Culture of Life/Notre Dame
A quick correction to Eric’s post from the vantage point of an academic dean. The maternity/paternity policy for faculty, at least, is more than Eric implies. Women faculty are generally excused from teaching in the semester they give birth, effectively giving them a four month or so paid leave. Male faculty who are primary caregivers have the option of delaying their tenure clock. Comparable policies assist any faculty person adopting a child.
This is not to say Notre Dame shouldn’t do more, or do it differently. But in fact the university has put considerable energy into these issues recently, and, for example, is now studying whether to expand (in age availability and number of spots) its highly successful childcare facilities. Terming Notre Dame’s efforts “a contradiction” to the elusive culture of life seems a bit overstated.
John,
If you look at the commentary on my post, I have backpedaled a bit from the language of “contradiction.” I apologize if the original choice of language was overstated. I appreciate that the University is trying to expand benefits for parents and am thankful for your clarifications. I could not find those particular nuances on the Human Resources website, and it might be good to have them available in writing there. Just a couple of notes: 1) Of course, “generally excused” does not mean “guaranteed.” 2) I’m not only, or even primarily, worried about faculty, but what about staff? It is people in lower paid positions that suffer the most from a lack of such parental benefits. 3) Just to clarify, my frustration stems not from the lack of parental benefits, per se, or the decision not to provide coverage for contraception, in and of itself, but the degree to which the commitment to the latter seems to imply (necessitate?) a greater commitment to the former, which is not yet fully reflected in University policy.
Eric,
I enclose a link to Notre Dame’s recently developed maternity policy for graduate students. http://ame.nd.edu/graduate/ghb09-10/medleave.html
I am not an expert on staff issues but I would encourage you to talk to people in ND’s human relations office about the topic — which is complex, and involves FMLA, ND generous vacation policy and other matters — before subsequent posts.
Here’s where I find the contradiction, in my experience teaching at Catholic universities … the difference between women faculty and women staff. For example, after Margaret was born, I would occasionally take her (as an infant) to a meeting, or teach class with her in a front pack. This was considered adorable and all present felt like enlightened persons. In those meetings, though, there was often a secretary taking notes. It would NOT have been acceptable for her to bring her baby to the meeting.
Formally, women faculty got six or eight weeks of paid leave, but if it impacted the semester enough, timing-wise, they were relieved from teaching that semester with some assumption (sometimes observed, sometimes not) of assigned administrative duties thereafter — and the pressure was strongly in the direction of simply giving them the semester off. This does not, of course, apply to women staff, who got the six or eight weeks, strictly observed.
I am in favor of more liberal maternity policies. I do not think that working conditions should be exactly the same for faculty and staff — for example, I need a private office to do my work. But in the case of caring for our children, what are the assumptions that drive this policy difference between women faculty and women staff? And where’s the solidarity?
John,
Regarding the maternity leave policy for grad students: while I applaud that there is one, should we really lump pregnancy in with “serious medical conditions”? What if a student has a serious medical condition in her early grad career, then later has a baby, then gets pregnant again having already used her two allotted “medical leaves”? There seems to be something a bit problematic about equating pregnancy with sickness.
The staff policy seems similarly questionable. It is actually quite clear and straight forward on the HR website I linked in my original post. Paid leave is given using vacation days (two weeks for those employed less than seven years with an additional week available to be rolled over from the previous year, if the previous year’s vacation was not used up), sick days (up to five), and personal days (up to two). After these days are used, it seems that any more leave is unpaid. There is a larger theoretical question here about how we view pregnancy: Is having a baby really some aggregate of being ill, on vacation, and personally indisposed?
As a ND outsider, I find it ironic that my secular, in-no-way-Catholic employer, by virtue of its parental leave policies, makes it easier for both me and my fellow rank-and-file employees to adhere to Catholic social teachings on contraception and abortion than does an institution which is putatively promoting those teachings. What sort of witness is that?