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Allison Yamanashi
When the good people at the Berkeley Graduate asked for an article, I was not shocked of course. It seemed like the least I could do to contribute a few of my experiences as a spouse of a graduate student. I should probably start by saying that my husband and I have a number of friends (lucky us!),both married and single,in the graduate programs at Cal. Thus,the comments I make here are informed by the anecdotes they have shared with me over the past few years in addition to my own experiences.
I’ll start with a shocking statement:graduate school is easier for the married couple. I know that the conventional thinking is that graduate students are single workaholics (and that’s half right), and I don’t really know all the reasons why being married seems to help (hopefully by the end of this, I’ll have conveyed a few of the important ones I’ve found thus far), nor is that meant to suggest that it’s some Herculean task for those of you who are single. I’ve just found that,for many of the couples we know on campus, being in a relationship prior to starting has been a boon. When my husband and I arrived here,there was a bit of culture shock. We’re from a small town in the Midwest, so Berkeley was naturally a big adjustment. It was nice for both of us to have someone familiar and ‘normal’ in the midst of the turmoil that accompanies the first few months of graduate school.
If you’ve been here very long,you know that the first 3 months are the worst. I don’t think this is specific to married couples at all,but the fine-tuning that occurs in this period precludes a steady schedule at home. My husband is in a hard science program, so he had to find a research project,and take classes,and attend a bunch of meetings at all hours just to get started. This was straining on both of us,and many meals and evenings were missed. But,looking back it seems that having a solid foundation at home that doesn’t exist for most single students really seemed to help us get through the hectic parts. And,as time came to make important decisions about his career, he had a ‘built-in’ confidant to help him sort through those issues and bounce ideas off of.
Once he found his lab and began a project,we began to settle into ‘The Routine’. This period has been is marked by long hours,unusual sleep habits,strange bouts of paper reading during dinner,and often consternation at why things were working yesterday but not today. I imagine that the time he spends in the laboratory is much akin to that you humanities graduate students would spend in the library,and the effect is much the same:a general distaste for the outdoors,willingness to eat standing up and drink lots of coffee where they’d never been much for hot beverages before,that sort of thing. Here being married offers extra challenges and along with the benefits. Everyone looks for companionship,and as a couple we already have found our other half. That saves both my husband and I fromhaving to date,which given his schedule would be difficult and I hear from many of my single graduate student friends there’s quite a problem finding time to build and nurture a relationship. That being said,since we are in a relationship already means that thereare extracurricular obligations (whether they be ‘dates’
for us, or group activities,outings and such),which we can’t just choose to ignore if it doesn’t fit into our schedule. The crucial things we’ve found here are communication and triage. His professional goals require certain things of him on a regular schedule, but so does our marriage. When we talk about what issues are important at work for him vs.activities for both of us,and come up with a plan to meet those goals. That means giving some things up from time to time,but hopefully you’ll find a balance that keeps both professional and personal life moving.
Of course, there are sometimes hiccups in graduate school, and being married doesn’t stop those, but it can help move them along. Many students go through a period of confusion and lack of direction after finishing a big project or qualifying exam. Being married helps address that from two angles. First,being married helps solidify long term goals. As I mentioned earlier, it’s easy to lose perspective by yourself,and I hope that my being there helps provide some grounding and objectivity about what he needs to do next. Sometimes just having someone to talk to can give you all the direction you require. The second is that I get to be a motivator directly. When he’s thinking about that perfect new approach to his project or wanting to take the afternoon off, I can gently remind him of the myriad reasons why he can and should put in those extra hours now for the payoff down the road.
The other place hitches come up is in the relationship itself. Graduate school is an incredible emotional and temporal investment (for both of us!) and in many ways I end up sharing my husband with his work in a way that I wouldn’t were he in a 9 to 5 job. Because of that,it’s all the more important to take some time out from our jobs and spend it on our marriage. Whether its getting out of town for the weekend, renting a DVD, taking a trip up to the Botanical Gardens,or going to a nice restaurant in the City,we make doing something together on a regular basis a necessity. It can be hard on the limited income of a graduate student, and its important to not add financial strain, but try to find some activities that are inexpensive and give you time to relax and be together as a couple. Living in a college town means there are lots of cheap events
going on all the time, so make an effort to take advantage of them.
The final thing to remember is,whether you’re married or single,graduate school will eventually end. My husband is closer to his thesis with each passing day,and then it will be on to the rest of our lives. But be careful;you can’t just be looking at the goal. While it’s true that there’s a lot to look forward to after this period is over,you should be working to enjoy it while you can. When we are all out of school,wealthy and living in the suburbs,we are not going to have a chance to walk around downtown street fairs every weekend,and a whole new set of problems are sure to crop up (home ownership – it ain’t no picnic). So enjoy what you can here while you’re here, and let the future stay there for now – we’ll all catch up with it soon enough.
Showing posts with label Spouses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spouses. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Saturday, September 12, 1981
Black Working Women: The System Takes its Toll
by Sharon Broussard
Black women have been prominent in the labor force since the days of slavery, when many were forced to work in fields alongside their men. After slavery, black working women labored as domestics to help support their families. The only other fields open to black women were traditional female professions such as nursing, teaching, and social work.
However, in the late 60's, educated black women began to move into white male dominated professions such as law, business, and medicine, mainly as a result of Affirmative Action programs. This phenomenon has sent many researchers and scholars alike scrambling for data to determine the implications of such sudden career mobility.
Dr. Robert Staples, an associate professor in sociology at San Francisico State and author of "The World of Black Singles: The Changing Patters of Male-Female Relations", is one such scholar. And his conclusions have made him a controversial figure in the black community.
In a lecture last month on the careers and professional relationships of black professional women, given at the four-day-long Black Working Women's Conference sponsored byt the Women's Center here, Staples said that black women are twice as likely as black men to graduate from college and continue their education on the graduate level.
"Black women are in the ascendancy, " he told an audience of approximately 50 people, mostly women, gathered in the Women's Center Lounge. "Womend o better in schools. Men get trapped in the manhood hustle--they believe they'll be basketball stars."
These women are often rewarded with lucrative careers, continued Staples, but they pay a high personal price if they are searching for black marriage partners with similar educational backgrounds and career opportunities. "That's where the rub comes in. There's a numbers problem," said Staples, as he shuffled his yellow legal-sized notes in front of him.
For example, Staples points out there were 150,000 more black women than black men enrolled in college in 1979. In contrast about one million more white males than females were enrolled in college, he said. Unless black women consider "marrying down," marrying working-class men with little education, they may find themselves opthing for alternative relationships ranging from singlehood to lesbianism, concluded Staples.
Staples' lecture was met with hostility and indignation by his audience who accused him of ignoring the general economic status of black women. And rightly so. Only a minority of black women enjoy the material success that Staples described. Economist Julianne Malveaux, an assistant professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, castigated Staples for neglecting to discuss the under-employment and unemployment of black women.
In a later lecture at the conference, Malveaux said that approximately 60% of working black women are in traditional low-paying female clerical and service jobs. "Occupationally, the polsiiton of black women has been worse than other groups." she said.
But few women in the audience objected to Staples's contention that black women outnumber black males in college and higher income professions, although the accuracy of Staples's views would affirm the matriarchy myth, the idea that black women dominate their males in the home and job market. They know that in appearances, at least, black women have made gigantic strides in the marketplace, seemingly moving by leaps and bounds out o fthe white man's kitchen and into elite schools and professions once closed to all blacks, such as law, business, and engineering. But in their wake, more myths have sprung up about black women.
One such myth is that black women are eagerly sought after by employers because they satisfy both race and sex Affirmative Action quotas. However, in acutality, black women are usually counted in one category--race. And despite Affirmative Action gains accrued by a few women, black women with education are less less likely than uneducated or black males to earn more than $20,000.
In addition to these myths, however, there are very real problems of black professional women who are single and complaining. Many o fthem have been groomed by parents for middle-class lifestyle. They have been urged since grade school to excel academically and to forego marriage until after they begin their careers. When school finally ends, they begin to consider marriage--to those who reflect their upbringing and values. Many of them are quickly convinced that single black professional men are practically non-existent.
And that belief is not far from the truth because the middle-class itself is a fragile institution maintained by two working marriage partners and heavily dependent on government employment. According to Malveaux, approximately 40% of the black middlecalass hold government jobs, jobs which may be endangered by government cutbacks.
Yet the success of the new black professional class is the bright side of an otherwise gloomy economic picture for other blacks. The economic gap is widening between whites and blacks. More importantly, high unemployment among black males and teenagers coupled with a tremendous growth in poor female-headed households may mean the perpetuation of a vicious cycle of poverty for the majority of blacks.
A closer look at the problems of professional black women exposes the inner tension of black relationships between the sexes regardless of class due to economic conditions. Both lower-class black women who are living alone and middle-class black women who are unable to establish relationships with those who are their peers have the same "male problem". They both lack mates because uneducated and unskilled black men--of which there are many--oftend on't overcome the effects of job discrimination, poverty, and educational inequality. A disproportionate number of black men are in jaiil, on drugs, or die at an early age.
On college campuses, the "male problem" is an important topic among black women, but it is discussed as though it has no relation to the economic position of black people in this country. C. Dianne Howell, a counseling psychiatrist at Cal, said that the lack of single black men is frequently a discussion topic here. "There's a concern about how to develop meaningful relationships with someone they can respect," said Howell.
Some of these women are looking elsewhere for eligible mates, she said, and considering anew interracial dating, sharing eligible men with other women, and marrying outside of their class.
But choosing alternative relationships is no solution to the economic problems which plague the black community. There is a far deadlier numbers game being played than the scarcity of professional black men and it is reflected in the dire statistics on the widespread poverty of black communities. Until the majority of black males and females have equal educational and career opportunities, then black professional women will continue to trade careers for sound relationships and remain a class apart.
Black women have been prominent in the labor force since the days of slavery, when many were forced to work in fields alongside their men. After slavery, black working women labored as domestics to help support their families. The only other fields open to black women were traditional female professions such as nursing, teaching, and social work.
However, in the late 60's, educated black women began to move into white male dominated professions such as law, business, and medicine, mainly as a result of Affirmative Action programs. This phenomenon has sent many researchers and scholars alike scrambling for data to determine the implications of such sudden career mobility.
Dr. Robert Staples, an associate professor in sociology at San Francisico State and author of "The World of Black Singles: The Changing Patters of Male-Female Relations", is one such scholar. And his conclusions have made him a controversial figure in the black community.
In a lecture last month on the careers and professional relationships of black professional women, given at the four-day-long Black Working Women's Conference sponsored byt the Women's Center here, Staples said that black women are twice as likely as black men to graduate from college and continue their education on the graduate level.
"Black women are in the ascendancy, " he told an audience of approximately 50 people, mostly women, gathered in the Women's Center Lounge. "Womend o better in schools. Men get trapped in the manhood hustle--they believe they'll be basketball stars."
These women are often rewarded with lucrative careers, continued Staples, but they pay a high personal price if they are searching for black marriage partners with similar educational backgrounds and career opportunities. "That's where the rub comes in. There's a numbers problem," said Staples, as he shuffled his yellow legal-sized notes in front of him.
For example, Staples points out there were 150,000 more black women than black men enrolled in college in 1979. In contrast about one million more white males than females were enrolled in college, he said. Unless black women consider "marrying down," marrying working-class men with little education, they may find themselves opthing for alternative relationships ranging from singlehood to lesbianism, concluded Staples.
Staples' lecture was met with hostility and indignation by his audience who accused him of ignoring the general economic status of black women. And rightly so. Only a minority of black women enjoy the material success that Staples described. Economist Julianne Malveaux, an assistant professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, castigated Staples for neglecting to discuss the under-employment and unemployment of black women.
In a later lecture at the conference, Malveaux said that approximately 60% of working black women are in traditional low-paying female clerical and service jobs. "Occupationally, the polsiiton of black women has been worse than other groups." she said.
But few women in the audience objected to Staples's contention that black women outnumber black males in college and higher income professions, although the accuracy of Staples's views would affirm the matriarchy myth, the idea that black women dominate their males in the home and job market. They know that in appearances, at least, black women have made gigantic strides in the marketplace, seemingly moving by leaps and bounds out o fthe white man's kitchen and into elite schools and professions once closed to all blacks, such as law, business, and engineering. But in their wake, more myths have sprung up about black women.
One such myth is that black women are eagerly sought after by employers because they satisfy both race and sex Affirmative Action quotas. However, in acutality, black women are usually counted in one category--race. And despite Affirmative Action gains accrued by a few women, black women with education are less less likely than uneducated or black males to earn more than $20,000.
In addition to these myths, however, there are very real problems of black professional women who are single and complaining. Many o fthem have been groomed by parents for middle-class lifestyle. They have been urged since grade school to excel academically and to forego marriage until after they begin their careers. When school finally ends, they begin to consider marriage--to those who reflect their upbringing and values. Many of them are quickly convinced that single black professional men are practically non-existent.
And that belief is not far from the truth because the middle-class itself is a fragile institution maintained by two working marriage partners and heavily dependent on government employment. According to Malveaux, approximately 40% of the black middlecalass hold government jobs, jobs which may be endangered by government cutbacks.
Yet the success of the new black professional class is the bright side of an otherwise gloomy economic picture for other blacks. The economic gap is widening between whites and blacks. More importantly, high unemployment among black males and teenagers coupled with a tremendous growth in poor female-headed households may mean the perpetuation of a vicious cycle of poverty for the majority of blacks.
A closer look at the problems of professional black women exposes the inner tension of black relationships between the sexes regardless of class due to economic conditions. Both lower-class black women who are living alone and middle-class black women who are unable to establish relationships with those who are their peers have the same "male problem". They both lack mates because uneducated and unskilled black men--of which there are many--oftend on't overcome the effects of job discrimination, poverty, and educational inequality. A disproportionate number of black men are in jaiil, on drugs, or die at an early age.
On college campuses, the "male problem" is an important topic among black women, but it is discussed as though it has no relation to the economic position of black people in this country. C. Dianne Howell, a counseling psychiatrist at Cal, said that the lack of single black men is frequently a discussion topic here. "There's a concern about how to develop meaningful relationships with someone they can respect," said Howell.
Some of these women are looking elsewhere for eligible mates, she said, and considering anew interracial dating, sharing eligible men with other women, and marrying outside of their class.
But choosing alternative relationships is no solution to the economic problems which plague the black community. There is a far deadlier numbers game being played than the scarcity of professional black men and it is reflected in the dire statistics on the widespread poverty of black communities. Until the majority of black males and females have equal educational and career opportunities, then black professional women will continue to trade careers for sound relationships and remain a class apart.
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