Chapter
Five: Whānau and motherhood
I identified two barriers
in Janet’s life, related to her family that made it more difficult for her to
circumnavigate the mountain to Principalship and compelled her to wait until
her daughter had left school: being a
wife and being a mother of a school aged child.
5.1 Principalship “does put
pressure on relationships, marriages” (Janet)
Women principals undertake
multiple roles as they are not only principals but are often homemakers/mothers/carers
of young children, teenagers and older parents (Hansen, 2014). These multiple roles take an inordinate amount
of energy and therefore women may find it more difficult to try to strike a
balance between career and family than their male counterparts (Christman
& McClellan, 2008; Fitzgerald & Wilkinson, 2010; Fuller, 2013). If women do set themselves the goal of scaling
the mountain or starting out the journey earlier towards principalship then they
are more
likely to be single and have fewer children than male principals (Fuller, 2013).
Gino, Wilmuth and Brooks (2015) uncovered that the
goals people set for themselves are a powerful motivator for behaviour and are
driven by what will make them happy in life as well as the way they imagine
their future to be. Compared to men, women have a higher number of life goals
with a smaller proportion related to achieving power (the desire to influence
other people) at work. Of
course research by its very nature is generalised and men are also affected by
work/family tensions but women tend to be more directly affected (Coleman,
2009) as they often put their needs of their partner and family ahead of their
own career aspirations (Neidhart, 2009).
This decision could happen because women are “encumbered by the
expectations” of their “life context” (Hansen, 2014, p. 20) or because women do
not want to position one life goal above another, especially in relation to their
careers, as much as men do (Gino et al., 2015).
An example of this is
relocation to a different place for employment.
Research
shows that few women have the luxury of relocating (Neidhardt,
2009; Robinson,
2015) and Robinson (2015) found that in the USA “society discourages family
change for the sake a of a wife’s career” (p. 59). However, Janet and her husband had “looked
at moving but house prices were absolutely phenomenal [and she was] quite happy
to travel” for around 45 minutes each way to her new school as a deputy
principal. “It was a good relaxation in the morning; wind down, wind up.” With both of her parents deceased and her
husband’s family in town “I would have stayed around here anyway.”
If women choose to put
their own needs first they may even have to “let go” of their husbands to take
on more leadership responsibility (Brunner, 1999, as cited in Robinson, 2015,
p. 11) and Duncan (2013) observed that female principals were more likely to be
single, divorced or separated compared to their male counterparts. Janet understood that principalship “does put
pressure on relationships, marriages.”
This made her less willing to make the sacrifice of home/career balance
including time spent away from her husband and daughter if she became a principal. Janet wanted to wait until she had more time
and less responsibilities. This waiting
for the right time concurs with USA research findings from Litmanovitz’s (2011)
who studied female educational
leaders at all levels and Sperandio’s (2015) investigation into
female superintendents.
5.2 Being
a mother “I was one of those mothers who
thought I would have five years off and within six months I was going up the
wall” (Janet)
Janet thought that she would
always be the kind of mother who would have a baby and then “have five years
off” until her child started school. However, when her daughter was born within six
months she was “going up the wall.” The
day care centre was attached to the high school and only for the use of the
school staff so her daughter went there and Janet returned to work. Janet said “I was the worse mother as she got
every bug under the sun when mixing with other children.” Janet also commented
that she “made use of every hour” of the day care and was
“probably the last terrible parent to pick the child up.” Although she said
that “sometimes I regret that, looking back now on her life” Janet could also
see the benefits. For example, her
daughter was an only child so at day care she “had lots of company.” When her
daughter went to school at 5 the teachers said that “she’s a typical teacher’s
child, she was taught how to count and do it all in English and Māori”. Janet
retorted “I tell you what it hasn’t come from me. When I get home at 6 pm I
barely have time to talk to her, bath her, put her to bed and carry on working.
I said she got that from the day centre!” Janet had to be a “superwoman”
(Moneypenny, 2013, p. 5) as a deputy principal
just to survive let alone be effective. However,
this workload is nothing compare to that of a principal where Fuller (2013)
reported that the unofficial working week of a UK head teacher was 62.4 hours. Here in New Zealand Janet has
“between a 6-7 start, [and is] last to leave at night 6-6.30” or 8-9 pm when
her husband is at work. To Janet it did
not appear to be sustainable to have a child and to be a principal.
When Janet’s daughter went to primary
school she
would catch the bus back from there to the high school so her mother could
carry on working. When her daughter was older and Janet moved to a deputy
principal position in another town her daughter came with her to college. As Janet said “it was a transport thing,
[but] also a safety thing.” As her father
was on shift she did not want her sitting in their home town while she was in a
different town so she “came where I was” and “waited for me to finish and came
home in the car with me.” Janet had to
incorporate her family life into her job (Robinson, 2015) if she
wanted to take on a promotion where she had to travel.
Janet was a deputy
principal for a long time but this corresponds with research that illustrated how
women delay their careers progression due to family obligations (Eckman, 2004;
Fawver, 2014). Janet
weighed up her life goals (Gino et al., 2015) and decided that there was no
place for her at the highest point of the mountain while her daughter was in
school, echoing what Fuller (2013) revealed in her research. Her goal of being a mother was stronger than
the goal of becoming a principal and Janet waited until daughter had
left school before she pursued the role of principal. Janet asserted “I would never recommend it
[principalship] if you have little children, our daughter had left home” which coincides
with the opinions of a number of female leaders in the USA (Fawver, 2014;
Kelsey et al., 2014). Eckman (2004) ascertained
from her USA study that having young children at home delayed the careers of
women while it inspired men. However, more
recent research, again in the USA, detected that a new generation of women
appear ready to access leadership positions at a younger age as they accepted
the compromises in their home and work life (Sperandio, 2015).
It appeared that Janet
put everything on hold for her whānau but this is not true. She did have agency and a fulfilling career
in senior leadership and she loved the contact with the students which she knew
would go (as observed from her previous principals) if she moved up the
mountain. Even though being a deputy
principal wasn’t challenging as Janet said “I could be a DP (deputy
principal), standing on my head” she
decided to place her “professional self-actualization in the back seat”
(Hansen, 2014, p. 20) until her time was right. She knew that she had one
chance to challenge the status quo as principal which took more time than she
was willing to give while her daughter was still at home. Janet had other life goals as a mother and wanted
to continue to coach her daughter’s sports teams and help with her other
extra-curricular activities.
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