Ask the grumpies: Should academic men get paternity leave?

CG asks:

[C]ould [you] do a deliberately controversial post about whether or not male academics should get a semester of parental leave when their partners have babies? I have some conflicting thoughts on that which I will leave for another day. And there is relevant research.

I feel like they should because otherwise their wives end up doing all the childcare stuff and the husbands don’t do any (#SwedenResearch). HOWEVER, the economist guys I know definitely abuse this and come into the department as if they don’t have a kid at all, they’re just not teaching and their SAHM wife just takes care of everything. One of them even sent his wife and newborn to another state to stay with extended family(!) But there’s not really any way to fix this situation. Forcing people to say they’re the primary caregiver just leads people to lying. And my DH was an equal co-parent and that should be encouraged. There’s just going to be either type 1 or type 2 error no matter what you end up deciding.  Personally, I’d rather err on the side of the wives not doing all of the childcare.  In some cases dad getting a semester off could mean mom gets to keep her job.  It also means the babies are more likely to bond with dad which will make dad feel more valued and want to continue interacting, which is good for everyone.

That said, we did hire mother’s helpers when we had the semester off from teaching for DC2 and I think DH was even briefly unemployed during DC2’s infancy and I was able to keep my research agenda going. But teaching with DC1 as an infant (no leave), even with the mother’s helpers, was pretty impossible. We had more than one load of laundry that went moldy and once I ran out of gas at work and DH had to bring some so I could make it to the gas station and come home.

CG adds:

I’ve been feeling cranky about the prof in our dept with a SAHM wife who is taking parental leave and claiming he’s the primary caregiver. And also remembering my first maternity leave where DH was traveling for work 4 days a week and I had to manage a toddler (first kid was born during grad school) and a baby mostly on my own while definitely NOT doing any work but also feeling guilty about it. I don’t think my crankiness about my colleague is necessarily fair or coming from a rational place and I’ve been struggling to articulate why I’m so salty about it.

xykademiqz adds:

Maybe there are men who pull their weight around newborns as much as their wives do, but honestly I have yet to meet one IRL. My husband sure didn’t, and none of my male colleagues seem to. They have a baby and are back at work immediately, like nothing happened. Most men I know seem to treat anything having to do with kids as opt-in; they elect to opt into some aspects but not others, and get to pat themselves on the back for being unusually virtuous and egalitarian. But women never have the option to opt out. This makes me seethe whenever I allow myself to think about it.

I also hate that the physical effects of childbirth are somehow not on the table when people discuss parental leave. A woman who gave birth needs 6+ weeks for minimum physical recovery; this cannot be transferred to any parent who did not, in fact, give birth. Yes, having a new kid is disruptive to the whole household. But it’s definitely drastically more disruptive to the person who just had their insides explode.

#1 counters: My body was ok at 2 weeks for both kids, but I was young and had very easy natural childbirths (literally an hour of pushing for each, which I understand is unusual). C-sections are actual surgeries and obviously need as much recovery time as any surgery.

My husband was also doing as much for our newborns as I was, if not more. I mostly did inputs and some daytime stuff. He took outputs and nighttime stuff, along with some daytime stuff (for DC1 we alternated days since neither of us had any leave). And we hired college students. But he’s not an economist.

CG reiterates that #1 is an exception:

I had 2 very tough vaginal births with major blood loss and physical injury both times and one c-section. The c-section was the easiest recovery, which gives you some idea of the extent of the damage the first two times. I was young and in good shape, just really unlucky. Twice. So yeah, the physical effects of childbirth are definitely a way in which it might not be equivalent for birthing and non-birthing parents…

Grumpy Nation, what do you think?

Are college visits necessary? A deliberately controversial post

I argue that no, college visits are not necessary.

I have been involved with all aspects of college visits.  I’ve gone on them.  I’ve taken my little sister to them when she was in high school.  I’ve been an undergraduate student host of prospective students.  I’ve been a graduate RA for a hall hosting prospective undergraduate students.  I’ve been involved with major-based campus weekends for entering undergraduates and graduates.  I’ve been on campuses while countless campus tours pass by all over the country starting as a kid at my mom’s campus.

They only give a snapshot of any campus, and often that snapshot is distorted. Caltech’s pre-frosh weekend is enormously fun and exciting– as an RA at another school our pre-frosh weeks were similarly socially active.  No sign of the stress or workload of most regular weeks on campus.  Students were abnormally giddy and full of school pride that they didn’t feel any other time.  At my undergrad, the only time the grounds weren’t in a constant state of construction/gardening was during parents weekend, graduation, alumni week, and, of course, pre-frosh week.  Going to any of these planned weekends for accepted students will show a best that may not actually exist any other week of the year at the school.  The food also tends to be a step above what it usually is when there’s large groups of prospective students visiting.

The snapshot can be distorted negatively as well.  So many people have been turned off by one weird person they met on a campus visit who in no way represents the entire student body.  Indeed, if you stayed on our hall for either of the events I was a host for, you’d think nobody in the schools drank or partied and everyone was a total nerd, which isn’t true, but was true for our halls.  If they had been placed in another hall they’d have likely been invited to a keg party(!) and gotten a completely different view of the school.  Tour guides are selected from a specific extrovert kind of personality, and there are plenty of examples of students on College Confidential who got turned off by something a single person said, or took the entire “vibe” of the school from the tour guide. Schools are big places with diverse student bodies.  They have vibes, but you’re not necessarily going to be exposed to the school’s vibe by a one day visit or even a weekend tour.

Today you can get a much fuller picture by utilizing online and print resources.  You can get other people’s direct impressions of campus visits.  Multiple data points are better than one alone.  I’m a huge fan of the Fiske guide and have found it to be surprisingly accurate for every school I’ve had direct extended experience with (though some details may be out-dated, like maybe they’ve changed the food service provider).  You can read reddit posts and college niche and unigo for reviews from actual students talking with other current students or answering specific college-related questions about every aspect of school life. Schools will also have virtual preview zoom meetings, though they tend to have the same kind of sameness that college tours have (yes, we have student research, yes we have study abroad, etc. etc. etc.)  You can listen to podcasts and student panels online (though again, the kind of person who volunteers for these is not going to be representative of all students, but they’re the same people you would meet in person on a tour).  After the acceptance, there will be more virtual Q&A sessions with panels of parents and students and admissions people that are more directly related to your interests.  There’s so much information available without having to get in a car or plane.

That’s not to say college visits are useless.  They’re another datapoint in a sea of available data, and not necessarily the most informative one.  There’s probably not much harm in visiting so long as you don’t let it be your only way of learning about the school (and the school’s “vibe”). Probably the best thing you can do that is difficult to get without being there is to sit in on some actual classes (and not during a pre-frosh week when only hand-picked classes will be shown), but that’s hard to do if you’re only able to go on weekends or over the summer.

A lot of people do go on campus visits and love the place and then go and believe that the visit helped them decide.  But they don’t know the counterfactual– they didn’t go to the places where they didn’t love the visit, and it’s likely they would have been just as happy those places too.  Most of these colleges, especially these elite liberal arts schools, are just wonderful places to be, and they will be great places whether you had a good campus visit or not.  And at large schools there are so many different vibes, you’ll likely be able to find your people on campus as a student even if you don’t meet them when you visit.  Vanderbilt may have a rich kid jock vibe, but there are plenty of quiet nerds around too.  You just may not notice them on your tour.

Ok, Grumpy Nation, your turn!  Why do you think college visits are or aren’t necessary?  Note the deliberately controversial post tag!  (That means you don’t have to agree with me, and agreeing or arguing are both encouraged.  It’s been a while!)

Summer Break: Have you read our deliberately controversial tag?

Back when we had more free time and it seemed like the US was on a good trend, we had a lot of silly deliberately controversial posts written to provoke discussion on controversial topics.  There’s a few from 2019 and a couple from 2017 but these are mostly pre-2016 things.  On important topics, like, you know, gift giving.  Or whatever drama was happening in mommy-blogland or academia-blogland.

Check them out!

Have a controversial but completely unimportant opinion?  Drop it in the comments!

Ask the grumpies: Should universities take Koch or Epstein money?

SLAC prof asks:

Is taking money from Jeffrey Epstein worse than taking money from the Koch foundation?  Which is worse?  Clearly we shouldn’t take money from the KKK.  Is it ok to take anyone’s money if there aren’t strings, or is there a line?  Who gets to decide the line?  Does Koch money ever truly have no strings?  Should personal morals be irrelevant when an institution takes money?

Oh wow, this is a hard one.  We’re really not ethicists and don’t have enough expertise to have an opinion on non-obvious cases.  That said… here are some thoughts.

First off, personally I think it’s fine to take money that doesn’t have strings attached (including naming rights!!) from the estate of someone who is dead.  So if you’re an institution that has a morally horrific but extremely wealthy graduate and he just gives you a couple million in his will but it’s completely unrestricted, go ahead and take it without advertising it.  Put it towards something completely antithetical to what he would have wanted (sexual assault prevention training for freshmen with a focus on how not to assualt) or spend it on something boring (utility bills) freeing up that fungible money for other things.  If he says you have to name something after him or hire someone specific etc., then don’t take the money (and advertise you didn’t take it).

If the bad person or group is still alive, don’t take money with strings attached.  No naming rights.  No final approval of tenure track hires.

When there aren’t strings it gets much more complicated.  Yes, one shouldn’t take KKK money (unless it’s used for training frats how not to do blackface or to pay for programs etc. that benefit black students and faculty– I’m a big fan of F-U uses of bad guys’ money).  But if Koch money is offered for something that isn’t evil (no strings scholarships)?  And they do fund things that aren’t evil along with their massive funding of evil… I’m not sure.  I mean, I’d like to encourage them to spend more money on not-evil and less money on evil.  But I don’t want them to get credit for the not-evil stuff as if it makes up for the evil stuff because it really doesn’t.

This is hard.

What do you think, Grumpy Nation?  Should institutes of higher education accept money from bad people and bad organizations?  Under what circumstances?

You need both: How to change (#notall) bad guys’ minds: A deliberately controversial post

Important notice:  today is a national call about saying no to the wall and yes to end the shutdown day.  We need phones to ring or our senators of every hue will think that the only people who care are the Fox News viewers who have been telling them to build the wall.  Here is the 5calls script https://5calls.org/issue/end-the-government-shutdown-with-no-strings-attached- and here is the indivisible script and explainer  https://indivisible.org/resource/trumps-latest-temper-tantrum-and-showdown-over-wall .

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogpost.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether it’s better to punch Nazis/shun Trump supporters, or whether it is better to listen and gently try to change them.  It’s always presented as an either/or.  The NY Times and other publications write article upon article about how the left needs to be more tolerant.  (Narrator:  It doesn’t.)

Here’s my no-research-done opinion.  We need the majority of people out there shunning Nazis/Trumpists and a much smaller number of selfless souls willing to be the “good cop” to gently listen to their feefees and to explain to them how to make their way back into society as non-racists.  We need people yelling at politicians in restaurants and throwing pies in Nazi faces and dis-inviting racist uncles from dinner and we need a lot more of them than we need that one empathetic person that picks up the pieces later.

At a recent faculty retreat, one of the professors made the point that our students don’t realize their writing is bad until they get bad grades on it.  Only then do they start listening to how to improve it.  Gently correcting comments are ignored if there’s an A on the front of the first page.  In the same way, we need a strong front of letting people know what is unacceptable in society, and then a little bit of gentle direction on how to fix it.  But not everybody has to be the teacher.  In fact, it isn’t any good if there are no social consequences and everybody accommodates the missing stair.

So go out there and be intolerant of racists!  Do it without guilt!  If you see one that has reached the bottom and wants a hand up, go ahead and listen (#DeliciousNaziTears) if you want to, but don’t feel obligated.  And certainly don’t feel the need to be nice to one who isn’t already questioning.  It’s not your job to be the Nazi Whisperer.  These people don’t deserve more time than the people that they are hurting.

Book recommendation: So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo.  Give it to everyone you know.  Then resume yelling at racists and telling them to get on up out of here with their wack opinions.

Grumpeteers, what do you think?

Should you buy the best? Should you look at ratings?: A deliberately controversial post

This post suggests that not trying to buy the best will decrease your stress.

It is true that we on the blog are big proponents of satisficing.  The paradox of choice is awesome. (Here’s our book review.)  For many things we’re happy to just buy what’s good enough rather than trying to optimize.

However, sometimes spending a little extra effort and money to get quality is worth it in terms of happiness and decreased stress in the long run.  Unlike the author of the original post, I get a lot of pleasure out of using a high quality pot or pan. We’ve had the target knock off Le Crueset and we’ve had the genuine Le Crueset, and after a couple of years there’s a big difference between the two. Sometimes spending the extra money and research is worth it.  (And maybe we are still technically satisficing with a high bar.)

Our method of satisficing is usually to go on Amazon and look for the highest rated item in our price range and just buy that.  (#2 does that sometimes when the method below fails; I trust Amazon reviews far, far less than #1 does.  #1 notes that the important Amazon reviews are the negative ones, not the positive ones, so it is important to check out the one and two star reviews before committing.)  We used to use Consumer Search but then they stopped updating as frequently so we don’t use it as much.

#2 says:  my answer to what to buy is usually on either Sweet Home or the Wire Cutter, depending on the item.

Do you try to buy the best?  How do you feel about optimizing vs. satisficing?  Does it vary by the decision you’re trying to make?  How so?

Saving isn’t necessarily “easier” for people who save more: A deliberately controversial rant

One of those bloggers who makes a ton and spends a ton and is always complaining about debt/bragging about purchases/letting other people buy hir necessities often talks about how it’s just *easier* for other people to not spend money on luxuries and trips.  Other people just don’t enjoy such things as much as zie does.  Other people aren’t *really* sacrificing.  Other people don’t know what it’s like, having friends who like to go out and spend money, wanting to go on trips, wanting to buy nice things.

Every time I read something like this, I want to say @#$#@ you.  I mean seriously.  You are not a special snowflake.  @#$@# you.  Sacrifice is NOT fun.

It isn’t easier for me to not have things I want.  I don’t get my kicks from saving instead of spending.  I would *love* to take vacations and eat out all the time and live someplace amazing and buy all sorts of fancy stuff.  But I don’t.

Why don’t I?  Two main reasons:

First:  That feeling you’re always complaining about?  The one where your budget comes up short and you don’t know where the missing money is going to come from?  The one where you’re getting lots of sympathy from your blog followers?  That one.  I HATE that feeling.  I hate it so much that I have something called an emergency fund.  I hate it so much that I set my fixed expenses low enough that there’s some extra every month.  So much that we’ve never had consumer debt and we paid off our loans ages ago.

Second:  You know how your family bails you out when you don’t have money for a broken appliance or the kids’ tuition or a whatever the latest emergency is?  Yeah, I don’t want my parents, my parents who make less money than I do, to be bailing me out as an adult.  I don’t want them to @#$3ing sacrifice their wants because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my own.  Emergencies happen on a pretty regular basis and you should plan for them.  If you can’t, then you can’t really afford those trips with friends.

So yeah, @#$@ you.  Sacrifice sucks for everybody.  That’s why it’s called sacrifice.

And maybe it’s easy to spend less for people like Mr. Money Moustache or Frugal Woods, but you don’t have to be an early retirement extreme junkie to be responsible with your finances.  And even with MMM and FW, it may just be that their values for the environment or for early retirement are stronger than their desire to spend.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to spend, just that there’s something more important to them than spending.

It’s not easier for other people to not spend.  It’s easier for you to let people bail you out or to have those regular feelings of panic than it is for the rest of us.

Are posts that are “raw” and dramatic more honest than posts that are happy or emotionally even?: A deliberately controversial post

Not necessarily.

Just like the accusations that (some? all?) people are making up their happy perfect lives, there’s also no doubt bloggers who are either dramatizing or possibly even making up their own drama so that they have something to write about.  Some people who seem as if their lives are trainwrecks seem that way not because they necessarily have horrible things happening to them, but because, like the (possibly fictional) “perfect” bloggers, they want attention.  They love being thanked for their “honest” and “raw” posts.

So they talk about fighting with their horrible lazy awful partners.  They talk about their horrible children.  They talk about their problems with money that they have created by taking on too much debt.  Some (that you will occasionally read news stories about) go so far as to make up diseases and put up crowd-funding.

It is true that there are people stuck in horrible relationships, or whose children have real psychological problems.  There are people who, through no fault of their own have money problems.  There are people who have life-threatening and chronic diseases.  And some folks with real problems do blog about them.

However, the Venn diagram of having a real problem and blogging about drama is not an “honest” and “raw” single circle.  There’s overlap, but it is far from complete.

Drama posts can be just as fictional as “perfect” posts.  And just as likely, some “perfect” bloggers are not lying about things going well for them.  Honest writing and happy writing may be completely uncorrelated.

Your turn, Grumpeteers.

Should people exchange gifts at all at traditional gift giving holidays such as Birthdays or Christmas?: A deliberately controversial post

I know we just had a deliberately controversial post, but Mel’s comment got us thinking.  Specifically the parts where she writes:

I guess I don’t really see the point of gifts for adults. Either you have the money to buy yourself something when you want it (or the ability to save to get it), or you don’t but there is the expectation that someone else should spend their money on you for something you want.

Later she adds this about kids:

Our kids are saving all of their money for a big trip when they’re in high school, as Josh and I did when we were starting high school. I want them to have that experience of travel, so I feel okay purchasing toys and such now. Again, I rarely do it on their birthday. It’s more that they express that they want X, and if I think it’s a sound purchase, I get them X. In that way, they are never disappointed.

So that’s actually two potentially deliberately controversial statements there if we add them up.

First:  Should we give gifts to adults at all?

This one is a hard one.  Over the years the number of adults we exchange gifts with has gotten smaller.  We have stuff.  They have stuff.  We’ve moved, they’ve moved, we’ve met a lot of other people with whom we are at the same level of intimacy and we couldn’t possibly give gifts to all of them.  And so on.

DH and I don’t really exchange gifts, but #2 and her DH do.  This partly matches our different financial situations — DH and I share finances and #2 and her DH have more separate finances.  Except DH will often do something for me for Christmas and my birthday– like he’ll do some icky chore we’ve both been putting off, or he’ll buy me something I’ve been wanting out of his allowance (often sleepwear), or he’ll do something that makes me cry like turning my name into a poem to hang on the wall.  I suck at reciprocating.  We also bake cakes for each other on our birthdays.  And it is true that we could do these things at any point during the year, but it really does take one of these standard gift deadlines to, for example, clean out the shower grout.

I would be perfectly fine stopping gift exchanging with DH’s family, though I would have to come up with some other way of delaying purchases given that they have pretty well learned just to buy things off my Amazon list (though DH’s brother always ends up getting me duplicates because he doesn’t buy them directly off my wishlist, and my SIL is especially good at picking things off my list that say “lowest” priority or, the one time nothing is labeled “lowest,” giving me a generic item that isn’t on the list and gets given directly to charity*).  I would also be fine stopping gift exchanging with my sister who refuses to use my amazon wishlist because it is too impersonal and then demands to know what I want instead.

#2 and I have exchanged gifts for many years.  There are three reasons for the gift exchange over the years.  1.  Back when we started we were both poor and I, at least, had a guilt thing about buying myself stuff I really wanted.  So near the end of the holiday season, we would both sweep in and buy books on each other’s wishlists that said “highest”– maxing at just enough to get free shipping.  2.  At other points one or the other of us will be making real money while the other is still in school/unemployed/on leave/etc.  In those cases, the rich one would sweep through the amazon list and the poor one would send thoughtfully curated used books (like Ex Libris or a biography of Dorothy L. Sayers).  3.  Imposing our preferences on the other person.  You will own this book because I say you will.  Mwahahaha.

I like giving gifts.  I like giving gifts that make people happy.  Mainly though, if I’m being honest, I like imposing my preferences on the people I love (or at least who I like).  Gift giving is a time that I can indulge in that whim in a socially appropriate way.  There’s also a small element of charity with some of our gift giving– holidays are a time that we can write a check to badly off family members and they can give us something nominal in exchange (like fudge).

Receiving gifts is a bit bittersweet.  I love getting stuff off my amazon list from #2 or from my family or DH’s parents.  I love getting thoughtful stuff from DH and the kids.  But… we’re doing a lot better off financially than DH’s siblings and I’d rather they kept their money, especially if we can’t give more than we receive in terms of dollar amount.  I just do not understand the large amount of gift-giving that their family does each year.

So I guess bottom-line here is that I don’t know.  Among people who know each other and can afford it, these special times work as a nice way to be nudged into thinking about doing some gift giving.  Some people prefer no gifts at all or prefer to give “whenever” gifts.  But “whenever” gifts can be uncomfortable if they’re extravagant because the reciprocity aspect can be confusing.  So who knows.  With adults, you do you and be gracious about others doing what they do.

#2 says, for me it’s really just fun to give and get gifts.  I have money to buy my own books, but it’s a nice treat when someone buys them for me.  I like finding a gift that fits the person I’m giving it to, something I think they’ll enjoy that they haven’t thought of.  I also find it sweet and wonderful when people donate to charity in my name, particularly charities I support such as kitty ones or child’s play.

Second:

Should we batch up children’s gifts for standard gift-giving holidays (birthdays etc.) or should we give them throughout the year when requested by the child?

This probably depends on the family, but I like batching up the gifts so they’re only given at Christmas, birthdays, and to a small extent Easter.  (Though my MIL does send small presents somewhat randomly throughout the year.)   In the same way that my amazon wishlist keeps me from spending throughout the year, the hope is that getting presents later at specified times will teach them patience and give them the ability to delay their wants when they are older as well.  Anything that they want sooner, they will need to use their allowances on, possibly saving up to buy.

I realize this is an empirical question and I have read precisely zero research on the topic, so who knows.

So there, that’s our second deliberately controversial post about gifts.

*Every year I fight the suspicion that my SIL doesn’t like me and convince myself that it’s just that we have really different tastes.  Every year it is a fight.

What do you think?  Should we get rid of adult gift giving entirely?  Should children get gifts throughout the year or only at specified times?

Secret Santas and White Elephant Games Aren’t Frugal: A deliberately controversial post

One of the common suggestions for how to get holiday expenditures down is to suggest a Secret Santa or White Elephant exchange at the office or family gathering.

For those who aren’t in the know, the Secret Santa is where you put everybody’s name in a hat, and then each person pulls out a name.  You are only shopping for one person.

The White Elephant is a gift exchange in which you bring in one gift, usually something humorous that nobody would want, wrapped in a package.  Then a game is generally played in which each person picks a package from the pile or exchanges a package with someone who has already picked a package.  (This is involves a lot of crying/screaming when it’s played at children’s parties.)

Jimmy Fallon mentions the problems with Secret Santa in this clip.  Even when there’s a spending limit, these never seem to work out well.  If you don’t know the person, you’re likely giving them something they don’t want.   Chances are pretty good that in any pairing, either someone who doesn’t know you will get you or you will get someone you don’t know.  So you’ll end up with junk you don’t want or you’ll give someone junk they don’t want.

The White Elephant is even worse– you have to buy something that is actually already junk and bring it in.  Sometimes the rules state you bring something from  home that you already own but don’t want, but if you own it and don’t want it, then why do you still have it?  On top of that, sometimes the junk is truly junk, and sometimes the junk is actually something nice.  More often though, some number of people bring actual gag gifts that get a laugh and then take up space, and some people bring things that are pretty nice, making others (who didn’t get the nice gift) feel jealous or (who followed the rules) uncomfortable.  In the end, most people end up buying crap nobody would want and taking home crap they don’t want.  It’s a very American sort of game.

I seriously dislike both these games and would rather not participate.  I don’t see the point in anonymous reciprocal gifts.  I don’t like being forced to give things to people who I don’t know very well who don’t need stuff.  I’d rather keep my money and buy my own junk (or not buy it, as the case may be).

What suggestions do we have?  We suggest that offices not have these kinds of games, and that if they do choose to have them that they be voluntary and neither explicitly nor socially mandatory.  As for families, we really think it’s better that if someone is worried about money that adults not exchange presents at all rather than having one of these silly exchanges.  But that’s just us.  We still exchange presents with everybody.  Maybe the joy some families get from having different senses of humor than we have outweighs the annoyance of crap being exchanged.  Maybe it’s worth it to some families.

But it still isn’t frugal.  At least, not as frugal as not participating would be.  Still, if this is the only option for not having a full gift exchange, it’s better than nothing.

What are your thoughts on these kinds of gift exchanges?  Do you participate?  Have you participated?  What’s your philosophy on anonymous gift exchanges?