Balancing Act

Tenured and Battered

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By Madeline Bates

I received my bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from elite institutions. When I went on the job market I received three tenure-track job offers from top colleges, one of which was my first choice. Two years into the perfect job, I fell in love, got married, and ultimately gave birth to several healthy children. I learned how to teach and how to publish and was tenured.

So, if I'm so smart, why did I remain married to a batterer for 12 years?

As it turns out, domestic violence happens to all types of women -- regardless of IQ. Before we married my husband seemed to be the perfect man -- kind, gentle, romantic, admiring of me and my academic successes. Three weeks after we married, when I learned that I was pregnant, the battering began. I was baffled that this man, who seemed so perfect during our engagement, was sometimes so cruel.

So, I characterized those sporadic attacks on me as outliers in the data set. And because our relationship followed the typical cycle of domestic violence, with the blowup phases always followed by the honeymoon phases, I persuaded myself that there was sufficient evidence to support my belief that my husband was a good man.

I couldn't see, or wouldn't see, that I was misusing my professional training as a social scientist to perpetuate my denial.

As the years passed, the cycles gradually changed -- so gradually that it took me some time to recognize that the pattern had changed. The blowups had become more frequent, more violent, and lasted longer. I needed to invent a new hypothesis to rationalize what was happening.

Being an academic I am used to having a great deal of control over my work life. I'm in control in my classroom. I choose the courses I want to teach, I determine the texts I will assign and how students' work will be evaluated. I choose the research topics I work on and the journals I submit my work to, etc. If I was being so marginalized at home, I theorized it was because I was doing something wrong.

Because my husband was now criticizing me almost constantly, it seemed that I had a plausible theory to fit the data. If only I did a better job taking care of the children; if only I kept the house cleaner and less cluttered; if only I spent more time attending to my husband's needs rather than grading papers or reading journal articles; if only I took care of the children by myself for a few years before my tenure decision and supported him while he went to graduate school in another city, he would be happier -- and less violent. I did all of those things.

But I should have known better than to form hypotheses about a subject without first doing a literature review. After reading some of the domestic-violence literature, I learned that no matter how much I tried to comply with my husband's demands, it would never be enough. He would just find something else to be angry about.

Trying to work productively during 12 years in which my home life became fraught with danger was difficult. How do you maintain the focus necessary to teach, grade, do research, and write when you are recovering from the most recent attack, or trying to avoid the one you know is coming?

Despite the stress of trying to construct a track record that would merit tenure and to maintain the facade of a happy home life, I found that work was cathartic. My students were so engaging that during classes I would actually forget about the terror at home. Publications, excellent teaching evaluations, and work on important internal college issues gave me reasons to feel good about myself, and the strength to carry on.

After my husband completed his graduate studies and moved back in with us, he began a very highly paid job that he enjoyed as well as a new cycle of violence -- one in which he was battering our children as well as me. When I tried to intervene to protect the children, my husband just became more violent. I knew that I needed to act, but wasn't sure what to do.

Why didn't I just leave? Because leaving a violent marriage is extremely complicated, particularly if you have children. Research shows that batterers are most dangerous (e.g., most likely to kill) when their wives/partners leave. If I left my husband, without the children, I believed that he would hurt them intentionally as a means to hurt me. I also believed that my husband would, out of spite, engage me in a protracted custody battle -- which he could afford given his much larger salary.

I considered leaving, taking the children with me, and going into hiding from my husband. That would have required leaving academe for lower-skilled, lower-wage work, assuming false identities, and living on the run.

Desperate to find a way out, I met with a lawyer. She advised me to go to the local magistrate and file a request for a temporary restraining order that would require my husband to temporarily abstain from all contact with me or with our children. It would also require him to vacate our home until after a hearing that would be scheduled a week later. My lawyer also explained that I could be granted temporary custody of my children and that I could file for divorce and begin proceedings to gain permanent custody and obtain child support.

Certain that I would have an expensive custody battle in front of me, I decided that I would max out my credit cards if necessary and borrow money from every member of my family if I had to. I was willing to waive all rights to child support and give my husband the majority of our financial assets, if he would just walk away. Supporting the children and myself on just my salary would cause a significant reduction in our standard of living, but we could still be comfortable.

Shortly after noon, I arrived at the magistrate's office to file a request for a temporary restraining order. The clerk gave me a legal notepad and pen and told me to write down the facts of my case which would be presented to the magistrate that afternoon for a ruling.

I have made many written arguments in my life as a scholar. But in terms of what was at stake, it was clear to me that this was the most important argument I would ever have to make. Nine pages later I returned the notepad to the clerk.

"Why did you write so much?" he chastised me.

"Because this is what happened," I said.

"Nobody ever writes this much," said the clerk. "I don't think the magistrate will read it."

I thought about all the times I have harangued students for writing overly long essays. Was I using the shotgun approach, hoping that if I put enough information down on the page, something I wrote would resonate with the magistrate? Definitely not. I wasn't backing down this time.

"These are all of the relevant facts," I said. "Please ask the magistrate to read it all."

Because my husband was still at work and I knew that it would not be safe for me or the children to come home that evening, my third stop that day was at my house. I grabbed enough clothes for a week, financial documents, and my laptop computer. As I walked out of my house, I looked back and wondered when or under what circumstances I would be able to return.

Later that day, the magistrate granted me the restraining order. Luckily I was on sabbatical at the time and I had good friends who invited me and my children to come stay with them that night and for as many nights thereafter as we needed to stay.

I found out the next morning that a sheriff's deputy had delivered the restraining order to my husband at around 9:00 p.m. According to the medical examiner, my husband shot himself in the head sometime around 1:00 a.m.

Now, I am a widow and a single mom. Since my husband's death I have told a few friends that he was a batterer, but not many. While I need the emotional support my friends offer, it would only hurt my husband's family to know the truth. So, I am careful who I tell.

As soon as I learned that my husband had died, I made just one phone call, to my dean, to tell him what had happened. One of the good things about being part of a small community is that the news of my husband's suicide spread quickly throughout the campus and the town. Every night, for more than a month, someone brought us dinner. Colleagues, trustees, students, and their parents endowed an educational fund for my children.

Balancing work and family involves a new set of challenges. Every meeting on the weekends or in the evenings and every professional conference requires lining up a babysitter. Getting my children to and from their after-school activities is also a logistical challenge -- as is supervising homework, while simultaneously getting dinner on the table. But those challenges don't feel at all daunting compared to the challenges of being married to a violent man.

I have put my academic skills to good use, researching the literature on domestic violence and searching the Internet to find support groups for me and for my children. I am convinced now that there was nothing else I could have done to produce a better outcome to what was a tragic marriage.

I give myself credit for ultimately making choices that saved my life and the lives of my children. I am no longer afraid or embarrassed to ask for help when I need it. Unlike many who experience domestic violence, I am lucky to have the financial security that tenure brings. And finally, I am no longer afraid to drive home at the end of the day.