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Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower by Mary Ann Mason, Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Marc Goulden

Do Babies Matter? provides essential insight into how family formation shapes the academic careers of men and women. This book’s central premise is that, to understand gender equity in the academy, scholars cannot only look at women’s ability to obtain the same careers as men in equal rates, but they also need to investigate the opportunities for women to create desired families. While the authors indicate that family formation tends to impact women’s careers more significantly, this book also reveals the barriers that the academy constructs for men who wish to be involved fathers. This book represents highly recommended reading for administrators in higher education who are committed to recruiting and supporting a qualified and diverse workforce. While the authors drew upon some qualitative data, I recommend a further analysis of qualitative literature and available qualitative data. Additional qualitative insight could bolster broad numerical trends and provide concrete strategies for academic fathers and mothers. This volume includes six chapters that detail the major phases of an academic’s life— graduate school, post-graduation, assistant professorship, midcareer, and retirement. These authors draw upon a decade’s worth of research that has utilized the Survey of Doctoral Recipients (SDR). The SDR is a national data set that tracks over 160,000 faculty members across academic departments and institutions. The authors supplemented the SDR with survey data from their University of California (UC) Faculty Family Friendly Edge project, a collection of surveys that investigated available supports for faculty and graduate students across the 10campus UC system. The authors additionally utilized open-ended survey items, analysis of online blogs, and interviews conducted for Mothers on the Fast Track, Mason’s collaborative project with her daughter, Eve Ekman. The first chapter describes the graduate student stage, a key period of socialization for a faculty career. Drawing upon their recent survey research, the authors underscore how today’s graduate students differ from those of the past because they (a) are often situated in dual-income households and (b) represent a generation that has a prevalent desire for work-family balance. Given the age of the majority of students in graduate school, the authors indicate that this career stage could be a good time biologically to have children. However, only 12% of the UC graduate students surveyed had children during graduate school, citing concerns about workload, discrimination, finances, and a lack of faculty role models. The authors also found that many graduate students decide to turn away from an academic career due to their perceptions that this career path lacks family friendliness.