Amen!
"Life became nothing more than time management."A kernel of wisdom from Dean Dad's musings on yet another American absurdity: the "controversial" nature of childcare.
What I don't understand (see the comments to his post) is why discussions about these kinds of issues (childcare, health care) so quickly deteriorate into a zero-sum game--I mean the idea that somehow, providing all children with decent, affordable health care, safe and stimulating day care, etc., is a radical infringement on the childless. I'm all for academia realizing, as an institution, that the youth and demographics of the entering professoriate mean that this is already a crisis in faculty retention. This does not mean there aren't other worthy crises--like my gay colleague, who cannot marry his non-citizen partner OR get him a work visa, and thus must commute hundreds of miles every weekend (or take a vow of celibacy, one assumes, in keeping with the vow of poverty we academics are supposed to take because of our deep, self-abnegating desire to tutor the unwashed, plugged-in masses). Or my single colleagues, who (like the parents among us) have no leave options short of unpaid absence when there is a family emergency. But why is addressing any one of these issues somehow an affront to the others?
Why are so many of our campuses seen as "hotbeds of liberalism" when, in fact, they are incredibly regressive in the policies toward the "labor." I understand the realities of shrinking budgets and declining public (tax) support. I mean, I understand that it exists, if not why. But I long for the days when at least some of the social justice impulse was directed at campus labor practices.
I, as a well-employed, relatively solvent (although that description may cause my sister to snort coffee out her nose) single parent, am certainly NOT one of the primary victims of the American public's lemming-like rush to "privatization" and "consumer 'choice'"(which, as far as I can tell, means "Now *you* have to pay, sucka"). But finding a broader, more responsible approach to the realities of working life--skyrocketing home prices, obscene health-care costs, ever-growing work-weeks, etc.--doesn't have to consist of us fighting over scraps.
And frankly, our universities (the place in which I have "career" experience) are getting far more work out of this new generation of faculty than they ever got from my own (most male) professors. "Student-centered teaching," with its incessant conferences, responses to drafts, informal "counseling" duties, and "process models" for every conceivable discipline, is clearly far more labor intensive--in "fact time," not necessarily in intellect--than the old "figure it out or flunk model." So it's relatively simple math to figure out that if you need two incomes to provide even a modest living, and one of them is a professorial income, childcare is going to be a big problem.
And one that demands an exclusively "private" solution, presumably, unless you take the time-honored American option: allow your child to get so far beyond the pale that s/he winds up with an all-expense-paid scholarship...to prison.
Labels: American insanity
posted by Unknown @ 5:28 PM
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