Unserious people in the Academy

Atrios has a link to a recently released study about women academics (with a bent, I take, towards those in the natural sciences).

On top of his points, which I've also witnessed, I'd add that similar pressures exist for male academics who might actually, I don't know, want to be involved in an equal partnership in raising their children (though not at the same intensity with which they burden women). I think ms. wobs and I were pretty lucky to have l'il wobs when I was still in grad school and she was working part-time. It gave me a chance to spend a lot of time in his formative years (as well as saved on childcare costs). But forget about making any sort of progress on my degree. It took me a year to take a comprehensive exam during that period. It also affected my research - I shifted the focus of my dissertation research in order to work with family-friendly professors, academics who themselves were more marginalized in our department.

Add to this the stress of raising a child on the combined incomes of a graduate employee and an adjunct writing professor at a community college, and you have a significant part of the cocktail that induced me to leave academia.