Prof brings sick baby to class; gives suck.

In My Humble Opinion
81

It is often dangerous to draw analogies, but if I had to pick something that is roughly equivalent to my view of breast feeding, I’d say it is picking one’s nose. Tons of people do it, I don’t care one whit if you are on a bus and unobtrusively get rid of that snoogie that’s bothering you. But if you stand up in a group of people and start picking your nose, that’s weird. I know that some people are going to say, “But breast feeding in beautiful and natural, and nose picking is gross!”

Well, save your judgments, because I have a different view. Breastfeeding isn’t beautiful, and I don’t see relieving one’s self of an annoying booger as a filthy and impure act that makes Baby Jesus cry. I don’t attach a whole lot of opinion to either act, good or bad, they are both just things that are commonly done for decent reasons, but often make people uncomfortable. (Now that i think about it more, maybe clipping one’s toenails is a similar act: necessary but not always appropriate.) So, exercise a little bit of judgment and we will all get along fine.

In contrast to even sven’s view that this episode is helping open a national dialog and that students should think about these issues, let’s look back at what the professor said: she said she wasn’t trying to make a political point, and she tried to get the story spiked. She strongly implied that the story was part of an anti-woman bias of the paper. She insulted the reporter (something about the reporter not speaking for herself) when the reporter told her that the editors were discussing the story, which is why a paper has editors in the first place.

Regardless of what happened in the classroom, that professor is a serious piece of work. The one bit of self-realized commentary in her article was her mentions of her being part of the privileged class.

You have no friggin’ idea how obvious that is to everyone around you, professor.

82

A baby is a problem in the workplace. Lots of things are normal parts of life and are still inappropriate to bring to work. Should people be able to bring their elderly parents? Dogs? Cats? What about older kids? Teenagers? Those are all normal parts of life too. I’m just surprised that anyone is seriously arguing that it should be okay to just tote your kid along to wherever like that wouldn’t create a huge distraction and be a massive problem. It’s not about misogyny and it’s not over-the-top intolerance of the occasional ‘coo and fuss’ as you put it. It’s the constant pooping and changing and screaming and “don’t-put-that-in-your-mouth!” while people are trying to work.

If a father wants to stay home and care for the kids while the mother works, more power to him. If they both want to work and the kid goes to grandmas or to daycare, great. If they both want to work part-time and split baby responsibilities, fantastic. I don’t care who takes care of the baby and I don’t think it’s necessarily the woman’s job, I just know it’s not my job and I don’t want it to become my problem. By bringing the baby to class this woman is making her responsibility everyone else’s problem, and I don’t think that’s okay.

She (and you) are trying to twist this into a feminist issue when I don’t think it is at heart. It would also be inappropriate for a man to bring a baby to class and let it crawl around and try to electrocute itself. It would just lack the ‘look at me, look at me, I’m being oppressed!’ angle that the breastfeeding lends to this story.

83

I’m a college professor, and I teach graduate students. I also do research on work-family balance among faculty dads. And guess what? I have had my 2 year old son in class (temporarily) when my wife and I were managing a childcare swap. However, I think this was a poor judgment call on the prof’s part.

Why? First class is an incredibly important day - you are setting the tone for the semester. You want to cover all the procedures, assignments, and expectations for the course in a relatively non-distracted manner. I have a pretty liberal guest policy in class, but not the first day. Additionally, it’s the first opportunity for me to get to know my students, and vice-versa. It would be hard if not impossible to do this if I wasn’t 100 percent focused on the class.

In addition, I work at a public institution. I’m required to have a certain number of hours in my course… contrary to popular opinion, I can’t dismiss class whenever I feel like it. AU is private, but I am sure they’re not fond of faculty canceling class whenever they or their kids get sick. If it happened to me, I would call on a colleague to step in for 30 minutes, get students started on an activity, and my TA takes over. I think that was a preferable option - having another professor at least greet the students, and allowing the TA to work through the syllabus, introductions, etc. I have tons of favors that are owed by colleagues when I’ve done this for them, and I know if worse case scenario came up and nobody was available, my chair would do it. (I have a great chair in regard to things like this.)

The other thing that bothers me is the child’s illness. I tell my students to stay home if they’re sick, because I have kids at home - so if Mom or I get sick, they get it, and one of us can’t work when that happens. It’s very possible that the kid wasn’t communicable, but absent a physician’s diagnosis, it’s better to err on the side of caution. What if a student’s child gets sick due to mom or dad’s exposure?

I’m also bothered by students having to monitor the child’s behavior and protecting her from putting paper clips in electrical sockets. I don’t know what kind of classrooms they have at AU, but the average classroom on my campus isn’t anywhere near childproof, and frankly, is not clean enough for my kids to roll around on the floor or carpet. As a parent I would be completely distracted by a kid dangerously crawling around in an area not designed for children.

Breastfeeding isn’t a big deal to me; my wife breastfeeds. But it is on the more private/discreet continuum of things, so I would think it’s fairly unprofessional to do it when you are center stage, like many of the natural bodily functions that are totally fine, but not something you would do when everyone in a room is looking at you. If it was a bottle, it’s still unprofessional.

Here’s a scenario where it might not be a huge problem. Given the topic, and if it was a seminar, I can see the prof discussing how her own life experiences could be instructive, and perhaps using those experiences to link to readings and the like. Purposefully bringing her child to class might be a great learning opportunity.

The other question, of course, is what is the policy regarding students and their children? When I was a graduate student and a TA, I had a student who moved from Canada to Cambridge, and unfortunately was dealing with a divorce. He was the primary carer for three kids, and our class met on a Friday morning. Occasionally the schools had inservice days on Fridays, so on those days, he asked if he could bring them to class. They were terrifically well behaved kids, but of school age. Not sure if it would work with babies/toddlers.

I have a colleague who breathlessly told me that one of my advisees came to class with her 9 year old son. I asked if he was planning to show an R-rated film, and suggested that as long as the kid was quiet, not to worry about it. (He doesn’t have kids.) Childcare crises happen to all of us. Of course my advisee met with him afterward and explained the emergency.

84

snip

I mentioned something about this in post #58.
I remember once telling a student that her boyfriend could not remain in my classroom since he was not enrolled in it. (He was sheltering himself from the rain, as if there were no other place available to hide.)

85

A few times in college and grad school a prof brought in a child. Not ideal, but really not a big deal and we all know that last minute shit happens. I was always happy to have the prof there instead of off on a sick day. I suppose I could have up and left if I was bothered. It’s not as if the prof’s presence affected what I was expected to know for assignments.

86

I was going to type a bunch of replies to people, but this sums up what I think pretty handily. There are lots of perfectly natural, non-disgusting, reasonable things that are simply inappropriate during a setting where all eyes are on you. I’d have no problem if she was breast feeding in her office, even during open-door office hours! At lunch? Fine. Even in the audience of the class, whatever. But when all eyes are on you? You need to maintain that class’ attention on the topic, not you, and doing something unusual undermines that.

I could maybe make an exception if that day’s lecture was on the history of breastfeeding controversy, given an eccentric enough teacher that could make for a rather funny and compelling segue into the discussion.

87

Agreed with all of this.

For my part, I recognize it’s a pretty minor issue and really doesn’t matter, but my reaction to it (as opposed to ignoring it) is largely because it particularly irritates me when people insist on polarizing everything so much. On the one side we have people thinking breastfeeding should only be done in private and on the other we have the people who overreact to that belief, insisting only the opposite is acceptable and that anything less than breastfeeding anywhere, any time is somehow misogynistic. Is the middle ground really so boggy and uninhabitable?

88

[QUOTE=Jragon]
I was going to type a bunch of replies to people, but this sums up what I think pretty handily. There are lots of perfectly natural, non-disgusting, reasonable things that are simply inappropriate during a setting where all eyes are on you. I’d have no problem if she was breast feeding in her office, even during open-door office hours! At lunch? Fine. Even in the audience of the class, whatever. But when all eyes are on you? You need to maintain that class’ attention on the topic, not you, and doing something unusual undermines that.
[/QUOTE]

This is basically how I feel. Just because something is natural and in no way shameful, illegal, or otherwise wrong, doesn’t automatically make it appropriate for any and all situations. She was teaching a class. It would have been rude to be scarfing down a hoagie as well. If baby is getting hungry, ask the class to wait for just a moment, pop outside into the hallway, do your thing, and pop back in. This would never have been an issue had she just done it in the hallway (read: a different public place where she wasn’t giving a lecture).
Honestly, she looks to me like someone who likes to abuse her power.

[QUOTE=Professor Pine]
She continued, “When the incident occurred, were you worried about what your students would think? Did they seem uncomfortable, did they say anything?”

I slapped my palm on my forehead in frustration. What I wanted to say was “Who cares? Do university students really need to be so mollycoddled that they should not see something I do on public transportation nearly every day?” But I believe my answer was more along the lines of “I’m the professor. I’m in a position of authority in the classroom. How likely is it that they will out themselves as being afraid of a partially-exposed breast on the first day of a course on feminist anthropology?”
[/QUOTE]

She decided to pull her “position of authority” into the discussion. All of a sudden, it’s not “it’s not a problem to breastfeed in public,” it’s “I’m the professor, dammit, and I can do as I please, and screw anyone who doesn’t like it.” This isn’t about her kid, it’s about her; it’s a power trip.
Still, the biggest issue for me isn’t the breastfeeding, it’s how she took her kid to class and that the students were keeping an eye on the kid for her.

[QUOTE=Professor Pine]
I sped through the lecture and syllabus review with Lee, dressed in her comfiest blue onesie, alternately strapped to my back and crawling on the floor by my feet. The flow of my lecture was interrupted once by “Professor, your son has a paper-clip in his mouth” (I promptly extracted it without correcting my students’ gendered assumptions) and again when she crawled a little too close to an electrical outlet.
[/QUOTE]

I mean, here she is letting her kid crawl around on the floor, putting dirty paper clips in her mouth, getting near electrical sockets, and she actually writes with a hostile tone towards a student who was keeping an eye on her child? Interrupting the “flow” of her lecture, removing the paper clip “without correcting my students’ gendered assumptions?” Seriously, piece of work doesn’t even begin to describe this woman.

I can see her deciding to take the kid in at first, if she thought she had no alternatives. But once the kid decided to try the AU paper clip sampler, she should have strapped the kid to her back for the rest of the lecture, passed the lecture off to the TA, or truncated the lecture right then and there. Instead, she just lets the kid keep roaming and lets the students and TA pick up her slack. Instead of rescheduling her all-important first class, she decided to half-ass it, load it with distractions, and take an antagonistic tone toward anyone who decided to question her on it. It was inappropriate and unprofessional.

89

This is almost the biggest point for me. But even then I’d be willing to forgive her. Some days I finish teaching and I’m like, “WOOOO, I’m a rock star teacher!” and other days I finish teaching and I’m like, “Christ, how did this day ever end?” We’re all human: we sometimes bring our A-games to our jobs, and we sometimes bring our D-games. And when your kid is sick but you’re not prepped for having a TA cover your first day, well, one way or another you bring your D-game to that class session.

That’s human. That’s forgivable.

What’s not forgivable is her attitude afterwards. When you have a crappy day at work, the right thing to do is to admit it, to apologize, maybe to explain why things went wrong, and to try to keep this particular thing from ever happening again. “Sorry, students,” she could have said. “I was distracted yesterday by my kid, and I know some of y’all were as well. There are some interesting sociological contexts that led to this event, and we’ll discuss those as part of this class. But in the end, yesterday wasn’t the best class session, and I’ll make it up to you.” Had she done that, this story wouldn’t be newsworthy.

Instead she got huffily self-righteous about it, showed no understanding of her failings as a teacher that day, indeed turned around and nastily blamed anyone who questioned her. That’s irresponsible, and worse, that suggests she’s not going to try to do better next time.

90

In complete agreement. She sounds like an attention whore, to be honest.

91

As others have pointed out. It wasn’t what she did was so over the top bad (but it wasn’t good either IMO), it’s her BS over the top reactions after the fact.

Either she is clueless, full of herself , or just looking for a fight. Or perhaps all of those.

92

Nasty. But not in the least bit surprised. It doesn’t take much more than perseverance to grab a doctorate, and there is a good reason the term ‘absent-minded professor’ is, well, a term. Clueless tard teaching a class. What else is new?

93

I see the issue differently. I think it’s a shame that she had nowhere else to take the baby.

My cohort is stuffed with working mothers in very busy careers, and they vary pretty widely in how well they handle it. In my experience, the most important factor separating them is how engaged the father is, but a very close second is how much of a local support system she has. That usually means extended family–parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, lots of people who are thrilled to spend a few hours with their grandkid/nephew/whatever, and in such numbers that there’s usually someone available in a pinch and you’re not wearing anyone out.

It’s much harder for people who move away from their extended families (or who don’t have much of one to speak of), but it’s not impossible. I don’t have kids, but if I did I can think of half a dozen people who would be happy to take one off my hands for a few hours in an emergency, none of whom are related to me. But I’m a fairly socially outgoing person who puts a lot of emphasis on having a social structure like that, and it takes a lot of time and energy to build one from scratch. That certainly wasn’t true for the first couple of years that I lived here. And I know plenty of people who have lived in a city for ten years and don’t know anyone well enough to invite them over for dinner, much less well enough to ask them to take their kid for a little bit.

The fact that I can’t always be sure I’ll have that support system–since I don’t see us living near either of our extended families anytime soon, and I can’t be sure we’ll always live here–is a big part of the reason why I don’t want to have kids.

We do need to improve the dynamics for working mothers, but I also think we need to encourage more engagment with one another within communities, and help working mothers who can’t do it on their own by not making them do it on their own. That whole “it takes a village to raise a child” thing? It’s still true.

That’s all a preface to the fact that I think she needs a better backup plan in place for the not-exactly-unforeseeable event that her kid has a fever and can’t go to daycare. I wish it were easier for her to make a plan like that.

As for the breastfeeding–yeah, I think it’s tacky. I don’t care when someone breastfeeds in a restaurant or an airport or whatever and can be subtle about it, but when a whole bunch of people are required to be staring at you then it’s not a good time. In a two-hour class I think she could have excused herself for a little bit.

94

You’re totally right that it’s tough to pull up stakes and get settled in a new place (I’ve done it three times myself). But it seems this is not her first year at American. If it is in fact true that she had no other option, I just see her lack of either a backup to watch the baby or a backup to handle the class (as suggested by Hippie Hollow) as probably symptomatic of the fact that she acts like a complete tool.

95

i thought i’d check things out at AU.

it seems the university is all behind her. on the website front page in the education section is a page, “Empowering Teachers to Feed”. no wait that’s , “Empowering Teachers to Lead”. time for new glasses i guess.

96

I don’t think it’s automatically unprofessional that she took the baby to class in an emergency situation, and maybe not even that she breast-fed her in class. (It’s unusual enough to be distracting for the students, but maybe violating a cultural norm in a harmless way and opening up a conversation about those norms is exactly what you should do on the first day of an anthropology-and-gender class. At least, I can imagine it working well in the hands of the right professor.)

Pretty much everything else about the way Pine has handled the publicity surrounding the incident has been blatantly unprofessional, however, so I don’t have too much confidence in her ability to be the right professor to pull this sort of thing off in a productive way.

97

Among faculty members, pinch-hitting for colleagues is a pretty common practice and we do it for each other - not because we’re nice, but because we know we’ll need that favor one day. She couldn’t reach out to a colleague for help in this regard?

It sounds like she might be a single parent - and if that’s so, it’s virtually a necessity to have some semblance of a backup plan in case your kid gets sick. I’ve gotten the call midday that my son is sick and has to come home, so we have plans on how to handle such a situation. It might throw us for a loop for an hour or so, but we have a plan for something which is frankly pretty common with young kids.

With that knowledge, I’ve become friends with a number of young parents in my department and college. We’re a pretty close support group that exists out of necessity… Pine should take it upon herself to initiate such a group, if it doesn’t exist.

Many universities have resources to assist with work-family balance. Is AU behind the times, or is Pine out of the loop on these resources? I suspect it’s the latter.

We academics are very good at pointing out when our students drop the ball and don’t appropriately take responsibility for their actions… maybe she came up short in this regard. As Fretful Porpentine notes, she hasn’t handled the furor very well, so I do sense an agenda is being forced here. Not really fair to drop that onto a class the first day.

98

seems like she created the furor.

the student paper claimed they stated to her that if they wrote an article that they wouldn’t name names. she did a preemptive rebuttal on the internet before the student newspaper printed anything. the national media picked it up from there.

99

I did actually breastfeed my daughter in PhD sessions - but I was a student, and she was tiny. You would never have seen a glimpse of boob - breastfeeding bras, slings and covers make that easy. I wouldn’t have done so when she were old enough to crawl around because then my attention would have been too much on the baby and it would have been far too distracting to the other students.

That’s the issue, not the breastfeeding or the sick baby. Anyone who’s terrified of baby germs must be terrified of daily life. It’s not like they carry mutant alien immunoresistant supergerms just because they’re too young to vote.

TBH, though, WRT the breastfeeding: at a year old, most babies do not need breastfeeding during the daytime, or it’s just a lunchtime feed and isn’t like the feedmenow! needs of younger babies. Sick babies of that age might need breastfeeding for comfort, but then they wouldn’t also be crawling around. I find it highly unlikely that she actually needed to breastfeed the baby during that particular hour, which makes me think she may have kinda made a show of it and did actually make people uncomfortable.