It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint, and Other Lessons for Supporting Librarianship and Motherhood

Academic  library  administrators  may  struggle  with  how  best  to  support  librarians  who  are also  mothers  of  young  children.  Using  both  qualitative  interviews  with  librarian-­mothers  and  the current  literature  on  how  academic  faculty  balance  work  and  family,  this  article  highlights  four key  lessons  for  library  administrators  to  use  to  help  librarian  who  are  mothers  succeed  in  the workplace.


Introduction
Imagine one of the librarians on your staff--let's call her Heather--just told you that she is 12 weeks pregnant and will be having her first baby in November. After you congratulate her, ask her how she is feeling, and wish her the very best, you start to think about how her new status might change things around your academic library. Will Heather be able to continue to teach her instruction sessions up until the birth? Who will cover her duties while she is out on maternity leave? What is the leave policy for librarians at your university, anyway? Does Heather plan to return to work full-time at eight weeks? Will she need a private office for pumping breastmilk? How will your other staff members (none of whom have young children) react to Heather as a new mother? Will Heather start requesting additional flexibility at work once she returns and must go to her child's doctor appointments, early pick-up from daycare, soccer practice, high school graduation? With this tornado of questions, and many more, you might turn to the countless websites offering managers help with managing pregnant women and mothers of young children in the workplace. Unfortunately, you may find numerous irrelevant suggestions like "offer your employees generous parental leave" (definitely not a decision left up to a typical academic library administrator) and "avoid a lawsuit by avoiding discrimination" (not exactly the advice you needed).
Your situation regarding Heather is not unique. Despite the number of academic librarians who are mothers of young children, there is scant information for the library administrator who supervises these professionals. University librarians and other library administrators cannot always look to the example set by their peers in their university's academic departments or staff units;; often the administration of academic libraries sits in a liminal zone in-between faculty and staff. Even when the librarians' status is more clear, library administrators may wonder what the best practices are for creating and maintaining a welcoming work environment for librarians who are mothers (or fathers) of young children. While your situation with Heather may be common, you may still have trouble finding good advice on how best to manage it. This article will not attempt to cover everything your university's human resources department would like you to know about managing your department. It makes sense to first contact your institution's human resources department and use their policies and seek their guidance when you have questions or concerns. This article will not set you up to be the ideal manager of librarians who have young children. This work focuses on the unique situation of mothers compared with fathers. Rather, this article intends to highlight four key points that library administrators should be aware of in order to support the success of academic librarians who are mothers.

Background
The springboard for this article was a qualitative, phenomenological study of the lived experiences of 21 full-time academic librarians who are mothers of young children (age 4 and younger) from across the United States and from a variety of four-year institutions (Gallin-Parisi 2015). In semi-structured, in-depth interviews, these librarian-mothers spoke about a wide range of topics related to their dual role as librarian and mother. The lessons for administrators presented here emerged from the participants' experiences as well as the current literature about academic (mostly non-librarian) faculty balancing work and family.
Over the last decade, there has been increasing scholarly and mainstream media attention on combining motherhood with full-time work. Some scholars have looked inward to focus on motherhood (and fatherhood) within the academy, and many such studies have found mothers in particular to be "leaking" from the academic pipeline. Mary Ann Mason, Nicholas H. Wolfinger, and Marc Goulden's seminal book, Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower (2013), highlights the myriad ways that having children does affect the careers of academic men and women. That book and Kelly Ward and Lisa Wolf-Wendel's invaluable Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family (2012) both seek to illuminate the distortions that are actually happening within the academy and then to compile strategies and interventions toward achieving work-family balance. Issues such as the flexibility stigma and bias avoidance are realities to many women (and men) with families trying to survive within universities and colleges;; despite the scholarship, change has been painfully slow.
While fathers of young children share several of the challenges of their female counterparts, mothers remain a distinct population. Ann Crittenden's landmark book, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (2001), goes to great depths to show how "a mother's work is not just invisible, it can become a handicap" (p.3). Interestingly, a pregnant woman is anything but invisible, making her position in the academic workplace noticeable and inherently unavoidable, unlike an expectant father.
Crittenden explains the stark differences between mothers and fathers in the United States, and how the economics of motherhood in this country diminish its value. Parenthood, regardless of gender, complicates work, and yet motherhood complicates it in a unique way.
Notably, the literature about motherhood and academia focuses on the traditional academic faculty (i.e., the teaching professor) and largely excludes the academic librarian who is also a mother. Librarian-focused research has taken small steps toward exploring motherhood, including topics such as mothers' advancement to top-level library directorships (Zemon & Bahr 2005), postponement of child-bearing due to pressures of tenure and promotion (Graves, Xiong, Park 2008), and leave and other relevant policies available to academic librarians (Connell 2012). Recently, The Code4Lib Journal published an article offering practical solutions for technical services librarians who are parents--such as implementing project management software, job-sharing, telecommuting, and offering more-flexible leave policies (Bedoya, Heller, Salazar, & Yan 2015). It is surprising that scholars within librarianship have not more closely examined the phenomenon of librarians balancing work and family, especially considering the historic feminization of the field. Academic librarians, even those for whom tenure is potentially available, are not the same as their academic faculty counterparts. Many full-time academic librarians are on 12-month contracts;; they often have less autonomy with regard to scheduling and time management;; they conduct their work within the traditional workday and workweek;; and they often do not have access to the same level of institutional benefits. The uniqueness of academic librarians juggling work and children within academia is worth investigating further, especially for the library administrator wishing to offer substantive support.

Four Lessons For Library Administrators
While the focus of the interviews was to understand participants' lived experiences and not to elicit a list of items for library administrators, four key points emerged as the most telling lessons administrators could learn about combining librarianship and motherhood. The participants who spoke positively about their experiences in their jobs underscored the significance of their supervisors' knowledge of the relevant policies, positive and supportive attitude, flexibility, and willingness to work with the librarian to create a mutually advantageous plan. The four key lessons library administrators should learn in order to support librarianmothers are: 1. Know the relevant university and departmental policies or how best to find them;; 2. Be flexible and fully support the librarian-mother in her use of the policies;; 3. Be aware of flexibility stigma, bias avoidance, and campus culture hurdles;; 4. Understand that being a librarian and being a mother is "a marathon, not a sprint." This article will take the library administrator through these lessons with the intention of building a greater understanding of how work-family balance may be achieved in the academic library for librarians who are mothers of young children. These are the lessons that many librarians who are having children (or hope to one day) wish their supervisor knew. Notably, all library professionals--not solely mothers with young children--will likely face personal life experiences (e.g., responsibility for the care for aging parents) which will require managers to take similar actions. All librarians would be fortunate to have an administrator who was familiar with the following lessons.

Lesson #1: Know The Policies
The most straightforward way to support librarians who are mothers is to become familiar with your institution's policies regarding pregnancy, leave, transition back into work, tenure clock extension, lactation support, and other relevant policies, and sharing those policies with staff. In the University of Washington Center for Institutional Change's brochure, Work/Life Balance for Faculty, it is recommended that university department chairs not only find out what campus policies exist, but also make a habit of discussing the policies in department meetings and also privately with faculty. Ward and Wolf-Wendel (2012) repeatedly highlight the issue of faculty not being aware of available university policies, and the pivotal role department chairs play in educating not only the people who may wish to use the policies but also the people who will evaluate the people who use them. Laura, a reference and instruction librarian and mother of two, stated bluntly that she would have had "no idea what the policies were if my direct boss hadn't just called up human resources right then and found a really hard-to-find webpage with a bunch of policies on it that we didn't even realize existed." Another participant explained that she researched her university's guidelines to find policies related to expectant or new mothers. "Most of the policies seemed to boil down to the discretion of the department chair," she said, "and I was nervous to ask him about them before, you know, I was even pregnant yet" (Danielle, research and instruction librarian and mother of one). A woman who is starting to take on the dual role of librarian and mother may feel vulnerable and even fearful about her status. You could wait for Heather (your fictional employee) to ask questions about the do's and don't's of combining librarianship and motherhood at your library. If she does not take the initiative, she may leave her questions unasked and move forward without the information she needs to perform well in her position. Instead, make it routine to have conversations with your librarians about policies such as tenure clock extension or FMLA leave policies or flexibility in the workplace generally. Some universities have training sessions for department chairs;; discussions about family-friendly and work-life policies could be included in those trainings instead of just directing librarians and other faculty and staff to human resources.
Most, if not all, campuses determine these policies at the institutional level even if they are implemented differently across departments or units. Significantly, in their invaluable study of faculty mothers, Ward and Wolf-Wendel (2012) learned that "managing work and family occurred in spite of the institutional policy environment, not because of it… The data from the study make it clear that policy use was viewed as an individual issue more than an institutional concern" (187). Upon exploration into your institution's policy environment, you may find that your campus has limited or no such policies;; has relevant policies, but faculty and staff are too afraid to use them fully;; or has some policies that are only being used by few individuals (Ward & Wolf-Wendel 2012). So while knowing and sharing the policies is the first lesson toward supporting librarian-mothers, it is useless without the second lesson: flexibility is key.

Lesson #2: Don't Forget To Be Flexible
Tailoring your institutional policies to your library, the librarian's position and job description, and her actual situation is what will make the policies work or not work. Amy, a reference coordinator and mother of two, described meeting with her supervisor, a father himself. They discussed the implementation of the university's policies, and he said, "there is the policy we all know and then there is what people here actually do when it comes down to it." Flexibility can take different forms. It may mean that your staff collaborates to make sure that classes are taught, the reference shift is covered, or a weeding project is completed by stepping in to cover for one another. Jessie, a reference and instruction librarian and mother of three, described how well her team manages to stay flexible when she needs help: "So, to get into the specifics, if I know [one of my kids] is starting to get sick or have a cold or something, I will make sure I have all my lesson plans prepped and ready to go, so if someone has to come in to pinch-hit, they can do that. And it's the same for my colleagues as well;; we all do it. We all have young children;; we all have pinch-hit multiple times;; we feel comfortable doing that. Our faculty colleagues at the institution are usually totally fine with this, if someone else is teaching, so if I'm suddenly standing there and not the person they usually work with, the faculty member is usually like 'Wow, oh my gosh, that's so awesome that you cover for each other, thank you for being here.' So the support is definitely there. We're flexible with each other. And that's all the way up the chain. It is supportive like that all the way up to the top. It's an attitude thing. I cannot stress it enough that my colleagues in the library, everyone has been very, very supportive. In fact, I've attended important meetings via Skype or Facetime when I needed to be at home with a sick kid but I have felt like I needed to be at a meeting to offer my input, and my colleagues have been really open to that." Sometimes flexibility might mean working individually with a librarian to make it possible for her to balance her roles. Flexible schedules or working from home might require trial periods to see what actually works for the library and for the librarian and her family. In Hazel's case (a discovery services librarian and mother of one), she felt strongly that her female dean was more understanding of her need for flexibility than a male dean would have been. Hazel pushed the limits of the university's policies as far as she could in order to make it possible for her to work from home starting 10 hours a week and eventually moving to two days a week after a year of "proving" herself capable: "I don't know if I would've had as positive an experience if I'd had a male dean. As I said, I've worked the system in every which way and asked, "Can I do this? Can I do that?" And [the dean] has pretty much acquiesced to all of my requests and, you know, I've proven myself, but she has really given me the chance to do that, to show that. And I really question if I would've had that if she were a man because I don't think a male dean would've been able to quite understand why I needed this flexibility in my job to be with my kid…. I do think it is a benefit that while my dean is female that my department is all male, almost all young men, and they all just sort of say, 'Do your thing, do whatever you need to do.'" It is notable that Hazel felt confident enough in both her abilities and in her relationship with her supervisor to request these scheduling accommodations. Since this "system of managerial discretion" exists in most academic settings (i.e., the department chair can determine how institutional policies are implemented on the department level), employees must take it upon themselves to bargain and negotiate the terms of flexibility (Brescoll, Glass, & Sedlovskaya 2013).
Federal policies such as the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) cannot be tailored to suit individual librarians or even individual institutions. That does not mean that there are not other places where a library administrator can be flexible. Faculty in academic departments might get course releases or have some other coverage for their duties after returning to work after maternity leave;; librarians can find creative solutions for the library equivalent of such accommodations. Ward and Wolf-Wendel (2012) advise that department chairs "break the silence" and "share the wealth" when it comes to work and family issues (228). Despite the potential discomfort of talking about personal topics, when department chairs and other administrators begin conversing about work-life issues and sharing solutions, a morecomfortable work culture can grow across campus. (2010) underscores that policies need to be made available to faculty and states that use of such policies should be treated as "the norm not the exception" (8). This is a key phrase to keep in mind as an administrator. The institutional family-friendly policies are useless if no one feels comfortable using them. Significantly, policies on many campuses may be left unused, which leads us to the third lesson for library administrators: avoid the flexibility stigma and other campus culture hurdles.

Lesson #3: Flexibility Stigma, Bias Avoidance, And Other Campus Culture Hurdles
Maybe you are now an expert in your institution's policies and you have even figured out something that will truly work for your librarian's specific situation. It may be smooth sailing from now on... or not. Significant hurdles exist for women who want to use available institutional policies but who fear being seen as weak, less-serious, less-committed, less-ideal, and more easily discredited in the workplace (Williams, Blair-Loy, & Berdahl 2013;; Cech & Blair-Loy 2014;; Sallee 2014). Academic librarians who take a full maternity leave, stop their tenure clock, use flexible scheduling, or request time to pump breastmilk may fear "mommy tracking" and being deemed "undevoted" to librarianship and therefore unsuitable for promotion (Blair-Loy 2003;; Quinn 2010;; Bernard 2013). These feelings of nervousness and even fear of using policies were echoed explicitly in the experiences described by Shannon, an instruction librarian and mother of three: "Honestly, I'm less willing to take advantage of the flexibility at work. The opportunities are there to adjust schedules away from the institution's 8am-5pm schedule, and I know there are ways that you can, supposedly, do that, but as I've looked into it, I haven't felt very much support. They say 'oh yeah, we'll do it and make it work for you,' but I really haven't felt like I will be supported to take any flexibility and so I'm kinda like scared to ask more about it. I'm just one of those people who feels very responsible for being in this situation, for having kids while I have this job, and so I need to show them that I can do it and I can work during my maternity leave and everything. So I really feel like I can't take advantage of any of these [flexibility policies] because I need to prove myself worthy of the investment they are making in me. I don't want to seem like this job isn't important enough to me, so I don't feel comfortable asking for any changes in my schedule or anything like that. It actually feels safer just to have my husband to stay home with the boys and not ask for any special treatment." Librarians who are mothers may feel bias (negative) or stigma (worse yet) when using institutional policies, and thus engage in behaviors to avoid bias and stigma (Drago et al. 2005 andBardoel et al 2009). There still exists a bias against caregiving in the American workplace, and so mothers may attempt behaviors to avoid being subject to the bias. "Productive bias avoidance" includes activities such as minimizing family commitments in order to move ahead in one's job. For example, a mother might miss a child's event at school in an attempt to appear to be a better worker. There is also "unproductive bias avoidance" which is characterized by women lying or hiding caregiving responsibilities in order to avoid bias at work (Bardoel et al. 2009;; Drago et al. 2006). Several studies over the last decade have pointed to the higher incidence of bias-avoidance behaviors (both productive and unproductive) among female faculty compared with male faculty (Drago et al. 2006;; Huang 2008, Bardoel et al. 2009; Williams 2004). Karen, an outreach librarian and mother of one and currently pregnant with her second, said that she now feels like she should "never talk about my son or my pregnancy unless someone explicitly asks me" after an incident when her boss assumed she was at an obstetrician appointment when in reality she was participating in an off-campus conference. "Before I was visibly pregnant, I don't think he ever would have assumed I was at the doctor," Karen explained. "He would have assumed I was working, and the thing is that I was working, but he just thinks any pregnant woman not in her office or at the [reference] desk is apparently at the doctor or secretly napping in a corner somewhere in the library." Working mothers are often warned in the popular press to hide unexpected parenting issues that inevitably arise to avoid "raising questions about focus and commitment" (Downey 2016 186).
All of the participants in the study mentioned the impact (positive and negative) their coworkers had on their experience of combining motherhood and librarianship. The relationship between the librarian-mother and the rest of the librarians or staff may be stretched when the librarian-mother takes maternity leave, keeps a different schedule than she did before kids, takes breaks to pump breastmilk, needs to leave work early unexpectedly, or stops her tenure clock for a year. Library administrators cannot police the relationships between staff, but should be aware that not all staff may be equally supportive of librarians who choose to be mothers. Significantly, most of the participants spoke of their colleagues and supervisors in the library being "extremely supportive," "quite understanding," "accommodating," and "ready to help out." However, six of the 21 participants detailed negative reactions they experienced at work as a librarian-mother, either directly from colleagues in the library or from a larger campus culture. There were some difficult--and at times, outright hostile--exchanges between librarianmothers and their colleagues shared by participants. Katherine, an access services librarian and mother of two, detailed how challenging setting aside the time for pumping breastmilk can be, even with an available lactation room in her library and supportive policies in place: "The awkward thing about pumping is the time commitment. And I feel like some people are weirded out because I'll sometimes have to excuse myself and say, well, I usually say 'I've gotta go to the lactation room' because everybody knows what that means and it somehow seems less crude than 'I've gotta go pump.' But sometimes you can just tell that some people don't think that that is a valuable reason for leaving an interaction. I've got one staff member whom I supervise who just does not accept it: she, like, continues to just stand in my office as I try to say, 'No really, I really gotta go now.' And I guess maybe the weirdest thing about it is that the pump looks like a bag and so people often think I'm leaving for the day, like when they seem me on the stairs. People think I'm leaving work, like, twice a day and that's an awkward thing." Amanda, an outreach librarian and mother of two children, noted how her colleagues and supervisors are generally supportive of her as a mother, but at the same time, "they'll crack inappropriate jokes about things like pumping. Like kinda all the time. So it's a little weird because they want to be supportive but they're not quite sure about it and so other colleagues make jokes. It's just something I have to roll my eyes at and take it in stride." Workplace bullying is a reality to some librarians who are mothers, and should be taken seriously by library administrators. Joan Williams (2004) discusses how attribution bias against women, and mothers in particular, can pit mothers against non-mothers in the academic workplace (20). Lisa, information literacy librarian and mother of one, described the bullying that she has had to deal with at work, and was brought to tears while discussing it: "I work with a lot of women in their 40s and 50s who never had children and, honestly? They are mean. Just mean, mean, mean. They want my kid to be secondary to everything, and they just, well, honestly, they just have a mean girls vibe to them. A bullying thing, a mean girls thing. One of them said to me a couple weeks ago when we were talking about a program, she said 'Get your babysitter lined up and just figure it out because we all have to be here' and then walked away. So, I just think it's been not very supportive with the people here, especially the women. It's kind of a shitty place to work because I know people are talking behind my back all the time. And really? It wasn't like this in my old job, but I mean, how would I have known that these people would behave like this? The young male librarians at my last job were just so much more supportive than these older single women. I don't know if they are jealous or what but I can really feel the negativity and the ganging up on me. Honestly, I just close my door when I'm at work because I'm here to get my work done, not to listen to them roll their eyes any time I mention [my daughter] around them." Workplace bullying is not always easy to detect, but a library administrator should be prepared to work with the victim and the alleged perpetrator, and seek help or mediation when appropriate (Dalager 2016).
Whether dealing with offhand jokes or outright bullying behaviors, it is the responsibility of the library administrator to serve as an example for the entire department and make it clear that hostile comments, disparaging remarks, or discriminatory behavior will not be tolerated. Several of the toolkits listed in Appendix A outline how administrators should dispel the myth of special treatment for parents, and make the use of family accommodation policies routine rather than exceptional. Library supervisors may call on senior librarians to help set the tone for the department;; these senior librarians must not perpetuate the myth of the "ideal worker in the academy" and instead support policy usage (Ward & Wolf-Wendel 2012, 232).

Lesson #4: It's A Marathon, Not A Sprint
Remember Heather, the library employee who is expecting her first child in November? No doubt, she was originally hired because her library administrator felt confident she could do her job well and would contribute to the library and to the campus as a whole. The university has invested in her. Her supervisor would like to continue to see her grow as a professional. Right now, she may use the institution's leave policies, and she may require additional flexibility as she adjusts to her new dual role, balancing academic librarianship and motherhood. That does not mean that she is not worth the long-term investment as a professional. Three of the women interviewed mentioned that their supervisors told them: "Remember, it's a marathon, not a sprint." While this may sound like a management cliché, it bears repeating here since it can be easy to forget the long term when mired in HR policies and schedule adjustments.
In their chapter entitled "Mid-Career Perspectives on Work and Family," Ward and Wolf-Wendel (2012) highlight how women faculty's parenting concerns and work concerns both shift as they their children grow and as they move through their work lifecycle. "It's a marathon, not a sprint" works seamlessly in this context;; it will be hard for the librarian-mother throughout her career, but slowly but surely, she can complete the marathon. Later in their book, Ward and Wolf-Wendel recommend that department chairs "adopt a life-course perspective" by acknowledging that any person may need accommodations for life events at any point, not just those who have children (229). Normalizing the metaphoric "marathon" of life may help allay the temporary pains of adjusting for a pregnant librarian on bedrest or a librarian who has to leave early to pick up a sick child or a librarian who takes a tenure clock stoppage on her way toward tenure. Additionally, Allyson Downey (2016) recommends that supervisors "give everyone flexibility, not just parents" (228);; recognizing that life is a marathon for all employees, not just the ones who are mothers or fathers, can help an administrator maintain equity across the department.

Lessons Learned: Moving Forward
Most universities and colleges have official policies in place to help support employees with "work-life balance" and to encourage faculty and staff retention. It is common for individual departments to tailor such institutional policies to their own needs. Library administrators looking to support librarians who are also mothers can ask themselves the following questions: Does my library have library-specific work-life policies or at least a way for librarians (and staff) to find institutional policies? Are librarians encouraged to actually use the policies in place? Would it make sense for my library to have written policies or is it better to have policies worked out on a case-by-case basis or informally? As an administrator, have I considered what other peer libraries do for librarians who are also mothers and fathers, or who have other caregiving responsibilities (e.g., caring for aging parents)? What policy options are out there to offer librarians?
There are several resources available to department chairs and administrators that may be of interest to a library administrator looking for information on what he or she can do to support librarian-mothers. The University of California, Berkeley's UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge initiative created a report for academic department chairs and deans that has been modified for several other institutions, mostly large research universities. UC Berkeley, Oregon State University, and Iowa State University all have extensive "toolkits" for administrators to use (see Appendix A). Other schools have chosen to collect all the relevant institutional familyfriendly policies and information on one website, many of which are good examples of the types of accommodations that could be offered (e.g., University of Michigan;; University of Texas at Austin;; University of California, Davis). Toolkits can be tailored to a specific type of institution, like the one used at Loyola Marymount University in California, in which the policies for academic mothers are couched in the context of Jesuit values of the "whole person." It is more difficult to find such websites or documents for smaller four-year colleges, though there a few examples of reports and recommendations from Carleton College, Bryn Mawr College, and Claremont McKenna College.
None of the toolkits from other institutions will necessarily fit your library's circumstances perfectly, but the aforementioned resources are good places to start. Conscientious attention to these issues will not only have a positive impact on your librarians but also provide an opportunity for your library to set the example for your campus. The library could serve as the change agent, motivating your institution to explore and examine how best to support its employees and take a life-course perspective on family-friendly policies. Librarians value information, access, support, and empowerment;; helping librarians who are also caregivers is an opportunity not to be missed.