Adrienne Pine was in a jam. The assistant anthropology professor at American University was about to begin teaching “Sex, Gender & Culture,” but her baby daughter woke up in the morning with a fever. The single mother worried that she had no good child-care options.
So Pine brought her sick baby to class. The baby, in a blue onesie, crawled on the floor of the lecture hall during part of the 75-minute class two weeks ago, according to the professor’s account. The mother extracted a paper clip from the girl’s mouth at one point and shooed her away from an electrical outlet. A teaching assistant held the baby and rocked her at times, volunteering to help even though Pine stressed that she didn’t have to. When the baby grew restless, Pine breast-fed her while continuing her lecture in front of 40 students.
Now Pine finds herself at the center of a debate over whether she did the right thing that day and what the ground rules are for working parents who face such child-care dilemmas.
1) First and foremost, the issue here is if breastfeeding mothers have an equal place in our society or not. Especially working, single mothers.
In the real world, single parents are likely to have some sort of conflict once or twice a year for the first five years of their kid’s life. (There are some single parents who never have such conflicts, ever, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.) Unless we’re going to say that it’s never acceptable for a single breastfeeding mom to hold a professional job, then I think we have to accept that sometimes it’s up to us to just grow the fuck up a little and not panic and wig out because BOOOOOOOBS!
The idea that childrearing should be absolutely separate from the work world is a leftover from the past, when a large number of middle class families could afford having a “wife at home” taking care of kids while Dad worked (and secretly drank). We don’t live in that world anymore; we live in a world where, typically, children are raised either by two working parents or by a single parent. It is inevitable that sometimes work and home overlap, and sneering or yelling at breastfeeding mothers is exactly the wrong reaction.
Amanda sums it up nicely:
Funny how we live in a society that both expects women, especially highly educated and ambitious women, to breast feed, but forbids them to do so while pursuing their ambitions. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think pushing women out of positions of prestige and power and back into the home was a feature and not a bug of this system.
2) Many comments I’ve read about this have been stuffed full of drive-by mothering. The child was allowed to crawl on a floor! Shocking! She had to take a paper clip out of its mouth! Shocking! Etc, etc. Makes me wonder if these people have ever met an actual infant. Seriously, the things are like a cross between a stumbling drunk and a vacuum cleaner.
3) Professor Pine did herself no favors with her essay, which seemed (as Amanda put it) pedantic and defensive, and I’d add just plain obnoxious (especially towards a student reporter who Pine casts as a villain). My favorite part is Pine’s sneer towards “lactivism,” which she describes as “hopelessly bourgeois… marauding bands of lactating white women.” ((Pine also comments “It could be argued that my ability to breastfeed in public has been won on the breasts of so many women who have fought for that right, and that I’m ungrateful to them.” No kidding.)) Pine gives the strong impression that if this had happened to some other professor, Professor Pine herself would have been on the side of the critics.
But that’s okay. Rights are not the exclusive domain of gracious people.
4) A lot of folks arguing against Pine’s action say they’re only concerned with the students best interests. Jack at Ethics Alarms writes:
Was she engaged in personal duties and matters while being paid by the university to devote 100% of her attentions to her students? Yes. Is this professional and ethical? No. Was she in a fix—sure: I don’t care. It wasn’t the students’ crisis, and they should not have been involuntarily made part of the solution.
In the article, she unambiguously explains that her only choices (that she could see) were cancelling the opening class of the course, or bringing the baby with her. Jack argues that she should have conducted an email survey of students to find out what they’d prefer — as if such a thing were at all possible to write, send, get responses to, and compile on the morning of the class. Realistically, it does sometimes happen that single parents are faced with the choice Pine describes – either cancel work or bring the baby.
Let’s agree, for arguments sake, that our only concern should be fairness to the students. How is cancelling the class session entirely fairer to the students, exactly?
Several years ago, I would have been a student who took an hourlong bus and walk to get to the university. I walk up the three flights of stairs, overpriced textbook in hand, and reach either a closed, locked door with a “cancelled” note taped to it, OR a classroom where Professor Pine hands out the syllabus and says the usual first-day-of-class stuff for 75 minutes, but she also spends a few minutes intermittently dealing with the baby.
If the measure of value is “Professor Pine’s attention,” then obviously I get more value if Pine is there with a baby than if she’s not there at all. Aren’t I better off with 95% of her attention than zero percent?
5) In my life, public breast-feeding is unremarkable. Nearly every mother I’ve known who has a small baby, breast-feeds it while chatting (during games, during lunch, whatever), and it’s no big deal, just as it’s not a big deal if I pull out my sketchbook and start drawing while talking.
Is this a cultural thing? Are there still huge segments of the country where breast-feeding is treated as something that’s — well, if not shameful, exactly — then secret? Indecent to do in public? I’m sure there are. But I don’t see any advantages to treating breast-feeding that way. It seems like a lot of unnecessary trouble and fuss.
6) Remember this isn’t about just Professor Pine. Our reaction to her says a lot about how we react to working women generally, and to babies.
I was a wedding coordinator for 14 years, and I attended thousands of weddings. Probably there was a baby crying somewhere in the room in a quarter of those weddings. Sometimes a parent would rush out of the chapel with the baby, and I’d guide them to an area with comfy chairs, and they were always very apologetic. I’d tell them not to worry about it; crying babies have been part of weddings for thousands of years, after all.
Don’t get me wrong — I know babies can be disruptive. I’ve been at meetings and games where a baby in hand was crying, or shouting, or needed to be removed from the room and tended for a while while everyone else twiddled their thumbs. I’ve suffered on airplanes. Babies: noisy and inconsiderate of my needs. I get that.
But babies are an essential part of society. Without babies – preferably well-cared for babies – there are no future adults to take care of me when I’m old enough to need help with my diapers once more.
If Professor Pine intended to bring her baby to every class session, then I’d want her to warn her students ahead of time. But that’s not what happened here. Pine had an emergency and chose to prioritize not cancelling class. She has day care arrangements for the class generally, but on that one day her arrangements fell through because the baby was sick. By the next day she had arranged for a babysitter.
In short, it seems to me that Pine did absolutely everything she could reasonably do to prevent the baby from interfering with her class. To ask more of her than that is unreasonable. What we should do, instead, is realize that it’s not a big deal to have to be in the same room as a baby once in a while. It might not be ideal. If the baby screams or cries, that’s annoying.
But we’re grown-ups (or at least, we’re college students learning to become grown-ups). We should be able to deal with it graciously and then forget about it.
That’s what life is like in a society in which women – even mothers with babies — are equal members of society. That’s what life is like in a society which accepts that babies are part of life.
Yeah, I’m totally not seeing how “cancel class” is the fairest thing for the students. Either they lose out on a portion of the education that they’re paying for or they have to make it up at some later time (and good luck coordinating everyone’s schedules between jobs, sports, and other classes).
Besides, the class was Sex, Gender, and Culture. Breastfeeding a baby seems kind of appropriate.
That last line especially. I can’t think of a better object lesson.
Bringing your sick kid to work is one thing. Although, in most businesses it would be frowned upon, or not allowed, whether it was a mom or a dad doing it.
But breast feeding while you are teaching is way out of line. Would you feel the same if she were a thigh school teacher or a corporate trainer? Why is college different?
The really appalling thing about the blog post the prof wrote is that she makes absolutely no acknowledgement the students are consumers, her customers, she is a professional providing a service and th students are going into, what $100,000 in debt in receive that service. This isn’t a non paid favor she’s providing. Should American University provide emergency child care for faculty and staff? Absolutely! But this prof, if she really was up against it, should have rescheduled class.
I also have to say, as an immuno-compromised person, that had I been in the class I would have very much resented the prof deliberately putting people like myself at risk. We don’t send sick kids to school because we can’t find babysitters for them. (Why? Because we recognize that we don’t want to infect other people. ) Nor should you bring your sick child to your job for that reason.
I’m with Jack of Ethics Alarms, it was unprofessional. Sorry, but in-room daycare is not on the defined list of employee benefits. You don’t get to drag your personal/family life into your workplace uninvited and not deal with some consequences.
(I’m speaking here as a coworker, not a student. I don’t want my colleagues’ personal lives hanging around our office making noise and distracting us from getting the work done, be they children, babies, or life partners. Or pets.)
Saying “she had no other option” in this instance is like saying “I stole the car because it was the only way I could get to work on time.” Not really a valid excuse.
Good grief, it’s a baby, breastfeeding for a few minutes in a one-off situation, hardly the end of civilization as we know it.
$hit happens when you’re a human, circumstances mean that we my sometimes have to do something that doesn’t ‘follow the rules’ but in a situation like this, instead of the “oh nooooo’s” how about cutting a little slack?
I’d see more of a problem with the students who were (I guarantee it) tweeting, updating their facebook profiles or playing angry birds during the lecture.
Oh yes, and I don’t remember any legislation that says one has to be a paragon of sense & good manners to just be treated like a fellow member of the human race.
Cancelling class is an enormous pain and hassle. I had to cancel one day of my classes last week (while getting ready, I tripped over the too-long hem of my pajama pants, fell, put my hand out to break the fall, and dislocated a finger), and I’m still working on catching up on that work, because there’s a set amount of material that I have to cover before the midterm. And this is getting complicated by the fact that I’m going to have to cancel class on Yom Kippur, too — the High Holidays this year are on three class days, and I’ve found people who can cover my classes for the two days of Rosh Hashanah, but nobody who can take my Yom Kippur classes.
“just as it’s not a big deal if I pull out my sketchbook and start drawing while talking.”
I dunno. I think it’s good that people draw, it’s healthier than not drawing, but… in public? Jeeze. I mean, can’t you just excuse yourself and do it in private? I mean, children might see you drawing! Think of the children!
I kinda love, by the way, that the class she was teaching was “Sex, Gender & Culture”. I mean, hell, the breastfeeding could have been part of the damn lesson.
I’m gonna side with Jill of Feministe on this one: The professor should have canceled class instead of bringing her baby, because not only was the baby pretty clearly distracting, it was also SICK, and could’ve passed its disease onto her students.
Madame, the students are the consumers, the people who are paying in this scenario. This is not a high school. They can ignore the lecturer if they like. It seems foolish of them, but it is their choice.
The professor really does not seem to understand that she is providing a, very expensive, service to these students and they have a right to expect professionalism, and a right to complain about how that service is provided.
Though she could be cut some slack here (frankly she could have avoided the whole thing by bringing it up directly with th students at th start of class, something like “Look, this is the situation. If you prefer I can reschedule thi lecture. Show of hands?”. It also could have been a teachable moment. But instead of dealing it. She let people become upset by it, with no outlet to express it, so of course the issue went outside of the class and became campus wide and now national.
Good point, I missed that part in the article. Bringing a SICK person (of any age) into a crowded classroom or workplace isn’t just rude, it’s idiotic.
There are sick people in college classrooms all the time. With people coming into the dorms from all over the country and world, the first few weeks of every semester are spent catching everything that everyone else is carrying. I have not yet gotten through a semester without catching at least a cold within the first month or so.
1) College profs do not really operate in the “real world” like most folks. They need to remain aware of their special status, and of the immense difficulty that arises when they cancel class. Profs also need to remain aware of the relative hourly cost/student, and the losses which are incurred when they cancel.
It is reasonable and proper to expect college professors to give extraordinary priority to “teaching class on time, as scheduled, with full attention.” If you’re going to sign onto a highly sought-after job which requires you to be in class for one short class on a particular day, then you can be expected to treat those few hours very differently than if you had a “normal” job with a daily 8-hour day.
That may mean having more than one child care backup, if you have young kids. It may mean that you need to grab a student off the quad and offer then $75 to hold the baby for an hour and a half. But generally, it means that you’re really obligated to do your damn best–not merely what is convenient or pleasant–to perform the most important aspect of your very-time-limited job in the limited scenario where having a kid is likely to provide the biggest impact.
And that means “don’t bring the kids to lectures.” Bring them to office hours; bring them to staff meetings; bring them to building tours; bring them while you’re reviewing literature. But unless it is a REAL emergency, don’t stand up in front a a large group of people who are each paying $100/hour for the privilege of your full and undivided attention, and give them something less than they paid for.
But, of course…
2) The administration should also be aware of all that. In the end, the job of “providing teachers for students” falls on the admins. If an administration is too incompetent to be able to make emergency arrangements to cover classes, and/or emergency arrangements for this sort of thing, that is a problem.
If a professor calls a board chair in the AM and says “all of my three sitters are sick; my husband is in Belize; my daycare won’t let me drop off my baby because she’s sneezing; and i have a class in six hours. Can you help me work this out?” then the admin really needs to step up to the plate.
Now of course, we know why admins DON’T do this: We don’t trust that the professors will actually try to work it out themselves if they know they have a backup. Which is almost certainly true. But nonetheless, it’s relevant.
Still….
3) I don’t see anything in Pine’s essay which suggested that she called her board chair and was denied help, or that she tried to take emergency coverage methods as she did the next day. If She was willing to give the baby to the T.A. (and that is SO not the TA’s job,) can’t she grab someone and pay them $30 to sit in the corner and play with the baby? Pine didn’t.
The concept that this is “what mothers go through” isn’t true here. Pine didn’t exhaust all of her other options; far from it. She made a choice–a bad choice–and she is properly being called on it.
Moreover,
4) Not all choices need to be protected IN COMBINATION.
Do you want to have a kid? You should be able to do that.
Do you want to be able to breast feed your baby? You should be able to do that.
Do you want to avoid pumping or supplements? You can do that too.
Do you want to have a career? A particular career? You should be able to do that.
Do you want to have strong opinions about childcare, restricting interactions to a few highly-vetted and well-trusted friends? You should be able to do that.
Do you want to work full time? Do you want to work part time? You should be able to do that.
And so on.
But it is also reasonable to say that you may not be able to do every single one of those choices AT THE SAME TIME. Perhaps “I want to breastfeed” and “I don’t want to use bottles to supplement, so that others can feed my kids” and “I want to take care of my child personally when they are sick and not leave them with a stranger” and “I want to be a lecturing professor who teaches a few hours/week” and “I’m not great at emergency planning” is not a compatible mix.
In which case, that should be OK. Suggesting that a particular desire is not compatible with a particular set of choices is neither a wholesale attack on women, or choices.
Society can enable choice generally while still holding some reasonable restrictions on how they are exercised in combination.
She said that she told the TA that babysitting wasn’t her job, but that the TA picked up the kid anyway.
Question: having never done it myself, and given that part of this topic is the issue of the professor not giving her class her undivided attention – can anyone here who has tell me just how distracting breast-feeding is for the woman doing it?
But a TA is not a professional or social equal so there’s pressure to step in and do something not part of the job. If the issue were picking up dry cleaning or making coffee or cleaning out their car I wouldn’t assume that they were in a good position to say no.
Or as a noted philosopher once said:
“No, you can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.”
Perhaps (given the views he has expressed on relationships between the sexes) not the most favorite philosopher of most commenters here. But applicable in this case I think.
I read the professors article in counterpunch. Wow does she seem obnoxious.
Yes, because the only time involved in teaching a course is the actual time in the classroom. There is no lecture and materials preparation, assignment design and grading, office hours, exam preparation and grading, meeting with and supervising teaching assistants, dealing with course related administrative issues etc. Also, everyone knows that giving lectures is a faculty member’s only real work. Research (which at most research universities is weighed more heavily than teaching for tenure), administrative and committee responsibilities, writing and reviewing articles, supervising graduate students, procuring grants so those graduate students get paid, those aren’t real work (and if you’re going to argue that all of those other things can be done at home and don’t require face time, that showing up to give lectures is the only time the professor “needs” to be on campus, well you haven’t worked at most universities recently).
I haven’t done it either, but I think that the answer is “it depends.” I’ve got several friends who have breastfed, and some of them needed a quiet room and a certain chair and it was still an ordeal. Another friend commented on my facebook post about this topic that she breastfed all five of her kids while teaching. With at least two of her kids, she was teaching with the kid in a Baby Bjorn for the first few weeks of the kids’ lives. I’ve seen her hold and nurse a baby with one arm while typing her dissertation with the other hand and carrying on a completely unrelated conversation at the same time. I don’t know for certain if her students ever complained about her nursing in class, but I do remember that she won the award for the grad student with the best ratings on the student evaluations several times.
Although, after thinking about it a bit, I would think that, if she’s still breastfeeding a one-year-old, then it’s probably fairly easy for her — most women who really have trouble with it would have stopped by then.
Why do I have the distinct impression that the commenters here who are claiming that Professor Pine was Wrong and Unprofessional are (a) male and (b) have never been single, working parents of a small child?
FWIW, I read the Feministe article linked in comment #10, and it was not at all clear to me that Jill was saying that the Professor should have cancelled class. I did notice that quite a few commentors in that thread mentioned that at their colleges/universities, cancelling a class would be severely judged. (Others said that it would be OK at theirs, but then seemed unable to comprehend that different places might have different attitudes.)
What strikes me about the whole discussion, though, is the way so many people — who are _not_ in her shoes and aren’t faced with the responsibility for dealing with her situation — feel competent to second-guess every aspect of her behavior and fault her for every way in which she fails to measure up to their exacting standards.
It’s a perfect example of how mothers are expected to be perfect, whereby of course, everyone has a different idea of what the Perfect Mommy has to be. If people were to judge with the same exactitude how, say, someone (anyone!) drives their car for 15 minutes, they would have to insist the person should be thrown in jail for their abysmally bad and reckless driving.
I’m a parent (father) of two kids, and it really struck me how, once we had kids, _everybody_, no matter how blatantly incompetent and ignorant, thought they knew better than us how to deal with our kids and was willing to criticize us in the harshest terms for the slightest deviation from their ideal of proper parenting. Unless you’ve known us and my kids for years and know all about our constraints and all our kids’ foibles, your opinions are worth about as much as a pile of dog poo.
And the same goes for criticizing other parents, too. I’d have said “unless it’s life-threatening,” but then I remember the story behind Toni Morrison’s _Beloved_. Unless you’ve actually walked in a particular mother’s (or father’s) shoes for a few years, as far as I’m concerned, you can take your moral hair-splitting and second-guessing and put it you-know-where. (You can take the tone of my comment here as my answer to all the people calling Prof. Pine’s response “obnoxious.”)
What I haven’t seen any of the online discussions of this topic, is that when babies are breastfed, they get better from illnesses much sooner.
Wow, the people who are framing this as “consumers” vs. “service providers” have no idea about how a university works, do they? Look, if it’s a “consumers” vs. “service providers” model her students can, like, give her a bad Yelp score or something.
If we’re actually talking about a university — which is to say an institution that predates both capitalism and consumerism — then a professor has a lot of leniency in how she teaches her class, up to and including breast feeding during lecture. Is it appropriate? That’s at her discretion, and hers alone, outside of a very narrow range of crimes (sexual harassment or other gross misconduct) of which breast-feeding, distasteful or not, is pretty clearly not a member.
You might wish that universities worked on a consumer capitalist model, but they don’t, and simply asserting it isn’t going to make it true. If the students wanted a consumer-capitalist model they could much more easily enroll in one of those online diploma mill schools. Presumably, since they didn’t do that, they wanted to be at a university, with the professorial discretion and authority that that entails.
Something doesn’t make sense here. If she was going to leave her kid at home with a caregiver, then she must have had milk for it, or was going to. So, she has a breast pump, and supplies. Why didnt she use them beforehand so she could bottle feed her kid if need be?
If she had changed the kids diaper while lecturing, would that have been intrusive? Or does she get a pass because she is a parent?
Ben, that’s nonsense. Those kids and their families will probably pay more than $200,000 to get through AU.
Predates, shmedates. When you haring for service that costs as much as a starter home in a lot of places, you have a responsibility to the people who are paying for that service. It’s irresponsible to suggest otherwise.
If she breast fed in a faculty meeting. In a job interview. While meeting with a student in an advisory capacity. All of that, without consulting he other people in the room first, is incredibly inappropriate and very unprofessional. She showed absolute disrespect for the students who are ultimately paying her.
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Further, universities took on the responsibility to provide service to those consuming their product when they started marketing themselves as consumer products about 35 years ago – see any US News rankng issue.
Tuition and fees have gone up, much faster than inflation, predicated on the success of a school’s branding efforts.
That’s how universities work, now.
Btw, you remind me of Maggie Gallagher and the folks who say marriage can’t change because it was invented before the concept of sexual orientation was discovered. Nonsense.
“Question: having never done it myself, and given that part of this topic is the issue of the professor not giving her class her undivided attention – can anyone here who has tell me just how distracting breast-feeding is for the woman doing it?”
For me? Not at all. The second spent putting my son on my boob was no more distracting than it would have been had the professor had to pick up a pencil or blow her nose during lecture.
And all the pearl-clutching over what the Students Deserve is crap. I think the op nails it by quoting this big: “It wasn’t the students’ crisis, and they should not have been involuntarily made part of the solution.” God fucking forbid anyone, anywhere should ever have to “involuntarily” do anything.
Newsflash: doing things “involuntarily” is AT THE HEART OF our cultural discomfort with breastfeeding and with motherhood. It is AT THE HEART OF why feminism is necessary. We have made a god out of the idea that the most important human right is never, ever being “forced” to do anything–and the fact is that motherhood (and by extension, womanhood) is a problem, in such a society, precisely because it violates that shibboleth. Women *as women* have bodies that do things, involuntary things, that men’s bodies do not do. When women, in the course of their daily lives, remind us of that fact–by having children present, by drawing attention to the fact that they are lactating by breastfeeding (or leaking through one’s shirt), by showing “too much” cleavage, by dressing in ways that “draw attention” to our bodies, by being “too fat,” or “too thin,” by bleeding through our pants, by wearing “too much” makeup or perfume, by being “ungroomed” or “not taking care of ourselves”–we are an embarrassment, we are “unprofessional”, we are “asking for it.”
Fuck that shit.
Chris, even if we accept that a university education is a commercial product, that doesn’t make her a slave with no rights. Do the students have the right to demand that she change the color of her hair because they pay tuition?
The students have every right to expect her to teach a course similar to that described in the course catalog – which is what she did. Would the students have been better off if she had cancelled the class?
Actually, I’d think it would be fine to breast-feed in any of those settings.
Again, think of the perspective of a student who commuted an hour to be at the class. How does cancelling class show that student more respect than prioritizing making sure the class goes on, even if it means a bit of baby?
She was going to leave the child at day care. Maybe the day care had formula milk on hand, or maybe it had her own milk in a fridge. In neither case it is reasonable to assume that because there were preparations available at the day care, she therefore must have had something reasonably available to her at or near her classroom.
I’m amazed at how many of Pine’s critics take this tact – “obviously she’s lying, and she wasn’t really facing a conflict. There was an obvious, available third alternative which she’s just pretending not to have had.”
In real life, sometimes it actually does happen that someone is in a situation in which all alternatives are imperfect. Denying that could really be the case here seems like just being intellectually unwilling to address the issue honestly. Like the way Republicans deal with global warming by pretending it doesn’t exist.
If I was a student I think I’d rather have the professor breast-feed her kid than cancel the class. It would certainly be distracting and would not be something I’d expect to happen routinely, but faculty are human too and sometimes things just happen.
It brings to mind something that happened to me when I was a student at MIT back in the early ’70’s. I was working in food service. The ‘tute has a lot of foreign students and has more graduate students than undergrads. That means there are a higher than usual married students there. One day while I was working a woman whose complexion and dress gave the impression that she was from the Middle East calmly sat down and breast-fed her child. It was an astounding thing. I had never seen a woman do that, and I don’t think any of the American kids there had either. I looked at her, she looked at me, made eye contact and just smiled.
This brings back memories of the worst place I ever worked.
The Big Boss of the small, family-owned company only allowed 45 minutes for lunch, from 12 to 12:45. The company was fairly far-out from anything else, so most people brought in their lunch and ate it at their desk.
A woman there, who allegedly had something with the boss and who was therefore immune from criticism, I was warned, sometimes brought her baby in.
Right at around 12:10 or so (near the end of my stay at the delightful company), I would start hearing “Mr. Stinky Pants”. She would then change the diaper of “Mr. Stinky Pants” – which really emanated an odor of feces throughout the room. She seemed to time this with his feedings for the lunch hour.
It was just bizarre. She could leave whenever she wanted, and usually took lunch at other times. Some of the people at the company started literally eating lunch out in their car, others (like me) quit.
This whole thread is making me 1) hate everyone everywhere (as both a full-time faculty member with no workplace resources or assistance whatsoever, and an even less well supported adjunct) and 2) wonder if people have every actually had children.
Because as an attendee of public school, and the child of public school teachers, let me assure all readers here that the number of sick kids attending public school on any given day because their parents didn’t have child care and couldn’t miss work is not just non-trivial, but appalling.
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Hey, so this reminds me (somewhat) of one of the best classes I ever took.
First semester Calculus. A make or break class for a huge number of students (basically any one in premed, nursing, education, or STEM). The teacher was renowned as one of the best teachers of the subject not only at this school, but in the whole university system. And he was. People fought, hard, to get into his section.
One of the students in the section had a three year old child who she could not find regular daycare for. The prof announced on the first day that she would be bringing her three year old to class sometimes, that he was okay with this, and that “If any students had serious objections,” he would help them transfer to another section. No one had a problem with it.
The kid was very well behaved. He would contentedly draw on the side chalkboard the whole class, including drawing calculus-like symbols and sometimes trying to participate. His mom made sure that she had babysitting for exams, quizzes, and other high-stress class days. Sometimes she had to take him aside to feed him (granola bars or a banana) or take him to the bathroom. The education students really enjoyed getting to know him. It was … honestly better than fine. It was great. He honestly added to the class community which, for a homework heavy make-or-break class, was a big deal.
Was the woman entitled to bring her kid to class? No, probably not. But the professor, using his authority, allowed it, and it made the class not just accessible to her, but better for everyone. A great decision.
Ben, did he also breast-feed the baby in front of the class? Stuff like that is kind of the issue here.
Given these specific facts, in a gender studies class, the teacher very well should have breast-fed the baby in front of the class, if not changed him, to equate theory with practice, and it should be an ongoing thing. Any student taking these kind of classes or buying into this world view should not be against that.
The rest of the university should be held to professionalism.
Penelope, standards of “professionalism” are not handed down by God. They are just the subjective standards most of us agree to live by (or have no choice but to live by, if we want to earn a living in our chosen occupation).
If “professionalism” says that we can’t bear the sight of a Professor breast-feeding, even though objectively the information coming out of her mouth is just as good as it would be if she weren’t breast-feeding; and if restrictions against breast-feeding are likely to be sexist and harmful; then we should change our notions of professionalism.
Chris, people come to class, school, and work sick all the time. I don’t think it’s always appropriate, but it’s how things tend to work. You can’t leave a sick 4-year-old unattended. You can’t stay home from work or class every time you have a cold if you want to keep your job. Heck, some jobs you get in trouble for staying home if you’re puking you guts out, and that may be the only time you stay home sick, because you don’t get paid sick days.
I think that an immuno-compromised person (or anyone with anything chronic that screws with their class attendance) should be free to *leave* the class with the sick person (whether it’s a baby, the professor, or a classmate) without any penalty, but I don’t know that it’s practical to expect to never be around sick people in a world where most people have to suck it up and go to work anyway, sick or not.
Now, if there was an immuno-compromised student in her class who had told her this, then yes, it’s wrong and negligent to bring the sick kid in rather than cancel class (or give that student a heads-up and schedule a make-up with them). But I don’t think we can put the onus on one particular professor to cover every potential need when the system she works in probably doesn’t support that (and when we don’t know that there actually was someone with that issue in the class, or that if there had been, she wouldn’t have acted differently).
I know being put in the position of being the odd one out because you have health issues is screwed up, and having the onus on you for avoiding sick people instead of being in a situation where they can just stay home is screwed up. Schools and the workplace should do a better job of accounting for the reality that some people just cannot be around sick people. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to stick the individual professor with the responsibility of making sure that never happens, and keeping all her other students happy as well. Certainly some people would’ve complained if class had been canceled, especially commuting students.
This was really unclear. What I meant was that an immuno-compromised person should be free to leave a class with a sick person, with no penalty, just as anyone with chronic health issues that may screw with their class attendance should get to leave as needed.
No, this isn’t all about breastfeeding unless you deliberately ignore all the comments that aren’t about breastfeeding in an effort to steer the discussion there.
It’s about dragging your personal life into your workplace and whether it interferes with getting your work done, either by distracting you or annoying your colleagues (or students, in this case). Labeling yourself “Single Mother” and waving the breastfeeding flag doesn’t suddenly buy you an exemption from expectations of professional conduct. I don’t care if you bring your boyfriend, your baby, or your parrot into the classroom–it doesn’t belong there.
Wow, the hate.
From what I read here, the logic seems to be that bringing a baby in and breastfeeding during class (and this class in particular) is unprofessional because babies and breastfeeding are inherently upsetting and disturbing, rather than being items that disturb some people who have a problem with babies and breasts. Because if it’s the second, we have to start discussing what things students attending a lecture legitimately get to have a problem with, and what things they don’t. (Is it OK to have a problem with a particularly whiny voice, or a monotone delivery? An accent that one finds difficult to understand? How about a face that doesn’t belong to a straight white christian male?)
Of course, I’m spoiled here because the ways professors’ personal lives intruded into lectures I went to — the penchant for throwing chalk at the back row, the discussions of having ditched olympic tryouts to go to grad school, the digressions about welding rafters for a vacation house — all enhanced the courses rather than detracting from them.
The main arguments in favor seem to be:
1) She’s a professor and can do what she wants, so her actions are OK.
2) We have no right to ask anything of employees. Things like “please give 100% of your attention during the most important two hours of the day” are akin to saying “please become a slave with no rights.” What’s next, asking her to tattoo her face and shave her armpits? Asking her to donate her liver? Riiiiiight….
3) Breasts! Therefore Feminism! Therefore this must be a Feminist Issue and all opponents are Antifeminist. Because of course there is no way to separate a general issue of feminism from a specific example. All specific examples must adhere to the general rule. These arguments ignore the fact that many (probably all, on this blog) of the “this particular issue wasn’t a good choice” folks have specifically noted that it’s not a general rule; that breast feeding is OK or even good, etc.
4) The only people who can have an opinion are female womens studies professors who breastfeed, and–whaddya know?–they all agree with the professor. Or, perhaps, only single mothers who breastfeed their babies. Certainly, no men can understand. Anyone who disagrees is demonstrating their lack of understanding, and therefore lacks sufficient information to participate in the conversation.
Amp, by the way:
Yes. She’s not pretending, she’s just not acknowledging. The obvious alternative was to do what she did, but provide someone (who doesn’t need to be incredibly skilled) to take care of the baby during the class time and keep it from being a distraction in the class.
The TA stepped up and did the job. She shouldn’t have had to do that.
It’s “obviously available” because pretty much any college campus has a lot of students hanging around at any given point and it is hard to imagine that, given 10 minutes of asking (much less an hour) one could not find an in-class sitter for a single class.
Also, Pine was quite lengthy and detailed in her own defense. The administration has a lot of connections. If she called the admin and asked for help, there’s little doubt she’d have said so. Ergo, she probably didn’t do it. That’s yet another place which might have been able to help, and she didn’t try.
So there are AT LEAST two extremely obvious avenues for solving the problem. Do you think Pine would have tried them and elected to keep them secret? I don’t think so.
G&W:
I have to disagree. Most of those arguments aren’t arguments that anyone here has actually made. They are mocking caricatures of arguments people here have made.
The problem with that sort of approach to a debate is that rather than making me feel as if you’re sincerely listening to me (whether or not you agree with me), you’re just making me feel sneered at.
That’s not the conversation I want to have.
There was one part of your comment that was not mockery, and that’s the only part I will respond to. If you’d like a response from me regarding anything else in your comment, rephrase and repost it, please.
You wrote:
First of all, have you ever tried it? A lot of things that seem easy in theory turn out to be a lot harder in practice. Asking strangers for help – or trying to hire random people off the street – may not be nearly as easy as you imagine. And you’re not running late for a class while holding a sick baby.
Or maybe she really didn’t have an hour to spare, or even ten minutes. She may well have spent 90 minutes on the phone talking to the doctor’s office (never quick), then the daycare, then calling around every babysitter she knows to try and find one that could drop everything and be at her house right away, and as a result had no time to spare after driving or busing to campus.
Or maybe those options were in fact available to her but she honestly didn’t think of them. Hindsight is always 20-20, I’m sure you’ll agree, and solutions that are obvious from the comfort of your desk might not occur to an exhausted and rushed parent with a sick baby in arm.
I don’t know, and you really don’t know either. But it’s clear that she’s claiming that she was in a situation where she only saw two imperfect alternatives. And if you’ve known any single parents, you know that that sort of situation – only imperfect alternatives – does sometimes come up.
I don’t think saying “there was a readily available third alternative that she could easily have taken” – which is, I think, a fair summary of what you’re arguing — is a good approach. You’re implicitly assuming either 1) that she’s being dishonest by failing to divulge extremely relevant information about the choices she faced, or 2) that you can deduce her situation better than she knows it from having lived it. 1) fails because it’s not giving her a reasonable benefit of the doubt, and 2) fails because it’s too implausible.
KellyK, really good comments.
Copyleft:
You’re partly right – In that sense, it’s not all about breastfeeding. People here and elsewhere have discussed other aspects of this story, it’s true.
But in another sense, it is. This is only a national news story – or a news story at all – because it involved breastfeeding. Without that aspect, newspapers and blogs would never have written about this story, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.
But we’re all human beings, and all of us have personal lives that at some point will interfere with our professional obligations. For instance, I had to get a deadline moved forward and cancel two school appearances at the last minute when my father died. I’m sure dozens of people were inconvenienced by that, but that’s just how it had to be.
My point isn’t to say the two situations are alike, but to say that a total separation of personal and work lives is not going to be possible for all people all of the time.
A parrot or a boyfriend can be left unattended for 75 minutes; a baby cannot. (For that matter, I’ve had professors who brought both friends and pets into class, and no one objected at all, although some people did ooo and aww at the pets).
I know I’ve said this before, but: I really don’t see how the students would have been better served if she had cancelled class. I would have very much preferred class to go on, and surely some of her students felt the same way.
And if she had cancelled class, wouldn’t that also have been an example of her personal life interfering with her professional life?
And isn’t ANYONE going to compliment me on what a funny image I found to illustrate this post? :-p
Jesus Christ. I can’t even believe this is a controversy.
Look.
Sometimes there are emergencies.
Yes, even when we plan ahead.
When emergencies happen, we do our best in a bad situation.
As far as I can tell, that’s what Professor Pine did.
End of story. No, the students weren’t scarred by seeing a boob. No, they weren’t ripped-off by having her breastfeed while teaching … at least compared to how ripped of they’d have been by having the class cancelled. Was she distracted? Maybe, but likely no more than if she was … coming down with a cold, or had a fight with her romantic partner, or was worried about a department meeting later, or had overdrawn her bank account that morning … or any one of the thousand thousand things that might leave her in a mental state less than perfectly prepared to teach or leave any of her students in a mental state less than perfectly prepared to learn.
I think the big takeaway from this isn’t, “well, she should have clearly handed her child to some kid on the quad.” That’s asinine. The takeaway is that maybe we should all cut each other some fucking slack when emergencies happen. We’re human. Let’s make this world less hard and unforgiving, not more.
My hope would be that Professor Pine would be similarly understanding if a student had a similar emergency and needed to bring a child to class or something. I’ll reserve my criticism for the event that she isn’t.
—Myca
ps. I’m not addressing the gendered aspect of this, but of course it’s there, and of course the expectation is that male professors will have unpaid childcare available to them to deal with emergencies as they arise, and of course the expectation is that female professors will BE the unpaid childcare. And of course it’s unfathomable to so many male commenters that she didn’t have someone else to hand the kid to. “Where the hell was her wife, that’s what I’d like to know!” Sheesh.
Also Crooked Timber has some good stuff on this, as they so often do.
Last year, I had bronchitis that just wouldn’t go away. From October through December, I could not go more than a minute without coughing, unless I was on an amount of cough syrup that also put me to sleep. I was teaching through almost all of that time. Yes, it was distracting for my students, but me being there and coughing was better than me not being there. I also revised some of my lesson plans, to have a bit more time when students were doing group work or presenting their own work at the board, so that I didn’t have to be talking for 50 minutes straight, since talking aggravated my lungs a whole lot. My personal life (in this case, my health) was intruding on my work, and I made the best of it that I could.
Oh hell, if we did that, there’d be no space left for anything else. Yes, that is an astonishingly cute and apropos pair of photos. And I’m sure you just magically found it on the web by googling “image astonishingly cute kid suckling statute” or something. Cuz I could imaging various other searches that would produce a variety of images that wouldn’t be as apropos.
Ok, I’ll bite: Wheredja get the images?
Cool mind-reading helmet ya got there. Does it come in blue?
Mind reading? No, observation of external phenomena doesn’t require that.
—Myca
I’m with Myca @46. I’m flabbergasted by the comments here. I couldn’t have put it better, although I will now make a much worse comment.
Look, I don’t particularly like children and I think becoming a parent is a bewildering choice. Even I, with my dislike of children and the parent/child dynamic, don’t see a problem with Professor Pine’s actions.
When I’m on a plane and there’s a screaming baby, it annoys the fuck out of me. But I’m not gonna say that the parents are awful people. I don’t know their circumstances. Maybe the baby is sick, maybe they’re on their way to a hospital that specializes in the illness the baby has. I don’t fucking know and six hours of discomfort isn’t going to ruin my life. Just as 2 hours of baby in class and intermittent breast feeding isn’t going to ruin my education.
I’m sure none of you have ever done anything, professionally or otherwise, that was intrusive to others due to circumstances beyond your control. You are the best and luckiest people in the world. Congratulations.
Yes, when you made the “slave with no rights” analogy, I switched from “honest discourse” to a bit of sneering. That was really ridiculous. I’ll concede I was snippy in pointing this out, but… really? Slavery? Is there a Godwin equivalent for that?
Yes, with success. Not ALWAYS success, but then again one can only try.
Sure! Er.. so what?
Nobody is suggesting that she should be fired, AFAIK. People are suggesting that she made a bad decision and/or exhibited bad planning and/or thoughtlessness.
If she honestly didn’t think of it, that’s a failure. Yeah, mistakes get made. And people get blamed. And then they apologize or not, and we all move on. But that doesn’t make the mistake nonexistent. Since when does “oops, I didn’t mean to” make the underlying action moot? Have I been reading the wrong BB?
Since Pine, and you, and a variety of other folks have chosen to take the position that no mistake was made at all, then the disagreement continues. If you’d like to discuss the concept that “it was bad, but excusable,” I’m all ears.
I appreciate what you say Kelly.
Again, I’d point out the prof could have avoided al of this by taking it head on and say to the class this is the situation, are you ok with it? It is their class too, and I’ll point out again, they are paying for it. It also would have addressed the situation for people who are immuno compromised and someone who was would not have to out themselves to the prof and possibly and the class. And no one would be talking about it. She wanted to multi task while teaching, however important the reason was, and it was, she should have gotten a buy in from the other people in the room.
Judging from her really nasty piece about the student reporter, including “journalist” in scare quotes, it seems like this prof doesn’t have a lot of people skills. Plus, doesn’t it seem odd that she would belittle the students (and their paper), you know the ones she is teaching. Her post gave me the impression that she thinks the students at American and probably the University are second rate. That was very jarring.
Plus, she is a feminist scholar but she to stop a female reporter from asking questions or publishing a story? She was worried about her name being connected with thi on th Internet becaus a story in the student paper and asked them not to write it. How could she not understand that that would be the most certain way to make sure the first 30 pages when you google her are about this? It reminds me of Elaine and the Christmas card on Seinfeld, “Stop calling me “nip””.
Barry, I love you, but you are really out of touch if you think a woman could breast feed a child in a business meeting in any professional setting in the business world. Because they are meant o be focused on the business, not on their kid. No parent could bring their sick kid into a conference room and say “don’t mind the baby, let’s talk about these contracts”. Which is why more enlightened large companies have child care on site.
Barry, one other thing, American in its response to her blog post says that bringing a sick child to work there is ” not appropriate”. American is her employer. They set, within the law, the terms of employment that she agreed to when she took the job.
It is just silly, and borderline offensive, to call her “a slave” because she has to abide by the terms of employment that everyone else does. There is almost no workplace in this country where bringing your child to work, whether you are a mom or a dad, on a random day, and having them in the meeting while you work, multi tasking their care with your work is appropriate or acceptable.
Having said that, as it seems to be a one-off, American should, and did, cut her some slack.
G&W:
Nope, sorry, there’s no Godwin’s law for anyone who ever mentions the word “slave”; nor does the fact that I used the word “slave” (in a perfect reasonable way that didn’t accuse anyone of being a slaver, geez) magically absolve you of responsibility to be either civil or intellectually honest.
As for the rest: I don’t think Pine did anything morally wrong. I don’t think having a childcare emergency, not seeing a way out, and taking your child to class is morally wrong. I don’t think breast-feeding a child in front of college students and expecting them to be able to deal, is morally wrong. At all. Nor does it make her a bad professor.
Maybe you agree with that. If so, we agree.
If you agree with all that, and your point is merely that it’s possible that if she had planned better or acted differently, maybe she could have found a way to attend class and have someone else care for the baby. Well, sure, it’s possible, although we can’t know for sure.
However, there are some people who are saying not just that she failed to see every possible solution, but that she was morally wrong, or that bringing her baby to class proves she’s incapable of being a good professor. (Jack at Ethics Alarms, for example.) It’s those people that I’m disagreeing with.
From Pine’s own account “I could not bring her to daycare with a fever, and I didn’t feel that canceling class was an option”.
So, she can bring her kid to be around other kids, the daycare provider won’t allow it, but she can bring a sick child into a class of forty students where they can be made sick.
It wasn’t that her day care fell through (her babysitter didnt suddenly cancel), it was the provider would not allow a sick kid to infect other kids. Yet she had no qualms about the health of her students, and her co-workers.
Public schools also tell parents to keep sick kids at home, or and them home from school when they are sick. This is also apparently AU’s policy, as it is in most large companies, if you are sick take a sick day.
Chris, are you a Chris I know? Or a longtime poster? I ask because “Chris” is a common name, and the system is saying that you’ve only posted here a handful of times, which makes the “I love you” rather offputting.
Although I appreciate the sweet sentiment, of course. :-p
I am sorry to have used the word “slave,” since apparently it made my entire paragraph incomprehensible. Let me rephrase.
My point was, even if we accept that there’s a commercial transaction going on, that doesn’t logically establish that the students have the right to expect her to never have a family emergency requiring her to have a baby in tow. Her responsibility is to teach as well as she can; she cannot be reasonably expected to never, ever have a family-related conflict, however.
(I’m not going to defend Pine’s self-described behavior to the student reporter, because I think she acted like an obnoxious jerk. )
With all due respect, Chris my love, you’re sounding very provincial. There are businesses where attitudes are much more socially liberal than you seem to think is possible. (I know, I know, no true Scotsman….) And many people are perfectly capable of understanding someone saying “I’m sorry, I had a childcare emergency, so I had to bring my baby today.”
Secondly, I don’t claim that all businesses are accepting of situations like Pine’s. I am, however, claiming that they should be.
It’s true that AU put out a statement, but they actually don’t get to set policy alone; the employer/employee relationship is ideally mutually negotiated, not set down by one side alone. My bet is that Professor Park belongs to a union, and if the university has actually tried to discipline or fire her over this, they would have had to show the union lawyer where exactly it is written in a contract that what Park did was against the rules.
Regardless, my point isn’t to argue that Park did or didn’t break the rules (I don’t know either way). My point is that what she did shouldn’t be against the rules.
Barry, none of what this prof did is morally wrong. Except perhaps not thinking of the health or her students and coworkers.
The discussion is about is and is not appropriate in various workplaces. Bringing your (healthy) kid to work – not optimal, but understandable. Breast feeding while you are in a meeting – unacceptable and definitely unprofessional.
P.S. What Myca said in comment #46 was perfect.
Glad to hear it.
I really don’t have anything to say to this, that Kelly didn’t already say very well in comment 38 & 39.
Depends on the workplace, but generally, I agree.
Not true in all meetings, and certainly not true in all college classrooms.
But, more to the point: Why is that a standard we should all accept, rather than a standard we should try to change?
Nobody Really @48: Thank you. A little awestruck appreciation, that’s all I ask for.
I saw that image several years ago, and remembered it while writing this post. If I hadn’t known the image existed (and thus known what to search for), I can’t imagine that I would ever have found it. :-p
Tedra @29:
Thank you for that sentence, and the ensuing paragraph. It gave me a lot to think about, and a way to get a handhold into the ideas.
I think sometimes people in more liberal areas forget that sometimes things are a cultural norm somewhere and a taboo elsewhere, even in the same country. It’s hard to fight that ingrained value system.
Your comment is helping me understand the other side of the coin without feeling judged. Thank you.
Yes, you’ve known me a long time from Family Scholars and we email regularly. Sorry for the familiarity without an explaination. You posts are extremely well done, and a pleasure to read. I’m sure we all agree on that.
No one should fire or discipline Pine for her actions, which aside from the sick kid aspect, which I don’t see you addressing, are ok. Inappropriate in my opinion, but not a big deal, as long as it not a pattern.
I do object to her not consulting the students. As though her divided attention and the distraction didn’t impact them at all. That attitude is repeated and amplified in her treatment of the college newspaper people. So, we’ve got some condescension and some poor management. Nothing more than talk through it with her dept head or dean is warranted.
What this really brings up, and here is the story for the student paper, is why doesn’t a good-sized org like American have some emergency onsite child care options, so that faculty and staff in this position can concept rate illy on thir work. Knowing you have that option band that security is certainly going o increase productivity in any organization. Some companies now even offer elde care during working hours. Having taken care of my aging parents, I certainly appreciate that. These options provide security and relief of a burden without affecting other employees, customers, students, etc.
I resent being called provincial, but I love you anyway.
Embarking on one of my occasional delurkings to say:
I completely disagree with you, and, given the other comments in this thread, I feel confident asserting that I am not alone in this disagreement. Therefore, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask you to back up your statement with some rationale, evidence, etc. It has been established though that some people feel that breastfeeding whilst in a meeting would be a distraction, either to a) the breastfeeding parent, or b) the others in the meeting, or c) both.
a) The reports in the comments would seem to preliminarily indicate that, like many human endeavours, the amount of effort and dedication required to breastfeed an infant/child varies from person to person (and no doubt from child to child). Thus, to me, it seems most reasonable to leave it up to the individual’s discretion. Different people have different needs, and different ways of meeting those needs:
For some people, bringing their laptop into a meeting might be a distraction to themselves. For others, it is necessary – perhaps they have a disability* rendering the taking of notes by hand difficult, or maybe if they have adult ADHD it allows them to self-stimulate and thereby concentrate better in a way that is less disruptive to the other people in the meeting. Likewise, breastfeeding may or may not become an impediment to ‘productivity’ depending on the individual parent involved (and in some cases, such as where the alternative is to call in sick/cancel class/whathaveyou, it may be the most ‘productive’ option available).
*which may or may not be invisible
b) Though in some cases this may be true, I don’t think it’s at all valid as a reason to ban breastfeeding parents from business meetings, etc. (let alone someone who isn’t proposing to do it every day). It is sexist and ageist.
Beyond my more intellectual and philosophical thoughts on this subject, I also have many childhood memories to draw on of accompanying my parents (both with and without my younger brother) to their various jobs as a postmaster, the owner-operator of a restaurant, the owner-operator of a retail store, a member of the board of directors for a non-profit summer arts school, and the mayor of a small town. Attendance at many meetings was certainly a part of all these experiences.
I know there were a great many circumstances that made my childhood unique, some of which may also have contributed the willingness of the other adults in my parents’ professional lives to accommodate the presence of one or both of their children. However, I don’t think those circumstances influenced the amount of nuisance and distraction my brother or myself caused. As far as I can remember – and I’m aware that it may strain the bounds of credulity to take my at my word in this – I wasn’t a major source of hassle. I’m quite happy to furnish you with specific memories if you’re interested, but it doesn’t seem necessary to foist them upon you unsolicited : )
[edited to add in some more paragraph breaks – whoa, I didn’t realize how lengthy my comment had become! also, I expanded on the laptop-analogy a bit]
That’s reasonable. It would definitely have been better if she’d told the students at the start of class what was up and asked if they wanted to reschedule and/or given anyone concerned about germs the opportunity to leave.
Dragon, in my industry, packaged goods, if one of our manager’s and I were in meeting with a suppler or a buyer, it would be completely inappropriate to have someone’s child present, except in the rarest circumstances and certainly not when the child was sick. If one of my managers had child care trouble (and it happens a fair bit, having kids means juggling), I’d tell them to stay home and take care of their kid and Skype in on the meeting, or reschedule the meeting. Actually, this one reason why most of the management of the company I co-own and founded 20 years ago, works at home.
Certainly a child would be absolutely barred from our factory as a safety issue. Volatile chemicals, pallets, forklifts – you get the idea, I hope. I’m assuming you, and Barry, wouldn’t expect a factory worker to be allowed to show up with her baby in a Bjorn. Am I wrong? And, yes, I cut the factory folks slack when they really need to stay home with their kids, and don’t have an option.
A restaurant or a store is a little different. Those businesses are more catch as catch can. Being mayor of a smaller town is probably the same thing.
Different universities have different standards on that sort of stuff, too. At my old university, there were kids around the math department all the time. At my current university, I can only remember seeing a baby once, and it was when someone on maternity leave came in to say hi for a few minutes and brought her baby with her.
Good for you. Seriously, that’s a sincere “wow, what an awesome and reasonable boss.”
I work in federal human resources. Federal executive agencies are mandated to be a model employer and with this in mind, work-life balance is something we take seriously with family friendly leave, paid sick leave and workplace flexibilities such as flexible work hours and telework. Having said that, employees are generally not allowed to bring children to work. In fact, Dr. Price would not be allowed to telework while taking care of her child at the same time.
I think part of the backlash is that every day employees struggle with work life balance. This is not an issue limited to parents; elder care can be just as much of a challenge. Dr. Price holds a position with a great deal of flexibility and latitude for appropriate behavior in comparison to many other people who face difficult choices. She had other options; she could have asked the TA to take over the class, for instance.
When my child was small, I was a single mother, too. I struggled with emergency child care as well. I didn’t have paid sick leave or many choices, but I didn’t bring my child to work. Personally, I believe Dr. Price behaved inappropriately by trying to care for a small child with an illness while performing the duties of her position. My full support of breast feeding in public doesn’t change my mind.
As she said in her essay, the TA was brand-new to the course, and wouldn’t have been able to take over the class.
Then she’s incompetent. The TA is a TEACHING ASSISTANT. It makes absolutely no sense to say that she couldn’t be bothered to prep the TEACHING ASSISTANT to, you know, do some minimal teaching in her absence. (Enforced childcare, apparently, is perfectly fine.)
I’m mystified why breastfeeding is supposed to be the real issue here; it’s a red herring. The real issue is that Professor Pine apparently thought it would be fine to have no real backup plan if she was unable to teach class for whatever reason – sick child, food poisoning, family emergency, catastrophic transportation failure. This is particularly mystifying given that she’s a single parent and her child is a year old; are we supposed to believe she had no idea daycare did not take a sick child or that her baby had never gotten sick before?
I don’t much like Pine’s vilification of the student reporter, but that’s the only aspect of her conduct I’d criticize. She certainly doesn’t deserve to be called incompetent for not wanting her TA to run the class in her absence. I suppose a *very* experienced TA might be able to do it, but even that wouldn’t be a good idea on the first day of class. I’ve been a university professor for thirteen years, and I don’t know of any of any colleagues who could or would leave detailed lesson plans for a TA to deliver. The one time I tried it the results were so dreadful I’ve never repeated the experiment. And that was with an experienced TA who is now a successful professor at a major research university. The standard practice is to teach when it’s humanly possible (I’ve lectured with a migraine so severe I couldn’t read my notes), and if it’s not to cancel class.
Yeah, lecturing and being a TA are really different.
Yusifu, I get that you had a bad experience with a TA once, but having had many classes as an undergraduate where all or part of the class was taught by the TA, I confess bafflement at the idea that it is impossible to plan for a TA to handle minimal teaching in case of emergency – and for a single mother of an infant who has no backup to daycare, you’re dang well going to have emergencies. Of the choices (cancel class, have the TA show up and hand out syllabi and give a brief intro, show up with a sick baby) the third is far and away the worst.
And, admittedly, her treatment of the TA is what frosts my crack the most. “Oh, but s/he didn’t HAVE to do it, I said so” has been the bullshit justification of every petty boss who’s ever made a subordinate handle their personal affairs for them.
No, you misunderstand what the role of a teaching assistant is. It would be an extraordinary case at most institutions (all that I know of) that a TA would be able to take over a full lecture at short notice. For example, in my department, TAs are usually first year Master’s students assigned to a wide variety of psychology courses the specific content of which we may be fairly unfamiliar with. We are expected to grade papers and exams to a marking scheme and more advanced students may sometimes be assigned a lecture to prepare (preparing a lecture in advance is VERY different than taking one on last minute), but that is not the same as taking over a lecture unexpectedly and at short notice in an unfamiliar subject. And, in my department at least, this would be equally inappropriate and open to departmental censure as asking at TA to babysit. TAs are employees, but also students.
Also, in your most recent comment, you give option two as “have the TA show up and hand out syllabi and give a brief intro”. That is far different than giving a proper lecture, which is what Pine’s class involved that day. Handing out a syllabus and then ending the class is basically equivalent to cancelling the class and emailing the syllabus with a brief written intro, which is most likely what cancelling the class in the first place would have entailed.
This is the crux of the issue, and Amp is 100% wrong. There are plenty of professional jobs which you can perform and work flexibly: like tax accountants or research fellows or web designers. However some professional jobs, like surgeons or lecturers or airline pilots, you can’t: you’re paid to be there and perform a role at a specific time. And you get paid a premium because of this. It’s daft to pretend this issue is merely cultural, and not driven mostly by the objective demands and realities of the job.
No it’s not inevitable. People could choose jobs which allow them to reconcile competing demands. If she had been a research fellow, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Lecturing is a bad job for people who can’t have 60 or so 2hr slots picked out per year and be pretty sure they can make them.
There is Option 4, the department also has the responsibility to have some qualified professor able to step in/up should something happen. Steps should be in place to prevent individual professors being left to their own devices and screwing things up.
I don’t think the flexible working advocates should take too much comfort from that though. On Alas! we’ve already had the, in my view, absolutely hilarious news of a Women’s Studies department being unable to find anyone qualified to teach Introduction to Women’s Studies on account of the faculty’s flexible working schedules. I was asked to step out of that thread because I was being ‘adversarial’, but the issue seems pretty relevant to this one too.
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2012/07/14/can-anyone-recommend-a-good-womens-studies-text/
I have a PhD.
I teach classes that no one else in my department is qualified to teach, or that no one else qualified is available to teach, because I teach in a small graduate program.
I get paid $4000 a class (for a class that raises over $160,000 in tuition) because I’m an adjunct.
I don’t know what world some of the folks commenting here live in, but it’s not my world. I am having planned, forseeable surgery in two weeks and my only option is to cancel one of my classes. Thank god I don’t have a baby. It would be bad enough if one of my cats had an emergency. Two years ago I had to cancel the last class of a semester because I’d been in the ER the night before with kidney stones, and all I could say to the students was “if there’s an accreditation problem with us missing those three hours, I’ll make it up to each of you individually for free.”
I am NOT in some kind of rarefied, high-paid job just because I’m highly specialized and qualified and teaching students paying a premium for the privilege.
“I am having planned, forseeable surgery in two weeks …”
And I’m sure you won’t mind if the surgeon breastfeeds during the operation. Or (heaven forbid) has to change the baby in the middle of the operation.
You can’t possibly think that’s a persuasive point.
Well, I tried as hard as I could, and that’s all that counts.
While I was driving around today I heard these lyrics by The Decemberists and it made me think of this discussion:
So . . . was the professor’s burden (on her students and TA) within reason?
I think those who are more ready to excuse her actions might come from a liberal value system (cut people some slack), while people who say that she needed to be more respectful of societal norms (i.e., not doing childcare or breastfeeding while working) probably hold more conservative values (if everyone pushes the norms, where will that lead us?) . . . not because it’s a women’s studies O.M.G. we have to talk about boobs kind of thing . . . but because a liberal world view compels us to have a higher threshold for accepting our neighbor’s burdens, while a conservative world view places higher value on self-reliance and holding to norms and commitments.
Here’s my hero George Lakeoff on his analysis of conservative values (he codes as “Strict Father”) and liberal values (he calls “Nurturant Parent” . . . I know, I know, biased but still brilliant):
And getting back to the prof . . . because her class probably examines what’s acceptable in everyday human-to-human transactions with respect to gender (and so often women’s impositions are seen as much more burdensome than men’s typical impositions), her choice probably seemed to her even *more* appropriate in context than if she was employed doing something else. And although other profs here have spoken about how much pressure there is against missing a class, it certainly would have been much easier for her that day to skip class and send out the syllabus via email.
(and FWIW, I probably would have been really pissy about her choice if I were her student but I think it would have expanded my horizons a lot, if she had handled the situation well in class. And I’m not opposed to having my horizons expanded, especially if it makes me less likely to feel pissy in the future about similar incidents, since I don’t particularly like feeling pissy about things.)
Another aspect is that one class of people rarely imposes on others, and when these people do it, they are apologetic and empathetic of others and are grateful that someone cut them some slack. They are usually kind people themselves.
You *want* to cut people like that some slack because they don’t abuse it.
Another class of people is always imposing on others. They have no empathy for others and expect that the world owes them; they may well also act in a passive aggressive way. They are usually extremely defensive if asked about their own actions and, in disaccord with their stance when they do something, they are usually very intolerant of others who impose upon them.
Even the most tolerant, kind people start getting sick of the people above in the second category.
After reading the snotty, defensive response of this breast-feeding teacher, I get the impression that she falls into Category 2.
There are also these kinds of divisions with regard to professionalism and upholding standards. Everyone has a transgression now and then, just like the situation of imposing on others, but a complete disregard for professionalism is going to drive people away from your business or organization or group and tarnish its reputation. That’s just how real life works.
Having said that, I think more of this should be pushed in women’s studies classes. If you have the mindview required of those classes, you are a hypocrite if you prefer not to have breastfeeding in class or a sick kid wandering around and grabbing things.
She was there. She *did* perform her role. It’s very easy for us to sit here with all the time in the world to armchair quarterback that decision and come up with things she should have done differently. (I think for example that telling the students her kid was sick and allowing anyone who wanted to leave without penalty is something she should’ve done.) But none of us is actually *in* that situation, and it’s not realistic to expect someone who had hours to make a decision to come up with, and be able to implement, all the alternatives that it’s taken us three days to hash out.
But comparing it to a pilot or a surgeon breastfeeding a baby while flying a plane or operating on a patient is completely ridiculous. It’s pretty difficult to inadvertently kill someone because you’re distracted during a lecture.
Huh?
The main alternatives were:
1) Hire someone to take care of the toddler. Note that this can be done in a manner that doesn’t require the sitter to be incredibly qualified, because the teacher can remain available for emergencies. I’d never leave my kids alone with a young sitter, but I’d happily hire a 10 year old sitter to watch them if I was working at home that day.
2) Ask for help finding someone to take care of the toddler. This requires a phone call to the admin.
Those do not take days to think about.
You’re in a rarefied job, not a high paying one. But your job is unusual in that it (a) apparently delivers an extraordinarily high level of personal satisfaction derived from things other than money, given the very fierce competition to teach at the college or graduate level, the continued desire of current workers to remain, and the continued flow of applicants into that field even in the face of low salaries; and (b) provides other unrealized benefits because is one of the ways to end up with a tenure track position that is both rare AND highly paid.
For similar reasons, it is extraordinarily difficult to get many attorney jobs in government service, even though they pay relatively little and often carry both high stress and long hours.
In both cases, the jobs are competitively filled by people who are, in theory, some of the more intelligent and well-educated folks in the country. It is bizarre to suggest that such folks don’t know what will be expected of them and what they will get in return, whether they are signing on to a $27,500, 60-hour-week, prep-for-trials-on-weekends job as a public defender, or a single-class $4000/semester job as an adjunct.
If you take a job, you have a moral obligation to prioritize the job as important pursuant to the internal requirements of the job. If you don’t want to do so because you don’t think you’re paid enough to meet those requirements, you shouldn’t take the job. This is as true for a professor as an adjunct; as true for a public defender as an equity partner.
It’s true that some jobs have a high level of expectation relative to their pay. So be it. Don’t apply for, or take the job, if you don’t like it.
Pine appears to be scheduled to teach one class in three sections:
MONDAYS 10:20-11:35, and 1:10-2:25;
TUESDAYS 1:10-2:25;
THURSDAYS 10:20-11:35, and 1:10-2:25; and
FRIDAYS 1:10-2:25.
She is required to lecture for fewer than eight hours/week, for four days/week.
Isn’t it reasonable to expect that she will treat THOSE EIGHT HOURS with an unusual level of dedication? It’s it reasonable to acknowledge that THOSE EIGHT HOURS have different requirements from the other hours she works? She may be able to eat lunch during office hours; she may be able to grade papers in a bathrobe; she may be able to nurse during a faculty meeting; she may be able to surreptitiously text during a mandatory fire drill. That has nothing to do with how she lectures.
But none of us is actually *in* that situation
None of us has ever been a parent trying to juggle work and childcare? Speak for yourself.
@Jadey: Then if the first-day class was so in-depth and crucial that only she could have handled it, and having the TA hand out the syllabus and the first day’s assignment would have been the equivalent of canceling the class, she should have had either a backup plan or cancelled the class. Elusis already pointed out that there are workarounds – like makeup classes later – and that a sick kid is not the only thing that might lead to a professor having to cancel a class suddenly.
And, of course, I find it hilarious that we musn’t expect a TA to teach a class, but we can goddamn well expect a TA to play nanny on demand.
i don’t think the issue was breastfeeding at all. pine could have used the eagle interview to make some very good points about the lack of emergency child are at AU, and the challenges faced by working parents.
instead she chose to lose her shit in a public forum, bully a student journalist and her editorial staff, and show an astonishing lack of maturity and professionalism. for that – not for breastfeeding in class – she should be disciplined. babies act like babies because they are babies. what’s pine’s excuse?
You still seem to be completely ignorant of how difficult delivering a lecture without preparation is, unless one happens to be very well-versed (and up-to-date) in the specific subject matter of it, which, especially in more obscure fields, is highly unlikely not only for TAs but for other faculty in the same discipline. It does not have to be any more in-depth or crucial than any other lecture in order for this to be so difficult. Most professors I know also do not prepare notes to the extent that someone else could pick them up and read along – they prepare brief jot notes aimed at stimulating their own memories, which obviously do not transfer well to another person. To do otherwise would be to require an enormous amount of preparation work which most faculty simply do not have time for. Even high school and elementary school teachers can be overwhelmed by prep work, and they aren’t usually trying to balance that workload with conducting research and managing research projects, supervising graduate students, writing grant applications, articles, and doing peer reviews, and sitting on multiple boards. These “back-up plan” ideas people are tossing around with such ease are actually much more difficult to implement than you realize – I don’t know a single faculty person in my department with the spare time to write up comprehensive notes on all of their lectures for all of their classes on the off-chance they might have to cancel one unexpectedly. When they do have to cancel, which is only if they physically cannot attend (plenty of my profs show up sick), they invariably must cram the extra material into another lecture slot, which is less than ideal all around (rescheduling is usually not an option, even in smaller graduate courses because there is simply no room left in the week to reschedule to). Hence, coming in unless absolutely necessary not to.
Make-up classes can be enormously difficult to schedule, and there is at many (though by no means all) tremendous pressure on profs never to cancel a class for just that reason. Pine may very well work at such an institution. A slightly distracted lecture is better than no lecture at all. Also, Elusis’ offer to make up the course for free to her students is incredibly generous, but not a general solution, nor do I think that is at all what she meant by that. So you are being disingenuous.
Speak for yourself in this expectation. Pine specifically did not request the TA to babysit, although the TA did anyway. And as I said, in my experience I would expect asking a TA to babysit to merit the same level of censure as asking one to deliver a complete lecture at short notice. Neither teaching a class unprepared nor child-care were ever contractually-appropriate duties of mine as a TA.
I’m planning to miss two days of classes this coming week, because of Rosh Hashanah, and I was doing a ton of planning last week to get everything prepared for the people who’ll be covering my classes. The notes I wrote out for them were twice as long as the notes I’d use myself.
I’m a feminist, and I support breastfeeding. However, this wasn’t “breastfeeding in public”, precisely.
We have clothing taboos in our culture in order to ensure most people can feel comfortable interacting with others. People stray outside of them from time to time, of course. However, these taboos exist. In public, at a restaurant or a store, anyone around her who felt uncomfortable could remove themselves to another location.
In this instance, she was in a position of power and had a somewhat captive audience. They’d paid a great deal of money to take a course from a professor who they had every right to expect would be devoting her attention to that class for its duration.
Men are not the only people who can be made uncomfortable when a clothing taboo is broken by a female. Many women experience trauma because they cannot have children, or for other very personal reasons related to conception. They have every reason to expect that in a university classroom their class will not be interrupted by a small child or their professor partially disrobing to breastfeed. I entirely fail to understand why this professor could not have had her assistant teach the class while she breastfed; it is obvious the TA thought the child was disrupting the class.
The issues of job performance and a captive audience do matter. Cancelling her class was certainly not the only other option.
Yeah, but you’re talking in broad, general terms that assume someone is available with the notice that she had. You’re also assuming that the admin would have helped and would’ve been able to find someone. Is that in their job description? This also assumes that Pine didn’t make an effort to find a back-up. If she had no backup whatsoever, sure, that was poor planning. But if she’d called three or four different people, then gave up and took the child with her, I can’t fault her for that. Eventually it gets ridiculous to say, “Well, why didn’t you have a back-up back-up back-up plan?”
I also don’t see where you’re getting the possibility of hiring someone not as responsible because “the teacher would be available” in case of emergencies. She’s not working from home, she’s leaving the child with someone so that she can be in class. A class that people are insisting she shouldn’t have taken her child to. “Have someone (who’s actually paid for it and isn’t the TA) watch the child in class,” would be just as unacceptable to a number of people, because the kid’s sick. The only way to avoid any distraction in the class–which is apparently the expectation–is to have someone watch the child outside the classroom.
Apparently I wasn’t clear. None of us has been in that *exact* situation, because none of us is her. Obviously, every parent here has been in *similar* situations. But the specifics vary. Some people have friends and family they can call on as last-minute babysitters. Some people would be comfortable leaving their kid with a stranger (or a college student they handed a $20); others wouldn’t.
My only point is that the assumption that acceptable childcare was available on short notice is an assumption, and it might not actually be the case.
I am with copyleft at comment 40
Millions of single mothers every day, millions of them do what it takes to go to work and have proper childcare for their kids, and all of them do get sick. It is not proper conduct to take your children to work. It IS distracting and once you have one parent doing it can you imagine then all the other parents doing the same thing? What would our offices and classrooms look like then? There is a separation between your work life and your personal life. (And Barry you had no control over your father passing away, the Prof had control, and should have always lined up sufficient daycare). This Prof didn’t want to get workplace demerits for missing class, so she put her professional career ahead of her child and students. SHE Came FIRST and I don’t go along with that. If poor planning resulted in not having backup care lined up for when your child is sick (daycare won’t let you drop off sick babies) then she should have stayed home with the baby and taken the Professional hit for her poor planning. Her decision really wasn’t about the students as Barry indicates, her decision was based on ME, “I don’t want to loose demerits for cancelling class.”
I used to work with a guy who had a sign over his desk, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” That pretty much sums it up for me.
Here are some quotes from what she wrote,
Heck she had time for breakfast with her friend, I think she just did what was easiest for HER, which was to take the baby to class. Could the friend from Chile have babysat if she would have asked? She likes things easy for herself she writes,
Oh so she hates cleaning bottles does she? Hrump. Her desire to only breast feed off the breast and not pump and bottle also, as a working outside the home mother, again is piss poor planning.
Thankfully, the following class day I found a friend willing to babysit my still-feverish child ($140 for the day, in addition to the $75 I paid for the daycare that Lee couldn’t attend while sick) so I could teach class. See- she found sick baby childcare but I seriously doubt if it is from a friend as she writes, my friends don’t charge me to help in an emergency.
I am glad she has been taken down a notch or, guaranteed, taking sick baby to class (because it is easiest for HER) would have been her modus operendi going forward. Now she knows that she has to actually have back up plans for if the baby gets sick. This is nothing unusual, all mothers and fathers all over the world have to do this same thing IF we want to work outside the home. IF we permit these mothers and fathers to do the easiest thing and that is bring in children into our workplaces and classrooms it would be wholley disruptive. Do you want to go to a nice restaurant and the bartender reaches down under the bar to sooth his crying baby while you wait for your drink? How about the Police Department, shall we have little ones running around the precinct while the adults are trying to concentrate on solving crime? I don’t even care about the breastfeeding that is irrelevant to what was going on here, and what was going on was all about Professor Me Me Me Me Me Me….
If you did piss poor planning (and she did, by not having backup sitters as she KNEW Daycare will not let you bring in sick kids) then you take the Professional Hit and cancel class. I guarantee you she would only do that one time before she would improve on her planning skills. This is a good lesson for her to learn early in her career.
Barry this really isn’t a one off situation because once she starts dragging her kids to class then that opens the door for all the other Professors to do so also. Look how much daycare costs in her area, pretty soon all the Profs will be doing it, look how much money they will save on Daycare. I don’t think her school has any responsibility at all to help her out finding emergency childcare, that is just one more added expense which drives up the already astronomical cost of tuition. This is a parent responsibility, finding childcare, to push that off on your employer I don’t agree with. Hey it is GREAT for those employers who have a day care service, but to expect your employer to help you find sick baby care, I think is over the top.
I agree, StraightGrandmother, with the exception of what I already stated above.
The teachers *should be* bringing in their kids and breastfeeding them and changing them in the specific area of gender / women’s studies. All of them. They should also have the broad leave policies and everything else advocated in these courses. A bit of real-world practical training along with the theory, so to speak – the students can directly experience the consequences of the theories. Lots of teachable moments.
First of all, she made the decision to bring the kid over breakfast. At that point, she had no incentive to keep looking. (If she’s like most of us, avoiding the PITA process of finding emergency care was probably a big factor in the decision. It is a PITA, no doubt about it.)
Second, she wrote a very detailed and extraordinarily defensive post, and it seems very strange to imagine that she would not have noted either an inability to find care after trying hard, or the failure of the administration to assist in an emergency.
It’s possible, but not credible.
Thought experiment: Change Pine’s job to construction work. Do her actions still make sense to those saying she did nothing wrong?
Construction work is more like surgery; it seems inappropriate to take a baby because the answer to the question “what’s the worst that could happen from someone doing this job while taking care of a baby” is “someone could die.”
Contrary to what some folks seem to think, however, no one dies of seeing a baby in a college classroom. Not even from seeing a baby breastfeed.