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Faculty Fathers: Understanding the Experiences of Faculty Men with Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Title: Faculty Fathers: Understanding the Experiences of Faculty Men with Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Language: English
Authors: Blakewood Pascale, Amanda, Ehrlich, Suzanne, Hicks-Roof, Kristen
Source: New Directions for Higher Education. Fall 2022 (199):89-101.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 13
Publication Date: 2022
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Descriptors: College Faculty, Males, Fathers, Employed Parents, Pandemics, COVID-19, Experience
DOI: 10.1002/he.20452
ISSN: 0271-0560
1536-0741
Abstract: To effectively cultivate systems of equity, it is important to not only understand the experiences of those who are most affected by inequity but also of those who are in positions of power and privilege. This study explores how faculty men with children navigated the pandemic experience. Two major thematic findings emerged including 'Not (as) Interrupted' and '"I" feel supported'. These findings suggest that academic fathers may be emerging from the pandemic positioned differently than academic mothers. This research has implications for higher education administrators and faculty in the shaping of practice and policies aimed at equitably supporting faculty post-pandemic.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2022
Accession Number: EJ1355784
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0160306336;ndh01sep.22;2022Nov22.02:31;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0160306336-1">Faculty fathers: Understanding the experiences of faculty men with children during the COVID‐19 pandemic </title> <sbt id="AN0160306336-2">INTRODUCTION</sbt> <p>To effectively cultivate systems of equity, it is important to not only understand the experiences of those who are most affected by inequity but also of those who are in positions of power and privilege. This study explores how faculty men with children navigated the pandemic experience. Two major thematic findings emerged including 'Not (as) Interrupted' and '"I" feel supported'. These findings suggest that academic fathers may be emerging from the pandemic positioned differently than academic mothers. This research has implications for higher education administrators and faculty in the shaping of practice and policies aimed at equitably supporting faculty post‐pandemic.</p> <p>Though over the last several decades there have been efforts to address and mitigate blatant outward displays of sexism and celebration of patriarchal norms in the academy, gendered norms negatively affecting women persist. Perhaps this is most evidenced in examinations of experiences of mothers and fathers in the academy. The growing body of literature on the experience of academic mothers suggests that the COVID‐19 pandemic presented a situation where faculty women experienced difficulty managing the demands of their work and home lives (Burk et al., 2020; Deryugina et al., 2021; King & Frederickson, 2020; McDermott, 2020). Less understood, however, are the COVID‐19 experiences of faculty fathers. In this paper, we lean on the perspectives provided by Goode's (1960) role strain theory to understand how faculty men with children experienced the COVID‐19 pandemic. To begin, we focus on the literature contextualizing and situating the current climate for faculty fathers and their reflections of their pandemic experiences.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-3">LITERATURE</hd> <p>Our review of the literature relevant to the present study is organized into studies informing four topic areas. These areas include (a) parenting roles at home, (b) gender and parents in the workplace, (c) parents and the academy, and (d) COVID‐19, parenting and academic life. Taken together this collective body of work provides the background and context for our study of the pandemic experiences of academic fathers.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-4">Parenting roles at home</hd> <p>Research has shown that there are differences in parenting obligations and child‐rearing styles between women and men (Doucet, 1995; Yaffe, 2020) For instance, mothers tend to be more responsive, accepting, and supportive than fathers, whereas fathers tend to be more restrictive, coercive, and show less parental concern (Yaffe, 2020). There have been some shifts in fatherhood in the last half‐century as fathers are now expected to take on more roles with their children in addition to providing for their family (Sayer et al., 2004). Even with these expectations, a small percentage of men have been deemed 'equal partners' leaving mothers with 'outsized' roles (Forbes et al., 2022). Across the world, researchers have shown that although men are becoming more involved in child‐raising, women are still responsible for the majority of housework and the health and well‐being of the family, including organizing the children's lives (Doucet, 2017). This gendered dynamic persists even in households where women earn as much, or more, than their spouse (Sayer, 2016; Schneider, 2011).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-5">Gender and parents in the workplace</hd> <p>Another line of research examines gendered workplace expectations. Studies indicate that some occupations are considered more compatible for certain genders. For instance, Nonnan et al. (2020) found that female‐compatible occupations are "occupation[s] that [are] associated with high ethical standards or "goodness", safety, and part‐time opportunities" (p. 11). Nonnan et al. (2020) noted that father‐compatible occupations were more difficult to identify. Other research suggests that male‐compatible organizations are those that require long hours of their employees or that assume work to be an individual's number one priority. This approach, however, comes at the expense of including those with family responsibilities (Acker, 1990). Organizations that perpetuate the traditional all‐consuming work culture, or that maintain the "invisibility of the parental role and the stigma attached to adopting flexible working practices" (Ewald et al., 2020, p.31), reinforce the notion of the ideal worker as male (Sallee, 2012). This may help to explain why Gould et al. (2018) found that in situations where a parent needs to leave work to attend to a child, mothers are more likely than fathers to perceive that their commitment to their job may be called into question (Gould et al., 2018).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-6">Parents and the academy</hd> <p>Gendered expectations of mothers and fathers exist within the academy as well. In the "publish or perish" academic climate challenges facing academic mothers (and to much lesser extent fathers) have been widely documented (Dickson & Taylor, 2021; Reddick et al., 2012). The academic climate demands long hours dedicated to research activities, service responsibilities, on top of core teaching responsibilities. Disparities among academic parents and their experiences based on gender have been noted in a variety of themes (Morgan et al., 2021). From workload to academic structures, primary themes that have emerged include: care (Eversole & Crowder, 2020), workload (Lawless, 2021), time and clock stopping (Fulweiler et al., 2021), ideal worker (Sallee, 2012; Wolf‐Wendel & Ward, 2006), and father‐friendly university structure and professional obligations (Miller, 2021). Sallee (2012) suggests that the ideal worker frame characterizing the culture at many universities may encourage academic fathers to prioritize work over home, whereas academic mothers maintain a high level of home life responsibility, which both created stress and also led women to develop work life strategies to manage home and work life demands (Wolf‐Wendel & Ward, 2015).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-7">COVID‐19, parenting and academic life</hd> <p>Previous literature on academic mothers describes instances of disruption to daily lives to be a source of stress (Hardy et al., 2016; Sallee & Pascale, 2012). For instance, in their study of women faculty in the sciences, Sallee & Pascale (2012) found that many of their participants spoke about an instance when their child was sick, and they disrupted their work to care for the child while their husband continued to work. In times of disruption, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, parenting can be affected differently than during stable times (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2020). The COVID‐19 pandemic required academics to work primarily, oftentimes solely, from home creating instances where lab‐based research was stalled, and teaching was pivoted to online. At the same time schools closed and children were sent home. The shift to remote work and the need for childcare at home caused increased challenges for parents, including academics. Lantsoght et al. (2021) found that of the central responsibilities for academics, research was most negatively affected by the pandemic, followed by teaching and work‐life balance. On the heels of these unprecedented times, a new line of research has emerged related to higher education pandemic response, with a fair amount of attention on the experiences of women faculty with children (Burk et al., 2020; King & Frederickson, 2020; McDermott, 2020). Perhaps reflecting the pandemic‐altered reality where the closure of schools left many working parents with little choice but to simultaneously attend to their work and home life roles and demands (Marinoni et al., 2020), much of the post‐pandemic work on faculty with children invokes the term MotherScholar. The term "MotherScholar" coined by Matias in 2011, identified the blended roles and responsibilities of being a mother in academia. Despite the number of terms used to identify faculty men with children, the term FatherScholar is absent from the literature. In this study, we explore the experiences of faculty men with children during the pandemic, to better understand and discuss the ways the academic father experience reflected, or not, the blended roles and responsibilities experiences described by academic mothers, or "MotherScholars" (Mataias, 2011).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-8">PERSPECTIVE/THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK</hd> <p>Goode's (1960) theory of role strain guides this work. In essence, Goode suggested that individuals possess many different roles, and that each role comes with its own set of role demands. However, in total a person's overall role system is over‐demanding. To effectively manage an over‐demanding role system, people employ strategies that Goode (1960) identified as <emph>compartmentalization, delegation, elimination of role relationships</emph>, and <emph>extension</emph>. Good suggested that <emph>compartmentalization</emph> describes the process of separation of time and space for given role demands to allow dedication of attention to one role demand at a time. For instance, a faculty member may opt to set aside certain hours of the day to focus exclusively on work or home‐life demands. <emph>Delegation</emph> occurs when an individual selects a qualified person to give away a particular role demand. Having a child attend daycare or school, hiring a house cleaner to manage housework, or turning over data‐collection to a graduate research assistant may be examples of delegation. Another strategy described by Goode is the <emph>elimination of role relationships</emph>. This process occurs when an individual limits responsibility by entirely cutting out particular demands. For instance, an over‐burdened faculty member might remove themselves from a committee to free time for other role responsibilities. <emph>Extension</emph>, a fourth strategy posited, describes the process where an individual strategically expands their time, engaging responsibilities of one particular role in order to mitigate role demands stemming from a different role. This idea can be illustrated by considering a faculty member who assumes an administrative position. The new role may bring increased responsibilities in one regard, but may also lessen the expectations of teaching and/or service associated with a full‐time in‐unit faculty role.</p> <p>In this study we lean on Goode's work in two ways. First, our interview protocol design was developed guided by the perspectives of the role strain theory. Second, we return to the framework to help us to understand and interpret our findings, specifically the ways in which our participants' experiences were reflective, or not, of the pandemic experiences described by faculty mothers in the MotherScholar literature.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-9">METHODS</hd> <p>In this study we examine qualitative data to understand the experiences of pandemic academic fathers. Guiding this inquiry, we asked the questions (a) how did faculty fathers experience the pandemic? and, (b) how did faculty fathers manage role strain associated with competing role demands of fatherhood and their faculty responsibilities?</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-10">Participant selection</hd> <p>After obtaining IRB permission from the authors' home institution, participants were recruited via social media and faculty listserv groups. Purposeful sampling (Patton, 2002) was used to select faculty who identified as a man, were employed full‐time at a 2 or 4‐year institution, and who had at least one child under the age of 18 living at home during the pandemic. Upon agreeing to participate, faculty were directed to sign an informed consent and schedule a zoom interview. Interviews took place during the summer of 2021, and were one‐on‐one, semi‐structured in nature averaging approximately 1 h in length. In total, 10 faculty fathers were interviewed. Relevant demographic information is included in Table 1. Some demographic data was intentionally omitted to protect the confidentiality of participants.</p> <p>1 TABLEDemographic information</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th>Pseudonym(Participant selected)</th><th>Age(s) of Children</th><th>Rank/Title</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Paul</td><td>12 years; 15 years</td><td>Instructor</td></tr><tr><td>Bob</td><td>3 years</td><td>Assistant Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Marty</td><td>5 years; 11 years</td><td>Research Assistant Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Freddy</td><td>12 years; 17 years</td><td>Associate Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Charlie</td><td>2 years; 5 years</td><td>Associate Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Bruce</td><td>3 years; 5 years</td><td>Associate Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Addison</td><td>9 years, 10 years (twins), 14 years, 16 years, 21 years, 24 years</td><td>Full Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Louis</td><td>9 years; 14 years</td><td>Full Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Fred</td><td>2 years; 4 years</td><td>Full Professor</td></tr><tr><td>Daniel</td><td>9 years; 15 years</td><td>Clinical Assistant Professor</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0160306336-11">Data source</hd> <p>The main source of data was a researcher‐created interview protocol. The protocol consisted of three main areas, (a) participants' pandemic experience, (b) questions related to department climate, and (c) wrap‐up questions. An example of a pandemic experience question was "How has the Covid‐19 pandemic influenced your career as a faculty member?". For questions related to department climate we asked items such as, "How would you describe the departmental climate with respect to parenthood and children during Covid‐19?" Wrap‐up questions included questions like, "Is there anything else that you think I should know to better understand your experiences as a professor and father during Covid‐19?". The protocol design was guided by the perspectives of the role strain theory framework (Goode, 1960) and was adapted from protocols used in previous academic mother work/life balance research (Sallee & Pascale, 2012). For example, a question asked participants to describe an instance where their role as a faculty member and a father conflicted. This question reflects the role strain perspective, which assumes that people have multiple roles that carry associated role demands, and that role strain is produced when these demands conflict. Additionally, documents from participants' institutions, such as policies, were utilized to corroborate and triangulate data to better understand/interpret the participants' words. For instance, when a participant mentioned particular policies they deemed to be family‐friendly, we sought to access those policies to guide us in interpretation of the findings.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-12">Methodological approach</hd> <p>This study utilizes an interpretive interview study approach, that most closely resembles case study to situate inquiry (Merriam, 1998). Case study inquiry describes a "bounded system" (Merriam, 1998, p.197); that is, the case being investigated has defined boundaries. In this study, the bounds are set by the context (the pandemic) and the circumstance of academic parenting. Interpretive case study is appropriate to "develop conceptual categories, or to illustrate, support, or challenge theoretical assumptions" (Merriam, 1998, p. 197). Given our study is guided by Goode's (1960) theoretical perspectives, and also that interpretive case study emphasizes social constructs and roles within social contexts, we deemed the interpretive approach well‐aligned with our theoretical and epistemological perspectives.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-13">Positionality statement</hd> <p>Aligned to the perspectives inherent in qualitative interpretive study approaches, we view this study as a co‐construction of knowledge. We acknowledge and respect the role our backgrounds and experiences as faculty members and mothers of young children play in the interpretation of the data. In thinking through the meaning of the data through the narratives of the participants, so too were we simultaneously reflecting on our own experiences as parents and academics during the pandemic.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-14">Data analysis</hd> <p>Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), first we generated open codes by reading through and line‐item coding transcripts. For example, in the open coding phase, words such as "guilt" or "stress" were identified from the transcripts. Then, we grouped these open codes into related concepts and ideas, known as axial coding. For instance, the words "stress" and "guilt" relate as they both describe feelings experienced by participants. Finally, the axial codes were collapsed into themes that described the nature of the participants' experiences.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-15">Trustworthiness</hd> <p>Several strategies were utilized to establish trustworthiness for this study. First, data were analyzed by all three researchers on the team, a strategy termed investigator triangulation (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). This approach allowed for individual review of data and collective discussion of individual analysis to allow different perspectives to enhance the understanding of participant words and meaning. We also engaged in method triangulation in the analysis of both interview and document analysis. Further, peer debriefing was a strategy where we invited and considered the expertise of our academic peers in interpretation of the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). These strategies allowed us to enhance the trustworthiness of our study.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-16">RESULTS</hd> <p>Here we share the major findings and themes from this paper, after which we organize our discussion by reflecting on these findings through the perspectives provided by Goode's (1960) role strain theory. Finally, we discuss the implications of the research and conclusions.</p> <p>Two major themes emerged from our analysis. These themes (a) not (as) interrupted/guilt, and (b) "I" feel supported. These themes speak to the experiences of faculty fathers during the pandemic. The first theme speaks to how faculty fathers personally experienced the pandemic in both their roles as a faculty member and as a parent. The second theme comparatively describes how faculty fathers saw themselves situated within their departmental and university contexts during the pandemic experience.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-17">Key theme 1: Not (as) interrupted</hd> <p>The literature on academic parents, which primarily focuses on mothers suggests that the pandemic was a time of immense stress and role conflict that led to feelings of guilt and exhaustion associated with the competing role demands of being a parent and a scholar (e.g., Spradley et al., 2020). However, in describing their pandemic experience, our faculty fathers' use of descriptors such as "stress" or "guilt" were less prevalent, or applied differently than we might have expected based on previous research. For example, when asked about how the pandemic influenced their careers as faculty, many of the men talked about maintaining their pre‐pandemic work lives. Paul shared, "I felt like I was maintaining more than anything else." Marty reflected on his productivity during the pandemic:</p> <p>It's hard to say what the effect [of the pandemic] is in terms of, if you want to call it productivity, or whatever. I mean, I've still gotten conference proposals in and gotten conference papers accepted. I haven't gotten any journal publications over the past, you know, since this all started. I don't really know whether that would have happened if I'd been in the office more in person or not. It's hard to say, because it's not like it's just been a matter of feeling like I couldn't write or anything. It was more just a matter of where things are with projects.</p> <p>Similarly, Bruce shared, "[The pandemic] did not have a huge impact on my career. I'm already tenured...My wife is a stay‐at‐home mom, so she's primarily watching the kids while I'm upstairs working during the day, which allows me to have a pretty regular schedule." Louis and Freddy both described many instances where they felt their roles as parents and scholars conflicted during the pandemic, but did not, however, feel they had fallen behind in their work, Freddy shared, "I also had two articles that were in the process of being revised for publication. And so, I think a really nice – honestly, it was actually a break. I was working on those articles and getting them to get them up to speed for publication and we got our acceptance during that time." Louis also described his experience in keeping up with work during the pandemic,</p> <p>All the article deadlines didn't necessarily get pushed back or the book chapters that I was working on didn't get pushed back...on days when my wife and both boys were home...the afternoons I try to shift things earlier and I try to cut things off by about 6 or 7 o'clock at night so I could sort of deal with everything else going on.</p> <p>Bob, a recently divorced dad of one did describe the pandemic as a time of stress, but attributed the stress to his personal life rather than the circumstances posed by the pandemic. Addison described how the pandemic allowed him to sleep later than he was generally accustomed to, and though he shared he would typically take a 2 h break during the day to care for his kids to allow his wife some free time, he was generally able to return to his home‐work station uninterrupted until typically 10:00 p.m.</p> <p>Guilt was another term pervasive in the academic parent literature—previous research is laden with descriptions of faculty mothers experiencing guilt over competing role demands associated with being faculty and parent (Marinoni et al., 2020; Pascale et al., 2022); Although generally mention of guilt was less pervasive than expected among our faculty father group, several participants did offer instances where they experienced frustration or guilt over not being able to support students in the same ways as they had pre‐pandemic. For instance, Paul talked about the experience of being one of the few faculty members who continued to teach in person classes through the pandemic and having to alter the class to accommodate the large percentages of absent students who were under quarantine. Paul shared, "I had a lot of plans for the classes that didn't seem to work out...about at least 10% of my students [were out quarantining] at any given moment...so that affected the teaching in my classes because I couldn't really give a full measure of the class". Bob also shared his guilt over his teaching, "I log on. It's very flat. And I feel like my students are not getting a lot of information. And in turn, I feel guilty...COVID has affected my instruction. It's just that we'll go into these very dull, horrible classroom situations that I can't seem to fix."</p> <p>When asked to describe the ways the pandemic affected their faculty careers, many of these faculty fathers talked about the biggest challenge being the shift from in‐person teaching to zoom teaching. For eight of our ten participants, technology was the first challenge presented. For instance, Daniel explained, "Some [of my courses] were face‐to‐face. The ones that were face‐to‐face got moved online. So, workwise, that was probably the biggest impact is moving what we normally would have done face‐to‐face online." Addison confirmed Daniel's words, as he described, "moving everything completely online was a lot of work and even mapping that out and planning it all out." Bob expressed his discomfort with the pandemic‐forced move to online environments in sharing, "so I am really terrible with technology...it is not something I am interested in. It's not something I do well. I'm being pulled into the technological world screaming. But it's the life that we have to live in right now."</p> <p>Taken together the experiences of these participants describe ways in which the pandemic affected their individual lives as faculty members and as parents.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-18">Theme 2: "I" feel supported</hd> <p>The second theme of this study describes our participants' viewpoints as themselves as a faculty member and a father as situated within the socio‐cultural contexts of their departments and university. All of our academic father participants felt that their department was supportive of them with regard to children and family, and this was true both before and during the pandemic. For instance, Daniel shared, "Yeah, I would say our department was very supportive. The university was very–or our department, our college, or university, they were all very supportive, and understanding, and aware that faculty were at home with children." Though each academic father participant expressed that they felt their department was supportive of families during the pandemic, several went on to elaborate that while they personally felt supported, they thought that their experience might have differed from others in the department. For instance, Paul talked about how he felt his department was supportive, but he was aware that there might have been different expectations between women and men in the department, though not "dramatic" differences. He then went on to clarify, "That said, I'm a man and quite often men miss things. So I'm sure you could ask one of the women in my department and they would have completely different stories." Other participants indicated that they did not feel mothers and fathers were held to different expectations. For instance, two participants mentioned rubrics for performance evaluations being the same for mothers and fathers in the department as justification for stating there were no differences in expectations. Freddy described in detail how he felt his department was very supportive of parents. For instance, he indicated that talk of family was common in his department, "talking about schools, or new developments, or funny things that happened, or family trips is pretty common in my department. I would say it's pretty welcoming in that regard." He also shared that while he did not believe there to be a "big difference" in expectations for mothers and fathers in the department, it might be more expected that a woman take a year off for having a child, "And, somebody taking a year off–a woman, not a man, taking a year off because they have a child, is something that is that is much more expected." Beyond this, though he felt there were no differing expectations of mothers and fathers in his department, he suspected this was not the case in the larger university context. As Freddy explained,</p> <p>But I do worry a little bit about how, not so much in our department, but within the university context, that a woman feels like they are being supported, or if they're being seen as somebody who's taking advantage of a system, or what have you. And that would be sad if that were the case, but it wouldn't surprise me, given how administrators can be.</p> <p>Overall, both our faculty fathers described feeling supported in their respective departments. However, several reflected that while they felt supported, they wondered if their mother colleagues experienced the same feelings of support. Particularly in instances where the role demands of parent and faculty member conflicted, our faculty fathers did not feel they would be perceived negatively for attending to home life demands, whereas they acknowledged that their experiences may not reflect those of faculty mothers.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-19">DISCUSSION</hd> <p>When interpreting these findings of faculty fathers' lived experiences, Goode's (1960) theoretical framework helps to guide the discussion related to each construct. The two main themes that emerged from this study were (a) <emph>not as interrupted</emph> and (b) <emph>"I" feel supported</emph>. We explore these themes and discuss the relevance of such experiences in the context of academic experiences.</p> <p>We relied on Goode's (1960) theoretical perspectives to guide us in our conceptualization and interpretation of how faculty fathers negotiate and navigate the impact of the pandemic—a situation where routine life was dismantled, and previously established coping strategies were no longer viable options to managing multiple and competing roles. As explained in role strain views (Goode, 1960), this type of research assumes that when a person is involved in multiple roles there is a source of instability, because it creates role conflict. Role conflict occurs when there are incompatible demands made on a person (Rizzo et al., 1970). Using the perspective of role strain theory, there lies a greater likelihood that having multiple responsibilities could be associated with role overload and role conflict. When given a greater breadth of responsibilities, a person is likely to have a wide range of role expectations across various spaces. In knowing that a person's attention is limited to only one working sphere at a time (Gonzalez, 2005), juggling multiple demands is likely to overload a person's resources (Rizzo et al., 1970).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-20">Faculty fathers and role strain</hd> <p>Academic parents are tasked with balancing the role demands of parenthood and academia. For some, the pandemic pivot dramatically shifted both home and work responsibilities, which resulted in accumulated role strain. The discussion unpacks how these faculty fathers coped and managed their roles, through various coping mechanisms as identified in Goode's role strain theory. The four key strategies leveraged by individuals when dealing with role strain include (a) delegation, (b) elimination, (c) compartmentalization, and (d) extension.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-21">Delegation</hd> <p>This construct of role strain is focused on delegating responsibilities to another individual, to offset the burden on themselves. During the pandemic, our faculty fathers did not describe situations where they utilized this strategy outside of spouses delegating to each other. There were several instances in which academic fathers expressed gratitude that they were able to delegate more childcare responsibilities to their spouse, which ultimately relieved their responsibility. Our participants tended to describe this exchange as part of the expectation, resulting in their feeling more time [compared to pre‐pandemic] to work on their own teaching and scholarship. Previous research on academic mothers during the pandemic did not describe the delegation exchange as expectation, but rather as feeling fortunate to have their spouse's help, and guilty for not spending time with children while attending to work demands (Pascale et al., 2022).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-22">Elimination of role relationships</hd> <p>Goode (1960) described this construct as an individual eliminating a particular role or responsibility to offset the overdemand. The participants did not describe ways in which they removed or distanced themselves in particular roles, rather they felt individually supported both at work and at home. In terms of over demanding role strain, it was expected that this would be the likely strategy employed; however, the academic fathers described their experiences as 'maintaining', thus without a need to eliminate a role or responsibility.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-23">Compartmentalization</hd> <p>The compartmentalization construct is defined as an individual has set dedicated boundaries of each demand they feel, which allows for concentrated efforts on that particular role (Goode, 1960). The academic fathers described their experience indicating this strategy as one of the most utilized, as they were able to clearly compartmentalize 'work time' from 'personal time'. Many of the fathers described this experience as a better opportunity for work‐life balance, by being able to spend more time with their spouse and child(ren) during small chunks of the day (e.g., lunch or dinner time). This finding was somewhat surprising particularly in comparison to the experiences shared by faculty mothers during the pandemic, who reported the constant switching between the role of mother and scholar to be exhausting and counter to their ability to perform either role effectively. In other words, academic mothers tended to count the inability to compartmentalize their roles as faculty and mothers as one of the major sources of strain resulting from the lock down circumstances (Burke et al., 2020; Pascale et al., 2022).</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-24">Extension</hd> <p>Extension is described in Goode's (1960) theory as the last construct and describes taking on a new role as a strategy to reduce the strain from other roles and demands. During the pandemic our faculty fathers did not describe use of this strategy. There was no mention of additional roles or responsibilities that were elected, likely as the pandemic limited opportunities and reframed current roles and responsibilities.</p> <p>Perhaps one of the most important take‐aways from this research relates not only to the use, or lack of opportunity to use, strategies during role strain but also the feelings produced as a result of using (or not) role strain strategies (Goode, 1960). Overall, we found it interesting that our faculty fathers were using role strain management strategies, but in contrast to the literature reports on faculty mothers during the pandemic, seemed less likely to experience guilt or stress in doing so. Sallee (2012) described how academic mothers and fathers displayed different emotions (e.g., guilt vs. pride) regarding use of family‐friendly policies on campus. Our research suggests the same outcome from academic fathers as compared to mothers in their use of role strain strategies during the pandemic.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-25">Implications and recommendations</hd> <p>Overall, the description of the pandemic experience portrayed by our faculty father participants was strikingly less interrupted and overburdened than that described by faculty mothers during this time. Furthermore, even the faculty fathers who described significant changes to their daily work lives did not feel as though their work productivity suffered, nor did they express guilt associated with spending more time with family or, on work. However, our faculty fathers noted that their experience may differ for faculty mothers across their departments and universities.</p> <p>This research has important implications for practice and policy and points to several recommendations to better, and more equitably, support academic parents overall. Inevitably there will be times of role conflict for individuals with multiple roles. In this case, the pandemic provided an on‐going and major change that rendered many strategies, previously used to manage role strain, unavailable. To help faculty parents mitigate role strain, administrators might consider intentionally aiding in role strain strategies within the department or university. For instance, typical school pick up or drop off times should try to be avoided in scheduling of important meetings or professional development opportunities. This approach would better allow faculty parents to compartmentalize and may help to avoid producing situations where faculty mothers are stigmatized and academic fathers are exalted for attending to parenting responsibilities. Second, it is recommended that universities offer training to administrators, including department chairs and deans on creating culture that supports faculty balancing multiple demanding roles. Our research suggests that it is important to encourage open conversations about family or other related roles outside of the faculty role. The precedence and expectations set by the chair and/or dean are key to creating a culture that either helps to equitably mitigate or exacerbate role strain for academic parents. Intentionally and openly challenging the "ideal worker" norms that assumes that workers are "carefree" is important to consider as a way to support faculty who are managing multiple roles. We suggest administration partner with assessment offices on their campus to create a way for faculty to provide feedback regarding the climate of the department as related to family‐friendly culture. It may also be beneficial to create opportunity and space for faculty fathers to better understand the experience of being a woman and/or a mother within the academy, and their departments. Our research suggests that faculty fathers may perceive that women and men are held to equal standards, but also consider that their perceptions may not be shared by their women colleagues. Understanding how faculty perceive their departments with regard to family‐friendly climate and culture will help administration to build and grow supportive and equitable work environments.</p> <hd id="AN0160306336-26">Conclusion and scholarly significance</hd> <p>This research has important scholarly significance. Despite efforts to reform, deep‐seated inequities persist in the academy. Facilitating systemic change requires not only examination of those who are most affected by the inequity, but also those who are in positions of privilege and power. To date, very little research has focused on the faculty father experience. Furthermore, no known research has examined how faculty fathers experienced the pandemic. 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Administrative Science Quarterly, 15, 150 – 163.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Sallee, M. W. (2012). The ideal worker or the ideal father: Organizational structures and culture in the gendered university, Research in Higher Education, 53 (7), 782 – 802.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Sallee, M. W., & Pascale, A. B. (2012). Multiple roles, multiple burdens: The experiences of female scientists with children. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 18 (2), 135 – 152.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Sayer, C. L., Bianchi, S. M., & Robinson, J. P. (2004). Are parents investing less in children? Trends in mothers' and fathers' time with children. American Journal of Sociology, 110 (1), 1 – 43.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Sayer, L. C. (2016). Trends in women's and men's time use, 1965–2012: Back to the Future? In Gender and Couple Relationships, edited by Mchale, Susan, Valerie, King, Jennifer, Van Hook, Alan, Booth. Springer, pp. 43 – 77.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Schneider, D. (2011). Market earnings and household work: New tests of gender performance theory. Journal of Marriage and Family, 73 (4), 845 – 60.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Spradley, E., LeBlanc, S. S., Olson‐Beal, H., Burrow, L., & Cross, C. (2020). Proving our maternal and scholarly worth: A collaborative autoethnographic textual and visual storying of motherscholar identity work during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Journal of Motherhood Initiative, 11 (2), 189.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Wolf‐Wendel, L. E., & Ward, K. (2006). Academic life and motherhood: Variations by institutional type, Higher Education, 52 (3), 487 – 521.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Wolf‐Wendel, L. E., & Ward, K. (2015). Academic mothers: Exploring disciplinary perspectives. Innovative Higher Education, 40, 19 – 35.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Yaffe, Y. (2020). Systematic review of the differences between mothers and fathers in parenting styles and practices. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01014-6</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Amanda Blakewood Pascale; Suzanne Ehrlich and Kristen Hicks‐Roof</p> <p>Reported by Author; Author; Author</p> <p></p> <p>Amanda Blakewood Pascale is an Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration and Chair of the Department of Leadership, School Counseling, & Sport Management at the University of North Florida. She is the mother of one child, age 5, and identifies as both a mother and a scholar.</p> <p>Suzanne Ehrlich is an Associate Professor in the Educational Technology, Training and Development program at the University of North Florida. She is a mother to one and identifies as a MotherScholar.</p> <p>Kristen Hicks‐Roof is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of North Florida. She is a mother of two and identifies as a MotherScholar.</p> </aug>
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  Data: Faculty Fathers: Understanding the Experiences of Faculty Men with Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic
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  Data: To effectively cultivate systems of equity, it is important to not only understand the experiences of those who are most affected by inequity but also of those who are in positions of power and privilege. This study explores how faculty men with children navigated the pandemic experience. Two major thematic findings emerged including 'Not (as) Interrupted' and '"I" feel supported'. These findings suggest that academic fathers may be emerging from the pandemic positioned differently than academic mothers. This research has implications for higher education administrators and faculty in the shaping of practice and policies aimed at equitably supporting faculty post-pandemic.
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