Oh Dogmama! Being a professor (in the sciences - I can't speak to other disciplines) is one of the only jobs that one has to "sing for one's supper". Research professors need to write proposals and get funding to pay for at least some of their salaries, pay for their graduate students, pay for their research. Professors are expected to: maintain a research laboratory performing world class science, mentor and graduate graduate students, teach undergraduate and graduate courses, bring in millions of dollars of funding, sit on many university committees - and if one is a minority, he/she finds herself on more committees than usual - the university likes to parade their minority professors for all to see, and mentor undergraduates.
Aside from the hope that they will, in fact, get to do world class research in a collaborative and supportive community, I do not understand why so many want to go into academia. I feel horribly sorry for my advisor from my MS program; she has traded any sort of personal life for tedious and difficult work with little thanks.