When it comes to babies, the “rules” of the job market for young female academics are clear. Don’t have a baby. If you do have a baby and manage to get a job interview, don’t mention the baby. Don’t mention your husband or partner. Don’t mention your second child, if you have one. Don’t have a second child.

This was explained to me by my daughter, who is looking for her first job as an assistant professor. All of her academic contacts offered the same advice: “Interviewers are not allowed to ask about your family; don’t tell them.”

But it’s not easy to hide your family, which became clear before the first interview.

The first step is a phone call from a potential interviewer. Whenever my daughter’s cell phone announced a call from a state where she had applied, she would hand off her talkative toddler and gurgling baby to her husband and run into a different room. If her husband wasn’t available, she wouldn’t take the call.

One day, she was downstairs with the kids while her husband was upstairs getting dressed. Her cell phone lit up with a call from Massachusetts, so she yelled to her husband. As he dashed downstairs clutching his clothing, he shouted, “Just drop the baby. Go!”

She placed the baby on the rug and ran.

The caller invited her to her first on-campus interview. These typically last all day, which makes them difficult for the breast-feeding mother of a six-month-old baby.

Arranging the shortest trip possible (43 hours), my daughter left the baby with her husband. To keep her milk supply up, she brought her electric breast pump. To use it, she broke the “rules” and revealed to the interview organizer that she would need breaks between meetings to pump milk.

She was lucky: the person she told was sympathetic, but the logistics of privacy and milk storage were still awkward and embarrassing.

A few weeks later, I joined the job hunt when I agreed to accompany my daughter and her baby to a Chicago convention where she had interviews. My job was to care for her noisy, chunky, lovable six-month-old secret.

My daughter returned to our hotel often to breast feed and spend time with the baby, and she told me how things were going. I learned that even in the baby-free hour of the interview, a young mother must be wary. “You don’t want to use the word ‘we’,” my daughter told me, “because it gives away that you have a husband.”

“What about the wedding ring?” I asked.

“Some people take it off,” she said.

Like babies, husbands and partners are a liability because they have needs and desires. A husband might not want to relocate, or he might seek special consideration, such as a “spousal hire” at the same university. He may want children. Clearly, an applicant without a partner is more flexible.

I can understand, therefore, why hiring committees might prefer unencumbered candidates, but it seems patently unfair, just as it was during the pre-feminist era when everyone tacitly agreed that the best jobs would go to men.

It is true, however, that babies and children consume time. My daughter recently said, “It’s a stereotype that women with families are less productive, but it’s a stereotype that’s true.” Temporarily, a woman with children does not have as much time for her profession as a woman without.

The first wave of academic feminists — my generation in the 1970s — found their solution in delayed child-bearing. They waited until after they received tenure (usually a seven-year process) before they had their first baby. Many women experienced a sad side-effect: they found it hard to get pregnant after age 35. Some lost their chance to be moms.

Today’s young women don’t want that to happen to them so many, like my daughter, are having their children during graduate school. Then, when they look for a job, they hide the kids.

But don’t academic institutions seek talent? They should want a woman who can sound calm on the phone while her baby protests his sudden abandonment. They should want a woman who can pump, freeze and track the correct amount of milk, and travel to interviews while always providing for her children.

Such a woman is strong, versatile and creative. Such a woman can accomplish amazing things, maybe not when the baby is little, but later. Ultimately, such a woman can be a good teacher of college students — understanding their foibles, dreams, and strengths — because she has children of her own.

I’m not accusing all universities or all departments within a university of being unfriendly to families. In my daughter’s case, the college that knew about her breast pump offered her a two-year position. But just as people know that racism exists even though it’s illegal, young women in academia know that having a family can work against them.

This whole thing surprised me. I thought being a mom and having a career is simply “the way it is now.” Instead, if you’re a female and an academic, you learn to hide one part of yourself in order to reach the goals of another part of yourself.

I thought we’d come further than this.

— Marion Franck lives in Davis with her family. Reach her at [email protected]

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