I Don't Have Kids. Why Should I Always Cover for You?

Bernie Lee is the chair of an academic department. Chairs are in charge of course scheduling. The following is a department meeting in which a problem with course scheduling must be solved.

Kidwell is a faculty member with young children.

Nyer is a senior faculty member who has spent over 30 years in the department.

Singleton is a faculty member who lives local to the university.

(The following work is a piece of fiction. Any resemblance to real events or people is entirely coincidental. Entirely.)

Bernie: All right, next on the agenda, once again we are not in compliance with the college rules on scheduling. Let me again remind all of you about our constraints. Twenty percent of our courses have to be outside of the prime teaching spots, between 9:30am and 4:50pm, because if all the courses at the university are crammed into those slots, there are too many conflicts and our students won’t be able to fulfill their requirements. And of course, all of you know that Wednesdays 3pm-5pm is restricted, because that is when student athletes schedule their practices and competitions. So we reserve that afternoon and evening for department meetings, talks, and other administrative duties. Not enough of you are opting for the non-prime times, which is 8am and 9am, and after 5pm. And, not enough of you are teaching three days a week MWF rather than opting for a MW, or Tu Thu teaching schedule. I need volunteers to in these nonprime slots, to bring us to compliance.

Nyer: Listen, you know that I commute in from New York City now, so its two hours one way. If I have to come in for our meetings also on Wednesdays, I need a MW schedule, and its just way too hard to teach outside of the prime hours for me. I have to make the morning commute, that rules out 8am, otherwise I leave the city at 5am. And I’m not going to get back in at 10 or 11 at night. And no way I’m coming in more than twice a week.

Kidwell: I have a young child, morning school dropoff for me is 8:30am, the earliest I can get into the office is 9:30am. And I’m charged with pick-up at 3:30pm as well. There’s also things to drive her to twice a week, so if I don’t cram all of my teaching within 9:30pm-3:30pm, it is incredibly burdensome for the family. But I’m in every day so I more than make up for it in the time spent working on campus.

Singleton: Is there some way you can arrange a ride with other people for your child? We’re talking only about a couple of days a week.

Kidwell: Its not that easy. A lot of students take the bus, others don’t live on the same side of town. And in any case, it’s not that it’s impossible for me to teach nonprime, it’s just that if I do this, I’ll have to put her in five days a week of aftercare that runs over $500 a week, and she doesn’t really respond well to the after school care.

Singleton: I’ve had to accommodate the commuters and parents in this department for the past ten years. I did not chose to live two hours away, and I did not chose to have children. Those were my choices and I’m very happy with them. But that also means that I have been the go-to person who has had to take up the slack in the schedule. I’ve had to teach at 6:30pm and 8pm for many semesters, and I’ve been scheduled on MWF for fifty minutes at 9am many times. My enrollments suffer for it. My own social schedule suffers for it. I don’t know why I have to be the one who can’t work an ordinary teaching schedule just because the rest of you have made different life choices. Its unfair to me.

Nyer: I paid my dues. I lived locally for half my career before I moved to NYC. We didn’t have these stupid rules then but I did my share of accommodating the schedule of young parents, and with accommodating commuters. I did it for more than 20 years and now I finally have a schedule that works for me. Someone has to teach the non-prime spots and its got to be the people who it is easiest for them to do so. But one benefit for you is that during our normal working hours you have more freedom than we do. You can take the car into the shop or do your medical appointments. This is a kind of freedom that we give up. Why is it a sacrifice?

Singleton: It is not for you to tell me what is good or better for my schedule. I am saying that I have had to teach at hours that are not conducive to my personal life schedule, and it is not conducive to enrollments, and students just don’t like taking courses at that time, especially the ones who are also commuters. So I get the worst and most irritated students. I am just saying we should more equitably distribute who has to teach those times. It can’t always be the people who decide they will be childless and live locally.

Kidwell: It is going to be at least another 15 years before I can reasonably foresee it not being a burden for me to have to teach outside of the prime teaching hours. Having children isn’t just about picking up and dropping off. You have to spend evenings with your family and attend activities. I don’t think it is unreasonable for parents to expect a daytime work schedule that is conducive to good parenting. This is academia; we all know we work while we’re at home anyhow. It is best for my child and my family that I teach a schedule when they are also in school.

Nyer: Just put the kid in daycare, what’s the big deal? We did that when our son was young, it was fine, he turned out all right. This generation of parents are so precious about their parenting.

Kidwell: That’s a very obnoxious thing to say, Nyer. If anyone should be doing some accommodating its the more senior people who make more money and live in their fancier places two hours away from work. What are you doing, going to musicals and gastropub tastings? Empty nesters who have no concerns about tenure, promotion, or salary should be the first people we ask to make sacrifices in scheduling. Since when did seniority mean that you get first dibs on the ideal scheduling for your life?

Nyer: Its called paying your dues. That’s what it means to be in this career. A lot of things suck when you’re young. Having young children sucks for your career, that’s why some people don’t have them. Singleton is right about that. Singleton should not have to be punished because you decided to do something that is burdensome on your schedule. This is true no matter what career you’re in.

Kidwell: I thought we were all progressives here who believe that child-rearing is a value that we need society as a whole to value. Everyone in here advocates higher taxation that pays for paid family leave and affordable childcare at the state or national level. I see progressives sitting right at this table who won’t even make the one little sacrifice of teaching on a Friday or teaching at 7pm. What kind of hypocrisy is this? Progressive family policy for the country, but if I have to commute back to the city for a semester at 9pm, it’s over?

Singleton: I don’t think it is progressive to expect single and childless people to be constantly making sacrifices on behalf of people who have children. I know it sucks, and is more expensive to have children. But that’s the cost of having children, its unavoidable. You know that when you have children you aren’t going to be able to do the same things as single people. Yes, I can work on my research projects 10 hours a day outside of my teaching. You can’t. That is why I am more productive in my research. Do we have to make a parenting accommodation in your personnel review? Do you get points added to your research productivity, or I get points taken off for mine? No, because taking a hit in your productivity is something you expect will happen when you have many fewer hours to work on your research once you have children. This is the same thing. We should have a fairer way of distributing teaching times as though we are all equal, not make special accommodations for people with children.

Kidwell: I think the way things are is fair. My children and the children of everyone else are the very reason why you and a lot of people are going to have a retirement. Younger people need to be around and working when you’re 65 and ready to collect social security. The very existence of this institution and many others requires there to be young people who exist in the future. Philosopher Sam Scheffler even argued that the very meaningfulness of anything you do Singleton, all that research you work so hard at publishing, depends on my child and many other people’s children existing in the future to read it. So who is free-riding off of whom when all we parents ask is to have normal teaching hours while our children need us when they’re young?

Nyer: Those sound like attacks on Singleton’s life choices Kidwell. I agree with Singleton that maybe I should be more accommodating in scheduling. There really is no difference between me deciding to live in New York City and Singleton deciding that they would like a bi weekly trip to New York City to have fun in the middle of the workweek. There’s really no reason we need to preclude that from Singleton’s schedule just because they have decided not to procreate. That is not a moral failing of Singleton’s. They are not free-riding on society, and owe no one else anything, including you and your children for those wholly morally permissible choices. As far as I see, if it’s morally okay and completely blameless not to have children, and morally okay and completely blameless to have children, then both of you are on equal moral grounds. And so if teaching in non-prime hours is an equal burden, why should it always fall on Singleton? It sounds like we should find some way to equitably distribute this burden.

Bernie: Okay here is my proposal. We all take turns over the course of the semesters within our three year plan to teach in non-prime hours equally. Any accommodations we have to make in our lives to make this happen, we do for the semesters we are asked to take on this burden. No one has any special claim to make exceptions.

Kidwell: I think this is an improvement over what we have been doing, which is making Singleton bear the burden alone. But I do not agree that this is the fairest way to do things. I think being a parent is something others have a moral obligation to accommodate. We all know that primary caregivers suffer greatly in their career and lifetime earnings. Everyone acknowledges that it is absolutely essential work for the rest of society that children get the best care their caregivers can give. People without kids in local schools pay school taxes because that is what it means to have communal values. We all bear a burden for the well-being of future generations. All I am asking from my colleagues is to make a sacrifice that isn’t even close to comparable with our school taxes, and bear the burden of teaching in non-prime hours while I raise my kid. I don’t see how this is controversial given the values we all espouse?

Bernie: There is ethics, then there is politics and policy. Even if you’re right about the issue on moral grounds, this is the best compromise we can come up with, especially because we need to turn in a schedule to the registrar by 5pm today and we need to resolve this issue now.

Singleton: I’ll make the accommodation. For one last academic year I’ll be the one who takes up the non-prime time. I’ll teach at 7pm MWF. But this is the last time because it is unfair to me. We need to come up with a better system.

Bernie: Yes, let us go back to the drawing board in our next meeting and try to figure out other ways we might address this problem. Maybe we can look for other burdensome activities in the department that we can redistribute in light of the fact that Singleton is always teaching at the non-prime hours.