Is Having a Stay-at-Home Spouse the Secret to Academic Success?

Have you ever heard that quote: “Behind every successful man, there stands a woman”? I have often thought about that quote in relation to my senior male academic colleagues. However, today, I want to talk about how it relates to me. How does having a supportive, stay-at-home husband provide me with privileges in academia?

The reason I ask this question is that there is an assumption that this is an undeniable privilege. Consider this comment on FSP’s blog: “I think people with a stay at home spouse should have an asterisk next to their name on their CVs and tenure documents, like baseball players who've taken steroids.”

First of all, there is no doubt that having a supportive husband has been integral to my success. I entered graduate school in 1999. My husband and I married in 2001, and had twin daughters soon afterwards. My husband is an artist and a musician, and he simply was not going to be able to earn enough in his chosen profession to pay for day care for our daughters. He did work while I was on leave from graduate school. But, when I went back to school, he stopped working. He has rarely had a full-time job since.

It did not make economic sense for my husband to work full time when we had twin infants, and less so when our third daughter was born. Putting all three children in day care would have cost between $2500 and $3000 a month and the jobs for which he qualified would have netted him about $1000 a month. As a graduate student, I was barely netting $1000 myself.

It was not until 2008 that we had all three children in free public school. At that point, my husband could have gotten full-time work. However, he did not for three main reasons: 1) In Lawrence, Kansas where we live, entry-level jobs pay very little; 2) Music and art are his passion, not working for the man; and 3) We love to travel and any job he would get would not permit us to take 4-week vacations in December and three-month vacations in May. Thus, my husband has become mostly a stay-at-home dad, although he occasionally sells jewelry, plays music, takes odd jobs, or works on our house.

In case you are wondering, we have been able to take vacations even though we have just one salary because we live fairly frugally in a low-cost area of the country. We have made vacations a priority over durable consumer goods and expensive nights out at home.

For us, his staying at home has mostly been a lifestyle decision. I have a flexible job as an academic and he has even more flexibility as a self-employed artist. I have thought a lot about the privileges it brings me (as a woman and mother) to have a husband who works as much or as little as he likes. Here are some of the things my husband does on a regular basis:

1. Grocery shopping
2. Picking up the kids from school and transporting them to activities
3. Taking the kids to doctor and dentist appointments
4. Staying home with the kids when they are ill
5. Cleaning and cooking
6. Yard work

Things I do on a regular basis include:

1. Laundry
2. Helping kids with homework
3. Getting kids dressed and groomed in the morning
4. Reading to kids at night
5. Paying bills and keeping track of finances
6. Vacation planning

Looking at these lists, it is clear that my life is easier than a single parent who earns the same salary as I do. A single parent would have to do all of those things (and more) or pay someone to do them. On my salary, it would be a stretch to pay people to do all of these things for us. Thus, I can only imagine that being a single parent in academia can be very challenging, especially if the other parent is out of the picture emotionally and financially.

But, what about an academic who is married to a well-paid professional or even a decently-paid academic?

I do think that if my husband were able to earn a decent salary doing what he loves, he would do it. But, we simply have not been able to figure out how he could do that. And, if he were able to make a decent salary doing what he loves, then I think that we would simply pay people to help us out with the things he normally does around the house. Right?

For grocery shopping, there are grocery services. We could pay someone to transport the children to their after school activities, to clean the house, and to do the yard work. The greatest difficulty would be when one of the children falls ill. For that, one of us would have to stay home. However, the other things it seems that we could pay someone to do.

So, how much privilege is there in having a stay-at-home spouse versus a spouse with a well-paying job? Am I missing something in the equation here? Do I have privileges that a two-income household does not have?

As I mentioned above, it is clear that an academic with a stay-at-home spouse (or a working partner) has advantages over a single parent. It also is evident that there are privileges associated with having a well-paid partner as opposed to a low-wage partner. In that case, I am very lucky that my partner is happy working from home, not making very much money with his jewelry and music, and dedicating most of his time to our home and children. If he didn’t find that fulfilling and instead preferred to work for $9 an hour as an intern somewhere, then things would be more complicated. Or, if we lived somewhere where we couldn’t get by on my salary alone, life would be more difficult.

What do you think? Can parents outsource household tasks or are there real limits to that? Do academics with stay-at-home spouses have advantages over two-income couples?

How Smart Do You Have to Be To Become a Successful Academic?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, he argues that success is often the product of hard work, combined with timing, luck, and ability. He also contends that superior intelligence is not necessary for success; you just need to be over a certain threshold. (This threshold theory of intelligence was proposed by Ellis Paul Torrance, and popularized by Gladwell.) Academia would certainly count for one of the areas where a certain threshold of intelligence is required.

I think the threshold theory of intelligence is interesting for two reasons. First, we can honestly ask how you know whether or not you are over the threshold. Secondly, once you are over the threshold, you don’t have to worry about how smart you are: you just need to work hard and hope that your timing is right.

Are you smart enough?

A few weeks ago, Jonathan mentioned the threshold theory on his blog. He argues

if you have a PhD from a respectable school, if you've published an article or two, if you've been engaging in the actual work in a way that's intrinsically satisfying to yourself, then you are over the threshold.

I agree with Jonathan, but I suspect he places the bar a bit too high. I think that anyone who is accepted into a graduate program at a school that consistently places students in tenure track positions and who is able to complete an M.A. thesis is likely over the threshold. I am tempted to put the bar lower, but will leave it there.

If that describes you, then we can presume you are intelligent enough to become a successful academic. You see, you don’t have to be concerned about whether or not you are the brightest in your cohort or the current star on the academic job market. You just have to be over the threshold and then work hard enough towards your success. If that does not describe you, then you might still be over the threshold, and just need to develop the skills to complete an M.A. thesis.

A Meritocracy?

It is funny to listen to myself say that if you work hard you will be successful, because I know we do not have a meritocracy in the academy, or anywhere else for that matter. However, I also know that many academics are plagued with doubt about their abilities and that these doubts keep them from being successful.

One aspect of being a successful academic is that it requires a certain set of skills. And, these skills can be learned and honed. As Malcolm Gladwell and Jonathan Mayhew argue, you need to have a certain level of ability to become a successful academic. But, as they both would likely agree, there are many more people with this ability than those who actually become successful academics.

Learning the Skills for Success

Focusing on learning and teaching skills for success is a more democratic project than attempting to identify the most intelligent people in the world. A focus on skills also will lead to more knowledge production. I am in favor of the production of knowledge and believe that our knowledge base will be substantially enhanced if we are able to draw from as wide a pool of knowledge-producers as possible. Malcolm Gladwell points out that Canada could have twice as many hockey stars as it currently does if it allowed for two leagues: one league for players born between January 1st and June 30th and another for players born on or after July 1st. Academia could probably have many more brilliant scholars if we could convince more people early on that academic success is not based on superior intelligence (a fixed trait), but on learning and mastering a set of skills (a learned trait).

In addition to describing these skills in this blog, I teach a writing and publishing class each Fall at the University of Kansas. In that class, I do my best to teach second year M.A. students the skills they need to become successful academics: time management, daily writing, planning, editing, critical thinking, and analytical skills. One semester is certainly not enough to teach all of the skills, but my intention is to create a situation where students to understand that the completion of an M.A. thesis is dependent upon learning a certain set of skills, not on being the smartest person in the room.

If you are working towards becoming a successful or more productive academic, I suggest that you think of those areas where you can improve your skill set. What are the skills you need to be successful? How can you learn them? Focusing on improving your skills as opposed to raising your IQ is much more likely to help you to become more successful.