Balancing Act

An Unexpecting Minority

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By Carol Peace

In many ways, my unexpected status as an outsider in my department could be interpreted as a sign of success for women in academe.

I arrived at my dream job last August on the tenure track at a major research university (relieved to have pulled off a wedding and a cross-country move). When I wandered into the office next to mine to chat with my new colleague, she greeted me by saying, "So, are you pregnant?" It was a punch line to a joke I hadn't heard.

As I soon learned, most of the female faculty members in my new department had given birth in the past few months. My colleague's greeting was meant to include me in the joke and perhaps even let me know it would be OK if I was pregnant. But I'm not, and I'm not sure I ever will be. Suddenly I found myself in the minority in my department, and I really didn't see it coming.

My husband is also an academic, and we have yet to decide if we want children, although we are leaning toward not. At my first job out of graduate school, only three faculty members (all of them male) in our entire division had young children. People rarely asked me and my then-fiancé whether we wanted to have children, and we worked, ate lunch, and played with colleagues who did and did not have kids. We frequently held cookouts and American Idol gatherings at a moment's notice.

I inhabited the preferred status quo (or so I thought) -- a career woman, dedicated to my work, with limited family obligations and a partner who shared household work.

Truthfully, I expected my new department would be grateful that I wasn't having kids. But the unofficial motto here seems to be "We do babies!" And indeed we do. Four women (36 percent of our faculty) have a baby (or two) getting ready to turn a year old this summer. Of the remaining female faculty members in our department, two have children in school or college, and a third is childless.

To those who fear, or have been told to fear, the supposed disaster presented by a department full of women of childbearing age, we beg to differ. The department has been chugging along earning national accolades.

And people in the department, parents and nonparents alike, have bonded over the baby boom. Our new hire for the coming fall, I kid you not, is set to give birth on the first day of classes. While that may sound horrifying, as one colleague says, "If that's going to happen to her, I can't think of anywhere better for her to be than here." We can't wait for her and her family to arrive.

And yet my status as one of the few child-free women in the department has left me feeling strangely isolated. When I arrived, the four women had given birth mere days or months before. Understandably, they weren't around much during the fall. I hung out in my office, yearning for contact and socialization, but there wasn't much to be had.

At the same time, one of the male faculty members had had surgery, and another was dealing with the serious illness of a parent. That left only the department head and the program directors who weren't (to my knowledge) experiencing some sort of personal upheaval.

Despite that, the working moms would pop into my office and ask how I was doing, often offering apologies that they weren't around more. But regular contact at work, much less after-hours socializing, was missing.

In my heart, I knew I had connected with the department's faculty during the interview process and would just have to be patient. I mustered the courage to ask four different colleagues to lunch, but none of them ever asked me out in return. And one of the four made me feel as if it was a personal sacrifice to spend lunch time with me.

So I began to look elsewhere, seeking people in other departments who wanted to go to lunch or could hang out after 3 p.m. I had met two women during orientation, and we arranged to have lunch, at which I discovered that they both had children less than a year old. Now the only time we get together is if I initiate a round of e-mail messages suggesting lunch. I really enjoy those lunches but it takes a week or two to schedule them and no one ever suggests getting together after work.

I couldn't believe that I was struggling to meet anyone who could go out for a drink. Here is a rundown of some of the other people we met last fall and their baby status:

• My husband's closest female colleague has a 3-year-old and a newborn. And five others in his department had babies this year.

• Casual friends we know from our undergraduate days who happen to live nearby have a young daughter and another on the way. (Their invitation: "She's going to bed by 8 so we need child-free couples who can come play at our house later, We'll hang out!")

• An acquaintance from our college days who is now a graduate student asked us to dinner, and we love him and his wife, but she was eight months pregnant at the time, and we've only seen them once since the baby was born.

Let me make clear: These are fabulous people, and we try to see them as much as they are willing to be seen. My husband and I did find two childless couples. One is actively trying to start a family, but we've started to shop together for furniture or have an occasional cookout. The second couple seems up for most invitations we have made but rarely takes the initiative to call us. I am happy to report that they finally had us over for dinner at their place this summer.

But that's how it's gone. In moving from a town of 10,000 people to one of more than 100,000, I had no idea that building a social network would be this difficult. After a tough day last November, I was sad to realize the only person I had to hash it out with was my husband. Meanwhile I had run into the faculty moms exercising together. I had heard them discuss the baby programs they took their kids to. I saw them working on research projects together.

I enjoy being child-free, but in my new town it began to seem as if I would have more friends if I got pregnant. And that was the realization that threw me. I recall sitting on the couch and thinking, "Well, gee, why not have a baby? There seems to be nothing else to do."

So that was my pity party, my low point. No, we did not get pregnant. But, clearly, I wasn't prepared to be the odd woman out.

I am thrilled that my female colleagues can choose to have children while working in our field and still get tenure. I love debunking myths about pregnancy at work. I am proud of how well my department has accommodated the unexpected simultaneity of pregnancies. I think the children are absolutely adorable and fun to be around. I think it's wonderful that the faculty moms have each other to lean on.

I just want them to be comfortable leaning on me, too. I don't want to be ostracized for being childless any more than they want to be for having children.

I can finally say, however, that it's getting better. As the faculty moms have emerged from their sleepless nights, and as I have overcome my fear of intruding, we have indeed begun to connect. The day I was invited to come out to dinner with some of the new moms, I came home and cried out of happiness.

The bittersweet part is that I know everyone will reach out immediately in the fall to our new pregnant hire, myself included. She'll probably be socialized into the department by October. Intellectually I'm thrilled and proud of my department for that, but personally I'm wondering if I won't get jealous watching her quickly develop the relationships I am still trying hard to foster.