Question: I have been on the job market, more or less, for five years -- the last three dramatically attenuated while I cared for my elderly and chronically ill mother. I taught faithfully as an adjunct, then cleaned her apartment, cooked her meals, helped her bathe, and ferried her to countless doctors. Last year she died, and now I'm in a wide-ranging job search.

I'm often asked what limited my search before -- and what do I say? As a social scientist, I'm tempted to report that I was a participant-observer in the American experience of life-cycle squeezes, the health-care crisis, and aging parents. Sometimes I think this is the perfect answer -- since it allows me to circle around to my own scholarly interests.

Yet even sympathetic interviewers obviously prefer a hard-driving, obsessive careerist. I've been one, single and childless, but I could have made no other choice about my mom.

Have I doomed myself by ensuring my mother's reasonably comfortable final years and meaningful death instead of jumping on the professional fast-track? Do I conceal what I was doing and just blame the terrible job market? I want to be honest but circumspect, humane but employed.

Answer: Your letter is one of the most wrenching Ms. Mentor has ever received, for it exposes the heartless side of academia. Far too many academics simply cannot see that life is more than the next paper, the bigger lab space, the longer vita, the national prizes. When search committees insist on having candidates with a "continuous work history," too often they lose well-rounded human beings.

The standard career narrative -- the linear, upward-striving, no-swerving path -- is possible only for those who are young, white, able, and lucky. They must either be monkishly single or possess a willing, I'll-handle-all-the-domestic-burdens-for-you partner (plus some kind of extra income). Anyone with a brusque, driven personality -- one who repels requests for human kindness and help -- will also have more time for research.

Meanwhile, those doing the hiring are still, too often, powerful administrators who, when asked about children, the elderly, the sick, and the troubled, reply: "That's my wife's department." Hence, to Ms. Mentor's great sorrow, many campuses still lack day-care centers; even fewer have elder care; and only one that Ms. Mentor knows of (Michigan State) has a battered women's shelter.

Newer academics without traditional wives, and those blessed with people they care deeply about, will wind up making career sacrifices, until those in power -- perhaps aggravated and humiliated by the likes of Ms. Mentor -- wake up and notice real life. Devoted children make the most dedicated teachers.

Ms. Mentor also recommends Constance Coiner and Diana Hume George's excellent book, The Family Track (University of Illinois Press, 1998) -- an impassioned set of essays that should turn up, even anonymously, on the desks of all deans, department chairs, and hiring committees. (Anonymous givers may even open their copies to the most relevant parts.)[How to buy this book]

As for job interviews, Ms. Mentor thinks your proposed answer is perfect: You are what you study. You may also add that you have never stopped doing your research. Rather, you've learned to craft it around the time available. Because you are resourceful and flexible, you have a continuous work history -- and you will be, as the record shows, a compassionate colleague.

Your mother must have been proud of you. Ms. Mentor is, too.