Ina Simonovska

University of California, Davis

One extra year is the equivalent of a child tax credit. I sort of see it as a way to promote childbearing by individuals in the highest percentiles of the IQ distribution. While in principle that should apply equally to both genders, there are physiological differences that cannot be ignored. I am the biggest feminist I know, and I think that the equal treatment for men and women with kids regarding the tenure clock is just about the most discriminatory rule out there.

Let’s establish that it’s great to have an extra year as a base for both genders to encourage procreation by the smartest. And now let’s try to calculate how much we should add to that base to level the playing field for the two genders.

Medical research has established that the female brain shrinks during the last trimester of pregnancy. So at the minimum, medicine would say add three months. A 2024 Nature article goes further to say that the brain of a pregnant woman alters significantly for about a year post partum. So on medical grounds, we are looking at a 15 month addition to the baseline 1 year.

Now let’s speak from experience. I am very sensitive to hormone changes. I knew I was pregnant before I even took the early-detection test. And the symptom was very clear—nausea and brain fog. This symptom persisted throughout the entire pregnancy and breastfeeding period. With a six-month minimum breastfeeding period recommended by doctors, I was effectively in brain fog territory for 15 months per child—incidentally in line with medical research referred to above.

What does brain fog mean? Imagine having the flu or Covid, but without the congestion and fever. Just plain old brain fog nonstop—inability to focus or think clearly. If our job was to simply teach, this is perfectly doable. I was teaching with a big belly and nausea—no problem.

Postpartum teaching is not as trivial, but still doable. My first born was not able to breastfeed properly for about 3 months. Here is what that meant for me: baby spends 45 minutes on the breast practicing feeding, then I spend 30 minutes pumping to actually get the milk out, hand off baby to someone else to give him the bottle so I can take a break for 45 minutes, where a break constitutes massaging my serratus anterior to recover from pumping, go to the bathroom, close my eyes for 30 minutes, and guess what? Repeat again. Yes. Repeat the 2 hour cycle over and over and over. For 2 months straight. No distinction between day or night. Add to all of this mastitis a couple of times—excruciating pain due to breast infection + fever. And finally add to all of this muscle overload and spasms in the serratus anterior that would paralyze the entire chest area making it excruciating to take a full breath of air or making even the slightest movement.

By month three, the cycle became a three-hour cycle, which meant I could close my eyes potentially for 90 minutes. I would use one of those 90 minute gaps per day to go to my Zumba class to maintain sanity and escape the smell of sour milk. In principle, I could teach a 90 minute class at this point—I didn’t have to.

By month 4, my baby was finally able to breastfeed properly. Since the pump was routinely causing spasms in my muscles, I could finally ditch it. But I had 2 months to go to hit the doctor-recommended 6-month mark. So my baby started to come to the office with me. The economics department at Maryland was very familiar with my baby’s cries, burps and farts. I took meetings with students in my office while breastfeeding, sat in seminars with my baby on the boob, went to conferences with my baby on the boob. In principle, I could teach a 90-minute class at this point as well—I didn’t have to.

The plan was to continue this for another couple of months, switch to formula at the end of month six, take December (month seven) off to recover and teach in January.

Nature had other plans for me. Exhausted from the 3-hour cycle in month 5, I finally threw in the towel and decided to replace a single feeding in the middle of the night with formula so I can get a 3-hour stretch of sleep. Little did I know that just one feeding would make my hormones change and I would be ovulating out of the blue for the first time postpartum. It only takes one time to make a baby and I was pregnant with #2.

That meant brain fog for another 9 months. This time I was teaching sleep-deprived from #1 and nauseous from #2. The summer came and #2 was born. This time around, breastfeeding was a breeze. My baby was feeding perfectly fine, and very efficiently. No pump, no mastitis, no muscle spasms. Just a baby that was feeding continuously and refused to go anywhere near a bottle. He would rather starve to death than take a bottle—and if you met #2 today you would understand why—Stubborn is his middle name. Instead, I had a permanent attachment on me for six months continuously. Luckily, at this point I was so exhausted that I could fall asleep anywhere anytime and my baby would just stay attached to my breast and feed. I would probably burp him in my sleep because I don’t remember doing it much. And he would just pass out on top of me—some very good pictures came out of this.

In principle, I could teach pretty much within a month postpartum this time around if necessary, I would just have my baby in the Ergo feeding while teaching. I didn’t have to so I didn’t. I went to a few conferences with my baby attached on the boob, including a famous AEA CSWEP mentoring session where my nanny’s flight got messed up and I had no choice but to bring the stroller with me to the round table mentoring juniors.

So, if we were only evaluated on the basis of teaching, in the worst case scenario of my first kid, I would’ve needed at least 3 extra months due to physical constraints. But, we get evaluated based on research. And for that, #1 + #2 of active brain fog purely caused by hormones during pregnancy and breastfeeding would mean 29 months. That’s a 1.5 month discount because #2 happened so quickly. And that’s not counting the cumulative strain on my body/brain from two back-to-back pregnancies without a single night of sleep of more than 3 continuous hours in between.

Since the tenure clock runs annually, this would mean roughly 2.5 years (in addition to the extra year that is gender neutral) for 2 kids. I would be willing to settle for 2 years extra (1 per child), although 3 in total would make most sense to account for physical recovery from two back-to-back pregnancies and breastfeeding including having to do extensive physical therapy to straighten my spine after carrying two babies and to strengthen my upper body muscles after breastfeeding destroyed them.

I didn’t know any of this before I had kids. I did know one thing though—I got my AP job when I was barely 26 and I could wait until after tenure to have kids. So I did. But the market is very different these days, and even back in 2009 when I got my AP job, I was an outlier in terms of my age. Most women don’t have the luxury to wait until after tenure to procreate.

Would I have done it while an AP if I didn’t have the luxury to wait? Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that. Probably yes because I am an only child and a foreigner in this country, and I always wanted one blood-related relative here with me who will hopefully outlive me. But I know this much. My CV has a huge gap in it and I can trace it to: two back-to-back pregnancies + breastfeeding, less than a year break/recovery, followed by Covid with two toddlers in a city that remained shut down for 2 whole years (SF), less than a year break/catch up, followed by two years of breast cancer treatment. The profession/literature moves on during such a long period of time and R&R’s become obsolete and turn into rejections.

But, life goes on, you pick up, rebuild, and you keep doing what you love, this time around with two boys who adore you and become your besties. So whenever a rejection comes, you say “Oh well, there’s always another journal, hopefully with an empathetic editor, I’ll just go read Harry Potter with my boys to make it hurt less.” And it definitely helps. You learn how to manage time and you learn not to hold on to negative feelings you have regarding a profession that often appears to be completely devoid of empathy because you only have one life to live. But if this story creates even epsilon>0 more awareness in the profession, then it was time well spent even though every minute of sleep counts.