How was Amy Coney Barret able to raise SEVEN kids while building her career?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


No “hothousing” kids a la DCUM, that’s for sure!

Some people are consumed by their careers and think being a parent means providing food and shelter. Not my type of parenting, but it takes all kinds.

I think most dcum parents are “those” parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ALMOST Every SN mom I know worked only part time or did SAHM once they had a child with special needs. No way is she doing the hard work of parenting.

Growing up a lot of Catholic families were this way. Lots of kids, very little parent time.

But the goal is just to crank out more Catholics.

Do you believe Jewish parents have more “parent time”? Please explain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALMOST Every SN mom I know worked only part time or did SAHM once they had a child with special needs. No way is she doing the hard work of parenting.

Growing up a lot of Catholic families were this way. Lots of kids, very little parent time.

But the goal is just to crank out more Catholics.

Do you believe Jewish parents have more “parent time”? Please explain.

Wow, anti Jewish people are out in full force I see.

I am not that pp, but if you have 2 kids versus 7 kids, those two kids are getting more parent time.

She probably had loads of help, and once the oldest was old enough, they became the surrogate parent to the others. I've seen it happen all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Healthy neglect.

Or unhealthy neglect, depending on your opinion about kids raised in a pack by someone other than the parents.

I don’t think benign neglect is possible with that many children, several of whom have special needs, and two parents with demanding careers. I’m a big fan of it myself, but there are limits.

She had a ton of help. I don’t begrudge her that, but one would hope she’d be more supportive of women’s rights broadly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ALMOST Every SN mom I know worked only part time or did SAHM once they had a child with special needs. No way is she doing the hard work of parenting.

Growing up a lot of Catholic families were this way. Lots of kids, very little parent time.

But the goal is just to crank out more Catholics.

There is no way I could have worked even part time and done all the therapies, special preschools and medical appointments for my one child let alone 7, what 3 with SN. We often did 1-2 therapies, preschool and an activity as well for social.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone else feel strangely ambivalent about her?

OTOH, I abhor her politics. OTO, I'm impressed despite myself by what she has accomplished. When I was younger, I had hoped for something similar to her lifestyle.

I never wanted to have seven kids because that's crazy but I had hoped for 3-4 plus two demanding professional jobs. We weren't able to do it. Husband has the demanding job, I have the mommy tracked job. I'll never end up as a federal judge.

That’s because you’re trying to do it on your own. She had her aunt as a full time nanny and countless nearby family members to help out. That’s a support network most families can only dream of.

Why have kids if your expectation is others will raise them so you can continue to live your life? She didn't do much mothering to those kids. Kids need their parents. Child care 9-5 is fine, 24/7 is not.

I don’t personally believe in this style of parenting. I’m just not delusional about the work of raising kids. I will say it’s always the women with the biggest family support who tend to minimize how much work it is — Of Course! They’re not the ones doing the day to day work of raising children. In that sense it’s even worse that she’s on the Supreme Court. She thinks it was “easy” to work and raise children because it’s in her interest to minimize the actual labor that went into caring for her kids. It’s easier to say she had a little help from family than to admit her aunt raised her kids with help from other family members.

Yes, I agree.
My SIL and BIL have 4 kids and when their children were little, worked full-time. They had a nanny during those years, who was part of their family, and SIL freely explains she could never have had 4 kids were it not for this other mother, someone she liked and trusted completely (and the grandparents lived close by and helped a little). At least my SIL and BIL acknowledge the outsize role their nanny played in their family structure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nannies.
Living in a ultra-religious community that REQUIRES the women to help each other.
A mother who believes in the same philosophy of the ulta-religious community and probably moved in with her.
An academic career that allowed her to take copious sabbaticals and teach low class loads in return for no tenure and fewer grants due to publications. (She has 12 - a comparative professor in her field at her age has 30-40).

Even with all that the only reason she's at the top of the list for SCOTUS is because Trump is down in the polls with conservative suburban white women over this pandemic and distance learning thing. The liberal suburban women who just hated him from the day one wouldn't have voted for him anyway.

Wait a minute. I cannot speak to her research productivity as I am not in law and I do not know the norms of publications and grants in her field, but my understanding is she has had tenure (promoted to a full Professor of Law) since at least 2010--which is basically 8 years after she started. So that really doesn't match your narrative above, especially if she took a couple parental leaves. In most fields the timeline to get promoted from assistant to associate (which is the point where you have tenure) is ~6 years and associate to full is ~5 years. This can be longer if there are parental/medical leaves or shorter if there is exceptional productivity. I don't know if law is similar to other fields (if it were going from being hired to a full prof in 8 years would be accelerated progress), but there seems to be nothing suggestive of not getting tenure in her timeline.

Tenure track is a lot shorter in law (like 3 years), and the expectation is that you get tenure—very different than other humanities fields. While it’s very competitive to get law professorships, the number of “suoerstar” candidates is relatively small, and schools would not be able to attract them if they routinely denied tenure to former Supreme Court clerks who could make high 6-figure salaries at a law firm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


No “hothousing” kids a la DCUM, that’s for sure!

Some people are consumed by their careers and think being a parent means providing food and shelter. Not my type of parenting, but it takes all kinds.

This is basically what it is. If she's religious and goes to church a few times a week, that is probably their idea of family time. They have a housekeeper for the house and nannies and family for the kids. It meets her need of having a large family but she isn't actually doing the difficult work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not impressed with her religion or politics, but a working woman with a litter of kids has my respect as a working mom.

She's not parenting those kids.

By that logic neither is any WOHM. Is that really the message, that a mother working out of the house is not actually parenting her kids? Talk about setting us all back...