Now with generous parental-leave policies becoming more widely available in academia, it's easier for women professors to have families. But a U. researcher has documented that childbirth remains far less common among academic faculty than other education-intensive professions. Male professors are 21 percent less likely than doctors to have children in their households. For women professors, that disparity increases to 41 percent.
A major reason fewer women faculty have children, observers say, could be universities' tenure system whereby young assistant professors must produce scholarly research or see their careers derailed.
"Right at the point when you are working huge hours, 80 a week, to do the things to secure tenure, is exactly when childbearing is happening. It's a huge conflict for women in tenure track," said Tashjian, an associate professor of finance who chairs the U.'s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. She noted that the fertility rate among U. faculty is about half the Utah norm of four births per woman.
Nicholas Wolfinger, an associate professor of family and consumer studies, authored the new study "Alone in the Ivory Tower: How Birth Events Vary Among Fast-Track Professionals," with two Berkeley scholars. He presented the study last week in New Orleans before the Population Association of America annual meeting.
Their findings are based on a review of data from the 2000 census, examining the likelihood of a birth for households of physicians, lawyers and professors - careers that require at least three years of post-graduate education. Physicians enjoyed the highest birth rates, followed by lawyers then professors. Within each profession, men are more likely to be a new parent than women.
Two years ago, the U. adopted a leave policy that allows faculty a semester leave at nearly full pay to care for a newborn. The policy gives parent-professors an additional year before their tenure reviews, which typically arise in their sixth year. One beneficiary of this policy will be Julie Stewart, an assistant professor of sociology who is pregnant with her second child.
"An academic career is actually much more family friendly than you would think," Stewart said. "It gives more flexibility, but that flexibility doesn't occur until six or seven years into your career. The biological clock and tenure clock operate in contradiction to each other."
Stewart can balance the competing demands of family and career, thanks to a "supportive and flexible spouse," a journalist who left his newspaper job to care for their son, now almost 4, and work part time.
Whereas most male faculty can count on a spouse to care for the kids, it is unusual for a female faculty member to have a husband who pauses a career. As Stewart continues on her path to tenure and her husband resumes work, she expects the competing pressures inherent in a two-career-two-child household will grow.
"I'm concerned about how those conflicts will play out," she said. "There will be some hard trade-offs we'll have to face."
bmaffly@sltrib.com
Other study findings
* For a woman age 30 to 34, the chances of a doctor giving birth were nearly 25 percent, but for a professor were 16 percent.
* The typical academic career track may explain some of these differences. The average age of a new doctorate is 33 and assistant professors achieve tenure, on average, at 40. Women academics are in their child-bearing prime when they are in graduate school, a time when they are unsettled and preoccupied with survival. As junior faculty, they are locked in the "publish or perish" struggle for tenure and by the time many achieve tenure, they are beyond child-bearing age.
* There may also be a personality component. "Academics may be less interested in having children," said researcher Nicholas Wolfinger, who is unmarried. "I don't want kids. I can hardly take care of myself."
"The biological clock and tenure clock operate in contradiction to each other."
Julie Stewart
an assistant professor of sociology pregnant with her second child.
