Hey Ryan,

It's great hearing from a Dad! And that feeling of being torn between
work and home is a universal one for working parents. Maybe not so
much for the working (mostly) dads who came in the generations
previous to ours, but it's certainly a reality now. It's great that
you are allowing yourself to spend more time with your child and
making work not as crazy of a priority as it might be. But I hear
that it's a hard trade-off.

I am wondering if aspects of caring for your child while working are
harder for dads on this one level because society doesn't expect dads
to provide the same level of child care as it expects from women.
Therefore, if you are taking time away from working to be with your
child(ren), then it's viewed as somehow "less" than if you were a mom.
Does this make sense? Moms are STILL expected to provide the bulk of
care and so maybe are given some more slack whereas dads are expected
to work and leave the child rearing to the women. Or perhaps I'm
completely wrong and it's just hard for EVERYONE to find some
reasonable balance.

Do universities have options for postponing tenure if you are a new
dad? Or is that reserved strictly for new moms?

Anyway, thanks for contributing - I'd love to hear more thoughts from
the science dads out there. That's why I called the site science and
families instead of science and mothering!

Best,
Carolyn



--- In scienceandfamilies@yahoogroups.com, "wapusker" <wapusker@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
> I'm a proud father of a two year old boy and have another boy or girl
> on the way any day now, while doing my postdoc, finishing up
> publishing my phd work, doing some consulting, and actively looking
> for academic positions, so I've very much appreciated reading what
> you all have to say. I thought I was sleep deprived before all of
> this family stuff started! Compared with many of the posts I've read,
> I feel pretty lucky in that my wife is a stay at home mom and keeps
> things rolling along really well but I continue to struggle with
> feeling like when I'm at work I should be at home and when I'm home
> feeling like I need to be working, so finding the balance is an on-
> going struggle. The upside is that all I used to do is work, now I
> actually make more time for the good stuff and having children has
> certainly reminded me of what is important in life. Work isn't my
> life anymore, its something I very much enjoy and try to succeed at
> but its not an obsession. Some folks at work are very understanding
> of my situation but for most, the tolerance is pretty limited and
> there are a lot of workaholics around that answer every email within
> an hour even on weekends (and expect the same) and ask for something
> friday afternoon and expect it monday morning. But the upside is I'm
> now much better at cheerfully saying no and expecting reasonable
> deadlines and I'm learning to not be apologetic about it. All in all,
> I couldn't be happier, though if we made the days just two hours
> longer that would be useful...
>
> Best,
> Ryan.
>