a child with masturbating? What a strange notion. At what stage does feeding a child become a normal, social activity?

I think you my have totally misunderstood what breasts are for.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:

Why is it only the college professors and ministers who can't cope and require our Christian indulgence?
It isn't. But that's the amazing thing about compassion-- it's not a zero-sum commodity.
You keep avoiding the real question and using it as an opportunity for more self-righteous, holier-than-thou opportunities so I'll rephrase it: Why is it only certain, rare people like this college prof who can't manage child care while the huge majority of less educated, poorer women do manage?

I'm not buying the idea that all the bank tellers and store clerks have left their babies home alone. During forty years of low-income jobs in over twenty different places (we moved a lot) I never heard a breath of any such thing. I think they planned ahead.

That's not the question. The question, again, was and is: did this woman, in this job and with these options, make the right choice.

And you are misrepresenting my statements. I didn't say the college prof. "can't manage" child care. She did manage child care. She managed child care in a way that made sense for her particular work situation.

I also never said that most or all working women leave their sick children home alone. Lamb Chopped (not me) said that is one of several not-great options that working woman make when they can't take off work.

The majority of working women take a sick day when their kids are sick. If they have a working partner, often they will alternate. If they have a grandparent or friend who can watch the child, sometimes they'll do that, but that's unusual, as is the more formal arrangement saysay believes everyone should be able to pull out of their back pocket. Usually they take a sick day.

But sometimes a working parent in a particular type of employment will take their sick child to work with them. Not just college profs. but people in all sorts of professions. That decision depends on several factors, including the nature/ seriousness/ communicability of the child's illness and the nature of the parent's workplace/ job responsibilities-- as well as the HR policies at the workplace. It's an option available to some people and not to others, for all those reasons and more.

The discussion here was whether this woman, who had the option both of taking a sick day (and canceling class) and bringing her child to her workplace (giving her students the benefit of her prepared lecture), made the best decision.

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
If breast feeding in university classromms during lectures is quite normal, then I also propose masturbating as well.
You equate feeding a child with masturbating? What a strange notion. At what stage does feeding a child become a normal, social activity?

I think you my have totally misunderstood what breasts are for.

haha no - just the public nature of such a thing. A colleague here calls babies 'great big over fed grubs' and actually dislikes seeing them AT ALL in public places and I could just imagine her reaction to such an activity in public - would make her stomach heave. As would someone masturbating of ocurse.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
I apologise for not having read al the posts so this may have been covered. If breast feeding in university classromms during lectures is quite normal, then I also propose masturbating as well.

No, that particular angle had not been covered as it is , hmmm, well, mad.

Posted by Emma Louise (# 3571) on :

I've breastfed both my babies, and pretty much in all sorts of situations and all over the place but as a teacher I wouldn't have taken a baby to work with me. For me it would be about taking the child to work - not the breastfeeding though. Happily breastfeed anywhere!

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
A colleague here calls babies 'great big over fed grubs' and actually dislikes seeing them AT ALL in public places and I could just imagine her reaction to such an activity in public - would make her stomach heave. As would someone masturbating of ocurse.

Yes - but she's the one with crazy notions - babies are not offensive at all, they are simply our young.

Masturbating is a private matter, feeding children isn't. If one of the students were hungry and ate a cereal bar - no comment. We eat in front of people, in public. We don't masturbate in front of people, in public.

No comparison.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

I have been reading this thread with increasing incredulity.

I remember giving as talk to some students at a conference in 1980 when one of them breastfed her baby - she was prob. 21, i was 29. It started me thinking.

They say that 'breast is best' so it is a natural function. If we believe in equality, then women have a perfect right in the workplace and that includes doing what mothers do.

Now, it is 2012. Are US mores different? Do they not believe in equality? Is a breast somehow profane? Given that half of the population has breasts, is it somehow wrong?

I wonder how people would react if it was the woman vicar breastfeeding during the mass. I, for one, would see deep and awesome theological significance it it.

As for the masturbation thing - the Church teaches that it is sinful. Is breastfeeding sinful?

Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
But we're not necessarily going to volunteer to help someone who deliberately set out to become a single mother, which of course you can't tell from the fact that someone is a single mother, but it is one of the possibilities.
What a dreadful thing to say! A single mother is a single mother. Two of my friends 'deliberately' became single Mums by AID (Artificial Insemination by Donor) - they are great Mums and the children have grown up to be fine young men.

I think you have a very strange attitude to single parenthood. Reasons for becoming a single parent are many and varied, and shouldn't be subject to judgement by anyone imo.

If they are going to continue to teach their grandmother's to suck eggs, then I am going to be honest about the fact that I'm not going to volunteer to take care of their children when they get sick.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Under the circumstances, I think that's probably a very good thing for all involved.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

The discussion is just going round and round at this point, with most folks just reiterating their previous points. Except for the masturbating thing, which is just ridiculous.

So, a question for those who think this professor made the right choice to breastfeed and teach at the same time: are there any workplace circumstances that you would find inappropriate for breastfeeding? Would it be okay for a woman to breastfeed while preaching? Leading an important meeting? Meeting with a client in a therapy session?

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

The writer of Saysay's link has used her little boy's fixation on his sister's father as an example of ... er, something. How other men will serve as a father substitue I guess but it just seemed sad to me.

Also sad, is this article about the high risk of stroke in young men whose parents divorced before they turned 18. I divorced my son's father when he was ten, the next year Newsweek did a huge cover story on the effects of divorce on children and said that boys, in particular, had lots of nightmares and felt that they needed to protect their mothers now that Dad wasn't around. Maybe that's where the excess cortisol comes from.

I think if someone had warned me I would have tried harder to tough out the marriage until my son was grown. How this compares with boys who never had a father in the home, I don't know.

I'm sorry this is off topic but then this thread already is running about five topics so I figured one more wouldn't hurt.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Also sad, is this article about the high risk of stroke in young men whose parents divorced before they turned 18.

If it is any help I could say that this research seems likely to be drivel to me. I've looked on the journal that was quoted by the news story and not found any article that matches the description. I can't find references in any of the usual places to the finding.

In any case it strikes me as a very difficult thing to establish, it would need a huge and very careful study to pin down, and it would be such a major finding that it would be likely to be very high profile in the medical literature if it were done, but I can't find sign nor trace.

Much else I can't be definitive about in this thread, but I think I can say that this particular point doesn't have much factual basis.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
So, a question for those who think this professor made the right choice to breastfeed and teach at the same time: are there any workplace circumstances that you would find inappropriate for breastfeeding? Would it be okay for a woman to breastfeed while preaching? Leading an important meeting? Meeting with a client in a therapy session?

I don't think it is appropriate actually, although my contributions upthread might be read as if I'm on "that side" of the argument. It doesn't make sense in general as I don't think one can really expect to deal with a work-place type of interaction while breast feeding.

It would have been better to cancel the lecture because her child was sick. That's what usually happens.

On the other hand I don't think it is the sort of thing one gets into disciplinary action over, and I think it is particularly ridiculous given that the class was feminist anthropology. I would have thought that the event was a second-to-none teaching opportunity for discussion and debate highly relevant to the course.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

On a related point - correlation doesn't equal cause. I get older the farther Haley's comet travels from earth, but it is due to the passage of time (a third variable) rather than the comet.

If there is any truth to that assertion, there is a good chance it may come down to something like - single parent families tend to be poorer, being poor tends to result in worse physical health (for a load of inter-related reasons) and worse physical health raises your risk of stroke.

Which might go from 1 in 500 to 2 in 500, or some similar change (which a newspaper would inevitably report as stroke risk increases by 100 percent !).

Meanwhile, someone else would do a different study showing that having a been brought up by a single mother slightly lowers you risk of dying in an automobile accident in childhood. (Because you are less likely to have a car, cos you are more likely to be skint.)

These reports rarely give enough context.

I am forever being told this or that factor raises my chance of dying of cause A, B, C, or D.

What I really want to know; is what decreases my chance of long term disability, and what are the main causes of death - which is least unpleasant - and given that how can I change my balance of risk to make it more likely I die quickly of that at an advanced age after a previously healthy life.

I think, for example, I'd rather die of a stroke than Alzheimers or supranuclear palsy.

[ETA crosspost with Twilight and mdjon re stroke risk in children of divorcees.)

[ 15. September 2012, 19:57: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

So, a question for those who think this professor made the right choice to breastfeed and teach at the same time: are there any workplace circumstances that you would find inappropriate for breastfeeding? Would it be okay for a woman to breastfeed while preaching? Leading an important meeting? Meeting with a client in a therapy session?

Yes.

I'm not sure your question gets us out of the loop you're anxious to avoid-- I think we've covered this ground already, but here goes:

As I said, the decision of whether or not to bring a sick child to work would depend on several factors, primarily:
• what other alternatives are available to you
• the financial impact (e.g. whether or not you get sick pay) & how that would impact your family
• the nature/ seriousness/ communicability of child's illness
• the nature of your workplace/ profession (safety issues, etc)
• the HR policies of your particular workplace

Once that determination is made, then the issue of breastfeeding would come into play. I would say that, in general, any place where it would be appropriate to bring a sick child to work it would usually be acceptable to breastfeed. But there would be exceptions, based on the kinds of criteria above.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
[
Neither do I believe that anyone in the UK or America has to leave their kids home alone to "put bread on the table."

Then you are completely out of touch with reality.

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
If breast feeding in university classromms during lectures is quite normal, then I also propose masturbating as well.

Is this offensive crap is a deliberate attempt to derail this conversation even more than it already has been?

quote:
Originally posted by saysay:

quote:
Are wealthy hispanic women, for example, not going to make careless assumptions that everyone has the same resources as them ?
I'm not saying it's impossible or it never happens, but it has not been my experience as a person in the US. Most people of other races still have working class relatives and relatives in other countries. I don't know why (though I suspect it is related to a decline in church attendance), but it's white women (and in particular college professors) who tend to not have any contact with the working class (and sometimes men in general).

I'm just jealous that you live in a place where college lecturers are wealthy. In Britain most of them get a slightly-below-average middle-class wage. Livable (though only just livable in London) but nowhere near wealthy. About the same as a schoolteacher or a police officer. More than a nurse would get, but a lot less than a doctor. And nearly always less than a similarly qualified person would expect in the private sector.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Would it be okay for a woman to breastfeed while... Meeting with a client in a therapy session?

I think breastfeeding in a therapy session would provide you with just an awesome opportunity to mess with your client's head...

quote:
"Baby is with me today so I may lift my shirt at some point to nurse her. Are you comfortable with that?

No? Do you think your discomfort with a woman's breasts may be related to your intimacy issues and your unresolved feelings toward your mother?

How does your answer make you feel?

(bet you're understanding now why I'm no longer a therapist...)

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Yup.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
[
Neither do I believe that anyone in the UK or America has to leave their kids home alone to "put bread on the table."
Then you are completely out of touch with reality.

Any examples, statistics or proof at all?
I thought the UK had a welfare system in place to keep children from starving to death but maybe not. I have never heard of any American children starving to death unless the parents were abusive and actually trying to starve their children. I'm not saying it has never once happened but if children turning up dead from starvation is a common occurance in these two countries then, you're right, I missed it. You would think the newspapers would be showing us pictures of the stick legged, bloated bellied children just like they do when they live in famine areas. Hmmm, this must be why all our attempts to get our church to send aid to these countries is met by, "No! We have starving children right here in Iowa!"

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

You're technically right. In the US, we have SNAP and other nutritional supplemental programs so that, while many children suffer from malnutrition, few starve.

"Put food on the table" is, of course, an idiom that really means "keep my job so I can support my family". A more technically accurate idiom, at least in the US, would be "keep a roof over our head".

The shelter hosted by my church (open only Nov.-Feb) averages 15 families with young children a night, we turn several families with children away due to lack of space. In warmer weather obviously more would be sleeping on the streets. But not starving.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

I went with my work colleagues on our night out to see The Pursuit of Happyness - it was painted as this great triumph over adversity. But our attention was primarily captured by the fact someone was sleeping in an adult homeless shelter with a young child - when the child could have been living with his mother.

I suspect that would be illegal in the UK. (As in the council's failure to house someone in priority need and/or custody should have gone to the parent with accomodation.)

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

How would this baby have been fed at that time had it not been sick? I suspect that the health of the baby is a non-issue; the real issue that Pine wanted to make was that she had a right to feed her baby in class. Poor child.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I went with my work colleagues on our night out to see The Pursuit of Happyness - it was painted as this great triumph over adversity. But our attention was primarily captured by the fact someone was sleeping in an adult homeless shelter with a young child - when the child could have been living with his mother.

My recollection of the movie (based on a true story) was that mom abandoned both father and child. Am I mistaken?

Regardless of what was the case there, we have, as I said, more than a dozen families nightly where that is not an option, our shelter is the only thing standing between them and the street. Those who don't arrive early enough, as in the movie, end up on the street.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

How do your local child services / local government get away with that ? Surely they have some statutory due to protect children ?

[ 16. September 2012, 00:03: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by Left at the Altar (# 5077) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
How would this baby have been fed at that time had it not been sick? I suspect that the health of the baby is a non-issue; the real issue that Pine wanted to make was that she had a right to feed her baby in class. Poor child.

I thought that too. But then I remembered that sick children grizzle. A lot. And one way to keep them quiet is to give them the breast. Even the sickest, sookiest child will stop wimpering if its mum does that. So it may not have been a meal, so much as a plug.

I think she was damned if she did, and damned if she didn't. For me, the crucial point is that it was the first lecture of the year. Cancelling would have been probably both difficult and a bad look and kids don't often give a week's notice of Intention To Fall Ill, so you do what you can to manage the situation when it happens. Some times you get it right, sometimes you don't.

I had to take my 15 month old daughter into work with chicken pox one day because we absolutely had to have an affidavit ready for court. My husband was interstate, we have no family in town and no child care worker would go near her. And the court was not going to wait for the affidavit.

I felt bad for her and bad for others at work, but I could not think what else to do in my particular circumstances. We were there for an hour and we went home. No one died. No one got sick. I got a few disapproving looks and felt like crap. But life went on.

[ 16. September 2012, 00:10: Message edited by: Left at the Altar ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Yes, "put bread on the table" was shorthand for "be able to continue renting our crappy apartment," "be able to pay the heating bill so they don't turn it off in subzero weather," and "be able to buy something better than ramen noodles so that the kids don't wind up malnourished." And if you don't think any of those things happen in the U.S., you are most fortunately circumstanced.

Not all families are eligible for assistance (see "immigration issues"). Not all families that ARE eligible, receive it. We had one family of five where every bloody year the food stamps people gave them the boot as a matter of routine (probably somebody sucking up to the boss--"see how many cases I've been able to close?" though it could have been racism, of course); and every bloody year we wasted forty hours' hard work appealing the decision, and they were then reinstated. That "we" is personal. Not every family who gets the boot off foodstamps/WIC/SSI/whatever has the personal ability to file an appeal (paperwork ho! illiteracy, anyone?) or semi-educated friends who can do it for them. Our friends were lucky.

And yes, they were malnourished. And proud, very proud, so we had the devil of a time finding ways to supplement the children's nutrition without the father cutting ties with us altogether. He used to supplement their diet by occasional fishing (who knows where, we're in a metro area) and thought that was enough protein for growing children.

The eldest stands 4 foot 10 I believe.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
How do your local child services / local government get away with that ? Surely they have some statutory due to protect children ?

In our city (a suburb of LA) dozens of children live on the streets. A few miles away in Skid Row, it's 100s. Child Protective Services will intervene if they feel the child is in danger, but sleeping on the streets alone in L.A. is not necessarily considered "dangerous", since it's warm enough here that people rarely freeze to death. Most families will give a shelter as their address to Child Protective Services and school. But yeah, they will fear losing their kids on top of everything else.

Our city recently decided to shift their resources from providing emergency shelter for 100s of people each night to providing permanent housing for the 10 people identified as most in danger of imminent death in the next 12 month. No families with children made that list since again, death is not usually an imminent danger-- the list was primarily elderly or disabled persons with some other sort of medical condition. I was part of that discussion, representing our shelter.

I understood their logic, but was greatly disturbed by the prospect of the long term effects of a generation of children growing up on the streets w/o even the meager stability of the shelter. We managed to scrape together funding to keep our small shelter open (again, just Nov.-Feb.) for the next few years. I'm hoping to build on our work to raise private sector $$s to open year round and connect to more permanent placements.

This is a much longer answer probably than what you were asking and off-topic I realize. It has been weighing on me heavily the last few months. It was 102 today so no one's freezing to death, but miserable for those w/ no place to come in out of the heat. Heatstroke and/or dehydration are very real possibilities.

[ 16. September 2012, 05:20: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

[Votive]

I just do not understand how people vote for politicians who perpetuate this policy.

(To clarify, I was considering that the government would have a duty to provide emergency housing, rather than that the children should be taken into care.)

[ 16. September 2012, 07:17: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

I'm mildly impressed by her ability to continue lecturing while breastfeeding. From my limited experience of interacting with women breastfeeding, it does not seem to go well with loudly projecting complicated thoughts...

I think breastfeeding in public is fine, as long as it is done discreetly. It is simply common courtesy to give people the chance to look away. Not because breastfeeding is "bad", but because we generally do not want to be involved with the bodily functions and conditions of strangers. Think of blowing your nose, putting on sun protection or shaving. Breastfeeding while lecturing is discourteous to the students who are supposed to pay close attention to the lecturer. They basically do not have the option to ignore this. (It is unnatural to not look at a speaker one is supposed to pay attention to.)

Setting aside the question whether it was wise or necessary to bring the baby to class at all, it is quite obvious what the lecturer should have done: retire from lecturing while breastfeeding. She could have set the students some task to keep them busy in the meantime. She could have instructed the TA to cover some material in the meantime. I think it would have been fine if she had sat down in some corner of that classroom to do her breastfeeding: in public, but discreet. This would have allowed her students to look away.

On a related note, I think the very existence of "feminist anthropology" demonstrates that anthropology has a problem as science. There is no "feminist physics". There can be feminism about physics (and perhaps there should be, it is ridiculously male-dominated). But physics itself cannot be "feminist". If we say that a science itself is "feminist", we are de facto saying that it is so far from true knowledge about its subject matter that it deals in mere opinions (which can be organised into "-isms"). That is not to say that "feminist anthropology" cannot be a valid reaction "chauvinist anthropology", or whatever. It is to say that "-isms" of any kind necessarily debase "-ologies" and "-ics".

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I think the very existence of "feminist anthropology" demonstrates that anthropology has a problem as science. There is no "feminist physics". There can be feminism about physics (and perhaps there should be, it is ridiculously male-dominated). But physics itself cannot be "feminist".

But anthropology is about people. And feminism is about people. If there can be feminism about physicists, there can be anthropology about physicists, there can be feminist anthropology about physicists. You can't sdo feminist physics any more than you can do quantum mechanical anthropolgy, the categories aren't relevant. But feminism is a relevant category for anthgropology.

Also participant study is a huge part of the traditions of anthropology. Who you are and where you are looking from and the clash between your perceptions and expectations and those of the people you are studying is all part of the story. (Unlike sociology or social psychology as well, which is one reason I think anthropology is in some ways a more honest endeavour because it puts personal bias centre stage) Anthropology from a woman's point of view, or anthropology of women, is part of the subject. So its easy to imagine feminist anthropology.

Anyway, I'm British, so my normal use of the word "science" is "natural science". I don't think of social anthropology as a science any more than I think of law or history as a science.

(Irrelevant aside: traditionally British universities teach or taught social and physical anthropology in the same departments. So it is a mixed discipline, like geography or psychology or linguistics - the same students study scientific and non-scientific aspects of the subject.)

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I think it would have been fine if she had sat down in some corner of that classroom to do her breastfeeding: in public, but discreet.

You have a good point here - it doesn't take long to give a baby a quick feed, then get on with the job in hand.

I did plenty of breastfeeding in public - but most folk didn't know I was breastfeeding, a strategically placed scarf works wonders.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
But anthropology is about people. And feminism is about people.

It does not follow in the slightest that "feminist anthropology" makes sense as a science. Lots of things are about people.

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
But feminism is a relevant category for anthgropology.

In the sense that feminism is a proper subject of study for anthropology, certainly. Not in the sense that "feminist anthropology" is meaningful as a science.

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Anthropology from a woman's point of view, or anthropology of women, is part of the subject. So its easy to imagine feminist anthropology.

There is a conceptual abyss between "anthropology from a woman's point of view" and "anthropology of women". The former is a potentially corrupting bias that must be carefully controlled against - which is of course also true for "anthropology from a man's point of view". The latter is an obviously valid field of study within anthropology.

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Anyway, I'm British, so my normal use of the word "science" is "natural science". I don't think of social anthropology as a science any more than I think of law or history as a science.

I quite like the dictionary.com definition, here re-order by me to distinguish two groups:

quote:
science
a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
systematized knowledge in general.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
a particular branch of knowledge.
skill, especially reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.

Entries 1-5 form one cluster, entries 6&7 another. In my opinion, it is quite obvious that the second cluster is a special case of the first. It may be in practice the most common or at least most prominent one nowadays, and it may make sense to assume that someone means this when saying "science". However, it does not make sense to reject the more general definition, and certainly it makes perfect sense to discuss what anthropology should be in terms of this general meaning of science.

And what it should not be is "feminist", any more than "communist" or "capitalist" or "chauvinist" or whatever...

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

Setting aside the question whether it was wise or necessary to bring the baby to class at all, it is quite obvious what the lecturer should have done: retire from lecturing while breastfeeding. She could have set the students some task to keep them busy in the meantime. She could have instructed the TA to cover some material in the meantime. I think it would have been fine if she had sat down in some corner of that classroom to do her breastfeeding: in public, but discreet. This would have allowed her students to look away.

fwiw, we don't know that she didn't do that. All we know is that she was there, it was the first day of class, and that at some point she breastfed (and that at one point baby was held by TA and another, crawling on floor).

As we're getting the story, there's lots of points here & there where I'd probably quibble and say she coulda done this & that differently. But that seems like nattering backseat quarterbacking, based on very limited data. It was a difficult situation, she made the best call she could at the time-- again, from the evidence, apparently based on what was best for the students rather than herself.

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
A colleague here calls babies 'great big over fed grubs' and actually dislikes seeing them AT ALL in public places and I could just imagine her reaction to such an activity in public - would make her stomach heave. As would someone masturbating of ocurse.
Yes - but she's the one with crazy notions - babies are not offensive at all, they are simply our young.

Masturbating is a private matter, feeding children isn't. If one of the students were hungry and ate a cereal bar - no comment. We eat in front of people, in public. We don't masturbate in front of people, in public.

No comparison.

But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
[QUOTE]But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.

Sure. But we live in a community. Which means we are, by necessity, going to have to face and even interact along side of, people who make different choices than us pretty much every day. Riding on the subway, we're going to have to look at t-shirts with political slogans we disagree with. Sitting across the conference room table is a man sporting a ridiculous comb-over that is truly heinous. Walking to lunch you'll pass a dozen people sporting bluetooth phones talking loudly to seemingly no one. I dislike all those things intensely, and wish those people would keep them far away from me, but alas, they don't.

That's part of living in a community. While there are some reasonable accommodations we can make to avoid offending others, we also have to make reasonable accommodations to avoid being offended. Like it or not, people will procreate, and lactate. Asking you to hold the baby is crossing a line. Asking you to breastfeed the baby would be really crossing a line. Asking you to dwell for a short period of time in the same space as the baby, even a breastfeeding one, probably not. Notable exceptions may apply.

[ 16. September 2012, 22:22: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Asking you to breastfeed the baby would be really crossing a line.

I'd be fairly amused if someone asked me to breastfeed a baby, as I've never lactated.

I think one key thing for me is that the professor was doing something that normally commands attention, while breastfeeding is something that, as IngoB says, we normally look away from. The other thing is that we're still in the midst of a cultural shift from one view of breastfeeding to another, not to mention the seemingly never-ending cultural arguments over women's bodies. cliffdweller has lectured us about having compassion for a woman none of us is ever likely to meet; it seems to me that some recognition that we're all in the midst of these changes would be more helpful.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.

One should no expect society to cater to unusual distaste. It is not about accepting everyone's, but about a general level of accommodation. In our debate hear, and in society in general, there are significant groups on both sides. The main issue is prude vs prurient, with a side of distraction.*

*is hyperbole, folks

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
[QUOTE] The other thing is that we're still in the midst of a cultural shift from one view of breastfeeding to another, not to mention the seemingly never-ending cultural arguments over women's bodies. cliffdweller has lectured us about having compassion for a woman none of us is ever likely to meet; it seems to me that some recognition that we're all in the midst of these changes would be more helpful.

Occupational hazard.

We have seemed to have shifted the goalposts a bit. A day or so ago we were assured the issue was not the breastfeeding per se, but the supposed inappropriateness of bring one's child to work. Now the issue seems to be entirely about the breastfeeding.

Posted by Leaf (# 14169) on :

I thought this thread needed one more subtheme [Big Grin]

: the thinning of personal social networks, to the point of disappearance.

The professor in the article seemed to have two choices: daycare (not an option for a sick kid) or herself. That is a sadly common scenario. ISTM a lot of social changes have contributed to this. Deplore or celebrate any of the following, but they seem to be real:

increased presence of women in the workforce. This makes it less likely to have an unemployed neighbour or friend to call upon. Ain't nobody hanging around Wisteria Lane.
smaller families and greater transience. Thus it would be unlikely to have a big bunch of adult siblings living in close proximity. Aunties and uncles live far away. Neighbours are new and unknown quantities. Friendships are harder to make.
more single parenthood - means that a partner may not be available to provide care.
active grandparents - even if they live nearby, they may not be as available because they are employed or travelling.

I'm sorry, IngoB, is that too close to a feminist sociology? [Smile]

And yet, if I may, surely this kind of situation must strike close to home to you. Elsewhere you had posted about a move to your current location. If your partner became very ill - and you had to give a lecture you felt was very important - whom could you call upon for emergency childcare? I am guessing that some of the above factors might apply to you.

Given the professor's apparent social poverty - her evident lack of available, trusted adults who could step in - I can't fault her choice in this circumstance. (However, I do think her reaction to the student newspaper was kind of douchey.)

Socially, I feel I am rich as Croesus for these kinds of scenarios... which I can, and have had to, call upon. Oh boy do I thank God on my knees for it. I have lived previously with almost the level of social poverty that the professor seems to bear, so I don't fault her choice in those circumstances.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

I think Leaf is onto something there. One thing some of us may have lost as we moved our way up the professional ladder was a connection to community-- the people we can call at 4 am when we have a sick baby.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

Actually, I think all the discussion about the poverty of her choices is a bit aside from the point -- if she had fed her child with a bottle, I don't think we'd all be discussing that. It's breastfeeding while conducting class that has excited comment.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.

You were one once, do you find that idea distasteful too? Do you think your parents should have kept you hidden from view? Or, if this notion isn't yours - how would those you mention answer my two questions?

[ 17. September 2012, 06:33: Message edited by: Boogie ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Actually, I think all the discussion about the poverty of her choices is a bit aside from the point -- if she had fed her child with a bottle, I don't think we'd all be discussing that. It's breastfeeding while conducting class that has excited comment.

I wonder if there is a cultural difference here. Does suckling a baby in a public place have a greater yuck factor in the US than in other countries? I get the impression it's broadly OK here as long as it's done discreetly.

Dragging your baby into work with you and insisting everybody else has to share the delight and pride you might feel that you've done your bit for the human species by bringing another into the world, whether he or she drinks human milk, cows' milk or has progressed to mush, can be a bit irritating.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
fwiw, we don't know that she didn't do that. All we know is that she was there, it was the first day of class, and that at some point she breastfed (and that at one point baby was held by TA and another, crawling on floor).

I interpret the following from the article in the OP as indicating that she was indeed lecturing while breastfeeding: "When the baby grew restless, Pine breast-fed her while continuing her lecture in front of 40 students." Again, I think the key point here is simply that it is discourteous to breastfeed while people were basically required to look at her. This has nothing to do with breastfeeding being "bad", but simply with the general principle of being discreet about one's bodily functions. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with how good, bad or ugly the childcare situation for academics might be. It was entirely possible for her to do the breastfeeding aside while keeping the students busy with some task, in particular because she even had a TA present.

However, given that this was a course in "feminist anthropology", my general feeling is that the students got precisely what they asked for in signing up for such a course...

quote:
Originally posted by Leaf:
I'm sorry, IngoB, is that too close to a feminist sociology? And yet, if I may, surely this kind of situation must strike close to home to you. Elsewhere you had posted about a move to your current location. If your partner became very ill - and you had to give a lecture you felt was very important - whom could you call upon for emergency childcare? I am guessing that some of the above factors might apply to you.

There seems to be a confusion here. "Feminist sociology" isn't simply "sociology concerned with women". The former is at best fighting fire with fire, at worst a corrupting bias destroying the science. The latter is an entirely uncontroversial field of sociology. (I'm not a sociologist, but it is hard to see how one could be active in this science without being concerned with women one way or the other...) Furthermore, concern for the welfare of women, and families, is hardly something exclusive to feminism.

If you ask me, the one thing proper to feminism is that it must make itself superfluous as rapidly as possible. It has a right of existence a socio-political movement that addresses actual grievances at a systemic (rather than individual) level. Its aim must be to remove these problems. Once that has happened, it must disappear, or become a problem by and in itself. Probably and unfortunately, feminism is still necessary even in the West. Perhaps so even in the academe. However, it is one thing to be motivated by feminism to look at some aspect of a science previously neglected due to male dominance and/or negligence. It is entirely different thing to declare that a science can be "feminist" as such. I will never accept the latter as a valid approach.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
fwiw, we don't know that she didn't do that. All we know is that she was there, it was the first day of class, and that at some point she breastfed (and that at one point baby was held by TA and another, crawling on floor).
I interpret the following from the article in the OP as indicating that she was indeed lecturing while breastfeeding: "When the baby grew restless, Pine breast-fed her while continuing her lecture in front of 40 students."

oops... yep, quite right. I missed that.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Actually, I think all the discussion about the poverty of her choices is a bit aside from the point -- if she had fed her child with a bottle, I don't think we'd all be discussing that. It's breastfeeding while conducting class that has excited comment.

Again, the discussion has shifted radically in the course of the last few days. For several days, shipmates were insisting that breastfeeding was not the issue, it was bringing the child to work. Now we seem to be arguing the opposite tack. Almost all of the discussion prior to yesterday was about the issue of sick child care options available to privileged college profs and whether she made the right choice.

I say that only because we'll have to be careful when referring back to things said in the course of that discussion to make sure the context is right. For example, Lamb Chopped's discussion of "loving your neighbor" (which I was castigated for affirming) were in the context of sick child care options, not breastfeeding.

Carry on.

Posted by Beethoven (# 114) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It was entirely possible for her to do the breastfeeding aside while keeping the students busy with some task, in particular because she even had a TA present.

That's quite easy to say from a position of no knowledge of the precise situation. However, a full feed for either of my opuses was around 40-50 minutes. Trying to get away with a 5-10 minute snack was a non-starter - and they'd let me know, loudly. And given that this particular class was the first one of the academic year, I believe, it could be fairly hard to re-write the prepared class to allow for the optional insertion of a significant breast-feeding break while the class gets on with something else.

Personally I can't work out quite where I stand on this. Bringing a sick child to work - not ideal, but sometimes the least bad option. Breastfeeding the child in front of a class - well, it's not something I'd have been happy doing, for sure, but different strokes... If the alternative was having a fractious and noisy baby, then perhaps. And while I'd be happy to say that I feel breastfeeding isn't particulaly appropriate in almost any work situation, the fact that this was feminist anthropology does bring a certain irony to the situation. It's just a shame it got handled so badly and blown out of proportion.

[ 17. September 2012, 14:01: Message edited by: Beethoven ]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Beethoven:
That's quite easy to say from a position of no knowledge of the precise situation. However, a full feed for either of my opuses was around 40-50 minutes. Trying to get away with a 5-10 minute snack was a non-starter - and they'd let me know, loudly. And given that this particular class was the first one of the academic year, I believe, it could be fairly hard to re-write the prepared class to allow for the optional insertion of a significant breast-feeding break while the class gets on with something else.

OK. If it was like this, then the appropriate reaction would have been to say to the class: "Well, I have tried but unfortunately it is not working out, as my baby is hungry now and needs to be fed. At least we managed to see each other and I was able to tell you about X, Y and Z. I would like you all to read Chapter 1 of the Important Book of Feminist Stuff at home, to make it easier to get back on track next time. Thanks for your patience and see you all next week."

This is not rocket science. This is not about a tragic lack of options. This is merely a question of manners and priorities, and perhaps empathy. Perhaps the underlying problem is whether one sees giving a lecture simply as a means of transferring information, or as a social gathering for a shared purpose with its own, largely unwritten, rules of behaviour.

The lecturer apparently is a "feminist anthropologist". If she was unaware of the social aspects of a lecture, then she clearly is a serious failure at her job. If she wasn't, then she was making a statement through her actions. The former suggests that she should be fired, the latter that the student had it coming - as I've said above...

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Beethoven:
And while I'd be happy to say that I feel breastfeeding isn't particulaly appropriate in almost any work situation, the fact that this was feminist anthropology does bring a certain irony to the situation. It's just a shame it got handled so badly and blown out of proportion.

Yes, circling 'round to where we started, IMHO it was the aftermath that was problematic, more than the situation itself-- Prof. Pine does come off prickly and even bullying at times in her treatment of the presumably young journalist, even by her own description of events. Shame to have missed an educational opportunity. If her goal (as she claims) was to de-escalate what she had hoped would be a "normal" situation, it was an epic fail.

The only aspect of this story I don't think we've covered thoroughly at least twice now is Leaf's comment re: the contribution of social isolation to the lack of viable alternatives. Well worth consideration I think.

[ 17. September 2012, 16:11: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them [children] intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.

And we parents mercifully tolerate those people (misopaedists?) in out midst, provided they keep their mouths firmly shut whenever tempted to offer advice or opinions about our children or anyone else's.

[ 17. September 2012, 16:38: Message edited by: ken ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Please forgive me if I have missed something - but there has been frequent mention of a TA.

Why are there TAs in universities?

A TA in the UK works in a state school to support slow learners.

Does the US have 'comprehensive' unis.?

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Please forgive me if I have missed something - but there has been frequent mention of a TA.

Why are there TAs in universities?

A TA in the UK works in a state school to support slow learners.

Does the US have 'comprehensive' unis.?

A TA is a teaching assistant. They serve a variety of functions, depending on their education level and the policy of the institution. At the univ. where I teach, you can request a TA if you have more than 100 students per semester. They are generally undergrads who perform clerical tasks such as recording grades. At some institutions, TAs may be graduate students who might do some (but not all) of the lectures, or meet with students in smaller work groups.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Why are there TAs in universities?

Because it's an easy way to employ graduate students, which helps them stay in school and keeps the cost of educating undergraduates low. Where I went to grad school, teaching assistants assisted professors running large classes and taught small classes of lower-division (first two years) undergraduates a prescribed curriculum. As a TA I mostly taught freshman composition and lower-division introductory courses to the major -- there were dozens of such classes offered every term, and it was much cheaper to employ grad students than regular professors. I once assisted a professor who was teaching a large lecture-based class; he had me do half the grading and give one lecture.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
A TA in the UK works in a state school to support slow learners.

Incorrect. TAs are also employed in UK universities, or at least they certainly are in the School of Psychology of the University of Birmingham, UK. Basically all that cliffdweller and RuthW have said (from a US perspective?) applies here as well, except perhaps that TAs must be postgrads.

Posted by shamwari (# 15556) on :

Whats the fuss?

I ministered in Zimbabwe for 25 years.

At every service the African men and women sat on opposite sides of the Church.

Whenever a baby cried the mother whipped out a breast and fed the child in full view of everyone present.

And nobody batted an eyelid.

Give over. Its no big deal,

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

What IngoB said. I don't think we call them "TA"s in our place, but its the same deal. I know them best as what we used to call "demonstrators" in practical classes. The last university course I did (which, despite my age, was only about five years ago) we had to take some catch-up classes in maths (which I needed desperately!) and computer programming (not so much) and there were PhD students on hand to help us out.

I even did it myself a couple of times on ecology field trips (it was genuinly a good experience in that it was pretty much the first time I became confident that I really did know the stuff I was talking about - in this case to do with the identification of fungi and plants, and some lab work afterwards)

And I take it back about the name here is a recent ad for graduate TAs in the very same department I studied in.

quote:

Graduate Teaching Assistants

The School of Science is offering remission of PhD fees coupled with a part-time Graduate Teaching Assistant role for up to three PhD students in the Department of Biological Sciences.

The applicants will be expected to pursue studies leading towards a PhD and to provide part-time teaching assistance (17.5 hours per week during term time). The duties of the teaching will include delivery and preparation of teaching materials at both undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as demonstrating in practical classes.

Too late to apply folks, the closing date was March! (Though if you fancy structure/function studies of voltage-gated sodium channels you still have a few hours to get your application in... oh no you don;t it closed at 5pm) But its just exactly the sort of thing our American friends were talking about.

[ 17. September 2012, 22:25: Message edited by: ken ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Another name used at some places is "teaching fellows"--when I did this I had full and virtually unsupervised responsibility for the courses I taught from Day One; this was modified eight years later for TAs to do about half the work load with far less teaching, and that more supervised. So you get the whole gamut.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LambChopped:
Another name used at some places is "teaching fellows"--when I did this I had full and virtually unsupervised responsibility for the courses I taught from Day One; this was modified eight years later for TAs to do about half the work load with far less teaching, and that more supervised.

At the university where I work Teaching Fellows have to have a PhD. They aren't postgraduate students. They do the full teaching work of a lecturer (unsupervised, obviously) but don't do research. Many of ours are older ex-lecturers or ex-researchers with a lot of teaching experience.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

If you ask me, the one thing proper to feminism is that it must make itself superfluous as rapidly as possible. It has a right of existence a socio-political movement that addresses actual grievances at a systemic (rather than individual) level. Its aim must be to remove these problems. Once that has happened, it must disappear, or become a problem by and in itself.

I think that's brilliant.

It will be hard to determine when the time to disappear has arrived -- it may almost be that time in some parts of the world, while needing to stay at the front of our minds in order to help the parts of the world that are still tragic with grievances -- but I think Dr. Pine serves as a good example of the backlash and resentment that can result if feminism is used beyond the legitimate grievance (not enough women hired at college level) to promote special priviledges (women should be able to take their children to work.)

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
A TA in the UK works in a state school to support slow learners.
Incorrect. TAs are also employed in UK universities, or at least they certainly are in the School of Psychology of the University of Birmingham, UK. Basically all that cliffdweller and RuthW have said (from a US perspective?) applies here as well, except perhaps that TAs must be postgrads.

Thanks - I didn't know that.

Now another naive question: somebody above suggested that she should have got a substitute teacher. How likely is it that there woulds be someone nearby with the same subject specialism?

In this city, there are two universities (one having been a former polytechnic). I doubt whether many staff could deputise at the other institution, not least since the two places offer different sorts of courses and also because they'd already be timetabled at their own institution.

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

Depends what she was teaching. If a final year class to a select number of students then if she did not have a collaborating post doc, very slight.

If it was a standard class (as were the majority of classes when I was at University) for the subject, rotated* around the staff in the department in some sort of pattern, then it might well be very easy indeed. The first class of first year statistical methods is not going to really tax any professor who has taught it in the last five years. I suspect other subjects have other such basic classes.

Jengie

*depended on topic the rotation could be long or short, the honours classes often had a very small rotation, several went Smith, Jones, Smith, Jones, ad nuaseum, you prayed your year it was Smith for though Jones was by far the more entertaining lecturer Smith's exam papers were far easier.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Depends what she was teaching. If a final year class to a select number of students then if she did not have a collaborating post doc, very slight.

If it was a standard class (as were the majority of classes when I was at University) for the subject, rotated* around the staff in the department in some sort of pattern, then it might well be very easy indeed. The first class of first year statistical methods is not going to really tax any professor who has taught it in the last five years. I suspect other subjects have other such basic classes.

Jengie

That has not been my experience. I teach a basic 100-level required course-- there are 11 others who teach different sections of the same course. But we all teach it differently, with different emphases, texts, etc. With notice we can fill in for each other-- as we did when a colleague recently underwent chemo. But on the spur of the moment, no, it's just not a workable solution.

[ 18. September 2012, 23:35: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them [children] intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.
And we parents mercifully tolerate those people (misopaedists?) in out midst, provided they keep their mouths firmly shut whenever tempted to offer advice or opinions about our children or anyone else's.

Oh aren't we chippy today? The usual over reaction posing as witty [Snore]

Go and have a cold shower.

And by my calculations your children would have grown up by now, and not tempted to shriek in public or be breastfed in public by you.

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
But as hard as it may be for some people to accept - there are those who dislike them intensely, choose not to have them, and would rather people kept them to themselves.
You were one once, do you find that idea distasteful too? Do you think your parents should have kept you hidden from view? Or, if this notion isn't yours - how would those you mention answer my two questions?

I'm not sure I can answer for her, but following her logic I would say

(1) That we were all 'one once' is a biological certainty. I don't think Lydia (not her real name) was ever a 'child' in one sense and probably the notion is indeed distasteful.
(2) 'Hidden from view' not really. To be seen is OK, to be heard, less so.

The person who mooted the idea happens to be most entertaining, intelligent and such very good company. She is most certainly not run-o-the-mill - mercifully.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
And by my calculations your children would have grown up by now, and not tempted to shriek in public or be breastfed in public by you.

Alas in a different culture they won't understand the reference. Otherwise I'd suggest that if their lecturer ever does it again, all the male students in the class should immediately all lean to one side and start crying out 'bitty'.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

In a different context than a classroom, I recall quite clearly a child-disliking adult being told that "if you don't like people, please stay home", to the approval of the dozen or so others in the area. Living in a society requires us to make allowances for others, even if we dislike them or prefer they would not be close by. It does take effort, and some days are more difficult than others. This situation as told in this thread holds lessons of tolerance, problem solving and requires suppression of tendencies to feel offended.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
In a different context than a classroom, I recall quite clearly a child-disliking adult being told that "if you don't like people, please stay home", to the approval of the dozen or so others in the area. Living in a society requires us to make allowances for others, even if we dislike them or prefer they would not be close by.

I'm not sure who you are saying should show tolerance -- the one who didn't care for children or the one telling him to take a hike.

--Tom Clune

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Living in a society requires us to make allowances for others, even if we dislike them or prefer they would not be close by. It does take effort, and some days are more difficult than others. This situation as told in this thread holds lessons of tolerance, problem solving and requires suppression of tendencies to feel offended.

Yes, it would be nice if the AU professor would learn something from this episode, but based on what she's written about it, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for that.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Living in a society requires us to make allowances for others, even if we dislike them or prefer they would not be close by. It does take effort, and some days are more difficult than others. This situation as told in this thread holds lessons of tolerance, problem solving and requires suppression of tendencies to feel offended.
Yes, it would be nice if the AU professor would learn something from this episode, but based on what she's written about it, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for that.

IMHO there were plenty of lessons in tolerance to be learned on both sides of the breast, as well as many missed opportunities.

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