FIRST PERSON

Not the Primary Caregiver

An administrator in student services, and a new mother, seeks to move up the ranks

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By ELLA DeJON

I am a registered Democrat, a social liberal, a tree-hugging pacifist, a religious lefty, and the mother of a baby who would be dressed in an Obama onesie if I had one. So it was certainly to my surprise that the politician I found myself most interested in this election season was an antichoice, pro-drilling, moose-hunting Republican.

Like many people, I had never heard of Sarah Palin until the announcement that she would be on the Republican ticket. As I read the reports and quickie biographies that went online in the minutes after the news broke, I found myself unable to stop looking at her family pictures — her handsome eldest son and healthy daughters in the first pictures and then, days later, her youngest child, sweet and sleeping, with the telltale signs of Down syndrome on his face.

Watching the news that evening with my husband, a former journalist turned academic, I began to feel a sense of dread and sympathy for Palin. The talking heads, he said, are going to eat her alive about that baby. Sure enough, as we watched the pundits start to spin, the predicable questions began: Who is going to take care of her kids? What kind of mother would leave her baby, her special-needs baby, to go on the campaign trail? What kind of misplaced beauty-queen ambition is this?

Like Palin, I have a family that includes teenagers and an infant. And, like Palin, I am also on the job market this year seeking to move up in academe, into a position that would require more of my time and energy than does the job I have now.

I am a midlevel administrator in student services. My job is interesting and, at times, challenging, but it is entirely manageable. I work 35 hours a week, and I go home. A flex schedule allows me to spend mornings with the baby and to leave early on occasion for dance shows and school events for the teenagers. I realize my good fortune but find myself growing bored. I have few late nights at work, no weekends, and no evening phone calls from colleagues.

That would almost certainly change if I am successful in my attempts to move into a higher-level administrative position. The dean I work for knows I am seeking to move up and warns me of 60 to 70-hour work weeks and board meetings that stretch into the night. She talks about the stress of managing multiple departments and the unpredictability of dealing with students in crisis and their helicopter parents. But that all sounds appealing to me in a way that music recitals and PTA meetings never have.

My dean is single and childless by choice. Her job, she says, is her baby.

I had planned to go on the market last year. Then, as luck and biology would have it, I got pregnant. My husband and I decided that maybe one major life-changing event at a time was enough, and so I reluctantly tucked away my résumé and waited.

As my pregnancy progressed, I used the time to try to further groom myself for an administrative position. I served on several committees, taught classes, bought an expensive and roomy maternity suit, and presented at as many conferences as I could before I had to stop flying.

I also sought out mentors and got positive feedback about my readiness to move up. My former graduate-school adviser told me, "Once you have that baby, you'll be a strong candidate. It shouldn't matter, but you'll be glad you weren't trying to get hired now. Your belly is a distraction whether you like it or not."

So I waited and made plans and began to negotiate a child-care schedule in which my husband, who is an adjunct faculty member, could be the primary caregiver and I could work on becoming the primary breadwinner.

My professional ambition was somewhat set aside during my pregnancy, but it was not diminished, although many people apparently expected it to be. I have been a stepmom for several years, but this was my first pregnancy and thus my first time experiencing the special frankness that some people have when it comes to giving pregnant women advice. In addition to nosy questions about my diet and plans to breast-feed, I was asked repeatedly if I planned to return to work after the baby was born. My husband, it bears noting, was never asked that question. Not once.

My husband has never been asked most of the child-related questions that people regularly ask me. He hasn't been asked about his child-care arrangements or parenting philosophies.

However, he is frequently told he is a great father when people realize that he is more than just casually involved in our baby's life. He gets tons of credit for doing things — like feeding, diapering, and attending to the basic physical needs of this helpless little person — that are the bare minimum of parenting.

He is mildly insulted by that praise, by the fact that our friends and academic colleagues think of him as somehow more optional in the care of our child than I am. I am frustrated by it, too, but not surprised. Throughout the course of my pregnancy, people assumed that I was going to be more in charge of the child's life, that I would be the one to make career sacrifices, even though I have always been visibly more ambitious than my husband.

I watched a lot of news as the election progressed, often as I nursed my son in the quiet early mornings before I headed to my office for the day. I couldn't help but notice the lack of questioning when it came to the male presidential candidates and their families. You don't see commentary on how Barack Obama will balance the demands of the presidency with the demands of raising two young children. Although I believe Sarah Palin made her role as a mother more central to the narrative of her campaign than Obama did his role as a father, I also think that the way people responded to Palin illustrates how deeply rooted our cultural stereotypes still are about the differing roles of mothers and fathers.

As the pundits weighed in on Palin and her family, I found myself reflecting on my own job search and what it will mean for my family. As my search progresses and, I hope, I begin to interview for positions, more and more of the responsibility for caring for our child will fall on my husband's shoulders. I feel confident that he is just as competent a caregiver as I am, although he does fall short in the breast-feeding department. I feel certain that I am professionally ready for the next level. I believe that my son will benefit from having a mother who is fulfilled and challenged in her work life. I do sometimes worry, just a little, that I am being selfish even as I remind myself that becoming a mother does not mean that my sense of ambition should diminish.

I didn't vote for Sarah Palin. I may have felt a sense of connection to her, but I am still a bleeding-heart liberal. And I may have questioned her qualifications for the office of vice president, but not because she is a mother. I hope that her presence in the race will continue to raise questions about why Americans still have so many assumptions about the role of working mothers, and about why there seems to be a lingering sense that ambitious women are not to be trusted.

My first round of applications are in the mail — announcing my candidacy, you could say — and I plan to pursue my campaign without apology, with my husband standing behind me, holding the baby and a bottle of breast milk.

Ella DeJon is the pseudonym of a midlevel administrator in student affairs at a college in the West. She will be chronicling her job search.