During the spring of 1998, we received the joyful news that Angelica was pregnant with our first child. It took us a few days to realize that her due date coincided with the opening day of the yearly conference for our academic discipline. We had nightmare visions of a scarred childhood in which birthday celebrations were perennially overshadowed by parental job interviews and scholarly presentations.
Sure enough, the horrific scenario played itself out the very first year. When the job listings for our field were posted that fall, there were two tenure-track positions in the Boston area within commuting distance of each other. Despite the scheduling complications, we would have been fools not to apply.
And so we embarked on two major life changes simultaneously, each with a gestational period of approximately nine months.
The job process went surprisingly smoothly at the beginning. Angelica was fortunate enough to have her preliminary interview at the conference waived by the hiring committee, and she moved directly into the group of finalists invited for an on-campus visit. Meanwhile, Henry scheduled a tentative interview at the conference with the proviso that he might have to cancel for personal reasons.
Thankfully, our child was wise enough to recognize the calendrical threat to his future happiness, and he emerged from the womb some two weeks ahead of schedule. Henry placed a call to his prospective employer to inform them that he would in fact be able to attend the conference. He then boarded a plane for his annual submersion into the vortex of professional schmoozing, narcissistic grandstanding, and furtive romancing (intellectual and/or otherwise). The ebb and flow of the academic masses was a none-too-subtle reminder that professional life continued outside our nuclear-family bubble.
On the other hand, Henry's anxiety about the interviewing process was counterbalanced by his secret relief that he would gain a momentary respite from the brave new world of parenthood. Henry intended to withdraw to the quiet, anonymous space of the hotel room, where he could trade in the unfathomable mysteries of eco-friendly diapering and diagnosing rashes for more predictable musings on the influence of post-structuralism on the historiography of the early modern period.
His plan failed. Unable to sleep without the soothing cries of a hungry infant, Henry spent most of the night before his interview obsessively examining and re-examining his suit for traces of the infant spit-up that seemed to permeate every piece of his clothing.
We spent the next month attempting to compose our two job talks in the moments of fragmentary peace afforded us by the miraculously soothing effect that vacuum cleaners have on colicky infants. We would then rehearse the presentations in hushed monotones designed to lull our infant audience to sleep. We wondered whether our job talks might have the same soporific effect on our prospective colleagues.
All the while, Henry slipped away for a few hours each day to teach his classes. There is, of course, no parental leave for academic fathers, particularly those of the adjunct breed. The combination of fathering, teaching, and interviewing was taking its toll on him (not to mention his wife). Observant students noted a peculiarly parallel decline in both his personal hygiene and the structural integrity of his classroom lectures.
The time finally came for our campus visits. Henry again left his harried wife and child for a three-day stint at his prospective employer. Angelica's trip was a more complicated affair. She was still nursing our son, so the two of us accompanied her on her campus visit. She was forced to schedule her rounds of appointments in three-hour blocks so that she could return to her hotel room for feeding sessions or retreat to an empty office for pumping.
Angelica concocted a battery of excuses to hide her current state of lactation, the knowledge of which inevitably would have decreased her intellectual cachet. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, many academics believe that women cannot be capable mothers and scholars at the same time. Angelica was determined not to be ensnared in this essentialist trap.
In the end, we both felt that we had managed to overcome the numbing effects of sleep deprivation to give a reasonable account of ourselves, and we optimistically awaited the results of our labors.
Henry was the first to fail. Sometime in the spring, he received an ominously slender envelope bearing the news that the committee had decided in favor of another candidate "more appropriate to their needs." Soon after, Angelica received word that she too would not be offered a new job. The university administration apparently made a last-minute decision to raise the advertised position to the senior level.
As a result, we are out on the job market again this year, but with the added urgency of a new baby to support. Henry can no longer accept the financial uncertainty that comes with adjunct employment. Nor can we justify, in economic or emotional terms, a commuting relationship that would leave Angelica as a de facto single mother. Therefore we have decided that one or both of us will depart academia this year, in the likely event that we cannot find two permanent positions near each other.
Angelica Lawson and Henry Byers are pseudonyms.
