Merging spheres
Braybeck, Mary M.
MERGING SPHERES TO PRODUCE & REPRODUCE I share David O'Brien's concerns about the chasms between men and women on campus and that these chasms exist "despite the removal of structural barri-ers."...
...Finally, we need to acknowledge that our segregation of the public and private, the productive and reproductive, results in a lopsided mission that does not educate the whole person...
...MARY M. BRAYBECK...
...We might reconceive the mission of Catholic universities to foster development of both the repro-ductive processes (Jane Martin's three c's: care, concern, and connection) along with the productive processes...
...We must ask, how has masculinity come to mean the antithesis of mutuality...
...This will require, however, a thorough examination of how these traits have been genderized in our Catholic heritage and in our Catholic schools...
...In her recent book, Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman (Yale, 1985), Jane Roland Martin makes a related distinction between the productive and the reproductive processes...
...It is they, O'Brien rightly notes, who feel the conflict of the either/or, choices family and career interests pose...
...The difficul-ties many academics experience with Martin's use of the word "reproductive" alerts us to the radical nature of her message: She would bring the private world of relationships, care, and love into the public arena of the academy...
...We know from research on fathers that men can excel in parenting (the word fathering, unfortunately, does not yet connote the myriad reproductive activities and involvements of men who assume this role...
...I am thinking here of the radical role the presence of day care could play in bringing the private world into the public world...
...and love will no longer be the taboo topic on campus...
...While we have admitted women to univer-sities for training in the productive processes, we have left them with the reproductive responsibilities (biological and social) in both the private and public spheres...
...As O'Brien notes, we have "left relationships to take care of themselves...
...How can we do this...
...We need to understand these barriers if they are to be reduced...
...Universities might begin viewing campus child-care centers as a central aspect of their educational environment, rather than a "benefit" to employees...
...University mission statements reflect the goals of producing independent, educated persons who are equipped to contribute to society...
...In other words, they engage in the reproductive processes, and reap the rewards from care, concern, and connection...
...We strive to train people in critical thinking and analysis, and to help them develop knowledge and skills so that as graduates they might assume their "proper" place in society...
...O'Brien offers other suggestions...
...In contrast, reproductive proc-esses include not only private biological reproduction, but rearing children and the activities of care, concern, and connec-tion that are needed in both public and private life...
...My university, like O'Brien's, fosters (often successfully) development of the productive processes among both male and female students...
...They also find that they develop very close ties with the children they parent, that they become empathetically attuned to their children and deeply connected to their child's joys and pains...
...We must examine the criterion of individual excel-lence at the expense of caring for others and acknowledge that we need loving concern for others in the public world of our universities (yes, even in our promotion and tenure delibera-tions...
...I suggest that other, more profound barriers, remain...
...According to Martin, productive processes include the public (as well as private) activities in the political, social, cultural, and economic spheres...
...Our women graduates are as successful (and as unsuccessful) as our men graduates preparing for the challenges that they will meet in their lives as productive citizens...
...Of course, the "if must precede the "how...
...Many writers have noted the tendency to split society be-tween public and private worlds, usually referred to as the separate spheres argument...
...We must ask how it is that we have come to attribute the maintenance of home and hearth, commitments and relationships to girls and women...
...Then they will find the ways to help students develop care, concern, and commitment...
...He notes that what is at stake in men's refusal "to place their need for intimacy in the context of mutuality, negotiation, and quality" is their masculine identity...
...they might now choose to prepare young men and women in the former...
...How-ever, the conversations, dialogues, and discussions O'Brien hopes for his students are out of place in such an institution...
...The activities in which O'Brien would have universities engage, fostering meaningful relationships based on mature, committed love, are not just ignored by the academy, they are considered inappropriate...
...The tasks, attributes, and roles assigned to men in the public world of work and achievement are viewed as separate from those assigned women in the private world of home and community...
...This research tells us that men find parenting very hard work (no news to women...
...According to this argument, di-chotomies are genderized as masculine-feminine...
...We cannot expect young men to embrace care, sensitivity, and loving self-sacrifice when we call these "feminine" virtues...
...I would suggest we have left relationships to women...
...Rethinking the role of child-care centers in our universities is only one way students'.private worlds and the reproductive processes necessary to live both there and in the public world, might be incorporated into the academy...
...Universities have already proven their ability to prepare both male and female students in the latter...
...Once universities have undergone this analysis they can begin to restructure university life accordingly to promote development of the reproductive and productive processes...
...They will have an easier time with women, who have already gotten the message: In both their careers and their roles as homemaker (at least that is the ideal that we hold out to them), they are to be committed partner, harmonizer, and the bridge for relation-ships...
...We must question the competitive model with its adversarial mentality that is not complemented by experiences with co-operation...
...It could be different...
...O'Brien understands this...
...Universities will need to decide if they are to have a role in developing students' reproductive processes as well as the productive processes...
...Young men will have to be convinced, first, that they ought to strive to develop skills in care, concern, and connec-tion...
Vol. 116 • March 1989 • No. 6
