"And keep your trousers on, Maximilian!"
"Maximilian, keep your trousers on!" Did I really just shout that into the telephone? While I was taking our son Erik and his friend to their football training (outside), a colleague of mine phoned up. We were talking about some data collection that was to be carried out soon, and the children were already running off to join their team. Then I noticed that it was too cold for the shorts they were wearing and I must have said this sentence into the telephone. My colleague just said, quite coolly, "If it's a bit inconvenient at the moment, we can continue the phone call later."
For me, it's part of my everyday life when family life and work collide. One of my favourite sayings in this connection is, "The children are there even when you don't happen to be able to see them!" Parents organise this wonderful (!) state of affairs in different ways and, as a rule, the world of work doesn't notice it. At any rate, I am often astonished at how little we notice of family life when we're at work. How imperceptibly family jobs and occasions are organized round work. Is that desirable? Yes and no! Research and teaching need time and attention. Oh, and the family does too. And, as a result, what arises unavoidably are individual and structural conflicts over our most valuable resource: time. I don't know how much "good" research is planned while a nappy is being changed. But I would say that respecting the way you use your own and other people's time benefits both fields.
For me, being able to work full-time means including evenings and weekends. I don't want to hold that up as a model to aim for, but in my case it just so happens that my work is my hobby and I don’t experience my work (at least, not usually) as "the price you have to pay as a working mother". What it also means is that family life and working life have to take mutual note of each other, each showing consideration for the other. It's great when – as in my case – the partner is supportive and helps as far as possible. An academic profession really is well suited to balance family and career if those involved talk about it and work it out in an open and trusting manner. Where I see a need for action in particular is with staff in the administrative and technical areas, because there it's often less possible to organize your time flexibly than in the academic field.
"What’s important is to build up a network of support that works well for the children."
As a university teacher I'm in the comfortable position of being able to organize my appointments myself – although juggling with various tasks and expectations is still quite difficult. When I had our children I was 35 and 37 and already qualified as a professor, which meant that the qualification phases didn't have this juggling between career and family. When I took up my first professorship (we were in Frankfurt at the time), my husband took parental leave for half a year, and after that we shared the work in looking after the children. Both children got places in the campus childcare facility, and that went off as well (and sometimes as badly) as these things do. Our children are now both at school, and, for us personally, the challenges of running a family are becoming more manageable – for example when one of the children is ill or there's an important date in the family parallel to an appointment at work. What's important is to build up a network of support that works well for the children. In our case, during the times outside regular childcare, that's most of all the grandparents.
What's important to me is that I can help create a culture of being a parent at Münster University – a culture of discussing and enabling – and can help look for individual and structural solutions. Mutual interest in, and understanding for, people's individual situations – with or without children – is a good start. So, as I said … Keep your trousers on, Maximilian!
Regina Jucks is Professor of the Fundamentals of Social Psychology in Education and Instruction at the Institute of Education and Instruction at the University of Münster. She is also Director of the Centre of University Teaching and Chair of the Senate’s Gender Equality Commission.
This article is taken from the University newspaper "wissen|leben" No. 2, 26 April 2017.