mothers in academia

7/30/2019 Mothers in Academia

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INTRODUCTION 1

iNTRODUCTiON

Speaking Truth to Power to Change the Ivory Tower

Mari Castaeda and Kirsten Isgro

we met in the autumn o 2000 in western Massachusetts, when both o us

were embarking on new academic journeys: Mari was beginning her frst

proessorial job resh out o graduate school (a Chicana rom the University

o CaliorniaSan Diego), with a fve-year-old son in tow, and Kirsten was

returning to her doctoral studies ater a decade-long hiatus rom graduateschool. Mari relocated her amily rom Los Angeles, and Kirsten relocated

rom Vermont with her partner o fve years and her aging dog. Both o us

became parents while in graduate school, albeit with a fteen-year age gap

and at dierent points o our lives. Like most o us who become parents, we

did not ully anticipate the delight, exhaustion, intense love, ambivalence,

and distress that come with raising a child.

It is not coincidental that this project was spawned at a time when notions

o motherhood were once again being contested at the turn o the twenty-frst century. In 2004, Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaelss witty and con-

troversial book The Mommy Myth came out, quickly becoming a best-seller.

As communication scholars, we ound this book incredibly useul in its criti-

cal assessment o the cultural representations o mothers in the media. This

new momism, as Douglas and Michaels call it, is a set o ideals, norms,

and practices, most requently and powerully represented in the media, that

seem on the surace to celebrate motherhood, but which in reality promul-

gate standards o perection that are beyond your reach (5). How does thismomism aect women proessionally, especially those o us who have cho-

sen careers in higher education? For many o the authors who contributed

to this anthology, lie as a parent and as an employee in institutes o higher

Copyrighted Material


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2 INTRODUCTION

educationin various positionsis complicated, with both productive and

contradictory tensions.

This new momism closely ollowed the media-ueled mommy wars

between stay-at-home mothers and mothers who work outside o the home.Women compose 47 percent o the total U.S. labor orce, 73 percent (ap-

proximately 66 million women) o whom are working ull-time (U.S. De-

partment o Labor 2010). Moreover, the participation o mothers in the la-

bor orce has risen over the past twenty-fve years. As o 2008, more than 60

percent o mothers are working outside the home or paid wages (U.S. Con-

gress Joint Economic Committee 2010). In U.S. academia more specifcally,

women compose nearly 50 percent o the workorce, and o that population

it is estimated that more than 65 percent are working mothers. In otherwords, many women working at colleges and universities across the country

are also parenting. These percentages not surprisingly correspond with the

shiting demographics in higher-education institutions, where emale stu-

dents compose almost 60 percent o all students in the United States and

47 percent worldwide (United Nations Educational, Scientifc and Cultural

Organization 2002). Indeed, the emerging workorce changes anticipated

or the twenty-frst century inspired the publication o several books aimed

at addressing the ongoing struggle o worklie balance or women. As morewomen graduated with college degrees, the challenge o becoming a su-

permom and superemployee has dominated the literary conversation since

2000 and has since become a central theme especially or women with pro-

essional white-collar careers (A. Crittenden 2001; Hewlett 2002; Mason and

Ekman 2007; Stone 2007a, 2007b).

The ideal o the supermom-employee-student is especially poignant in

academia, where the existence o exible schedules as well as extended

winter and summer breaks creates the misinormed assumption that thedemands o the academy are compatible with the demands o parenting.

However, the bureaucratic, hierarchal, and swelling expectations that char-

acterize so many institutions o higher learning make it difcult to maintain

a orty-hour work schedule, even in the summer. Academics and proession-

al university/college sta oten work overtime week ater week. In addition,

the dierent institutional structures and gradations o aculty/sta positions

place uneven and inequitable burdens on workers, which are increas-

ingly evident in the blogosphere discussions about working conditions inacademia. There are vast dierentiations between two-year, our-year, and

doctoral public and private colleges and universities that impact the rising

standards or aculty members employed as adjuncts, lecturers, instructors,



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INTRODUCTION 3

assistant proessors, associate proessors, ull proessors, and administrators.

For ull-time, tenure-track, and tenured aculty, excellence is expected in

three areasresearch, teaching, and service, although scholarly output is

oten considered the most important, particularly at Research I institutionsand increasingly at historically teaching-oriented our-year colleges. A or-

ty-hour work week is simply not enough to produce excellent scholarship,

engage in master teaching, and cultivate service an outreach partnerships.

Sta and students are also not immune to these rising standards. Pressure is

increasingly put upon graduate students to achieve excellence in their stu-

dent, research, teaching, and service years beore becoming proessors. This

very real pressure is deeply inuencing emale scholars in their decisions to

become mothers and remain in the realm o higher education.As a consequence, academia as a collegiate and proessional work envi-

ronment and its impact on mothers have become an important site o analy-

sis. Andrea OReilly, or instance, established the Association or Research

on Mothering and promoted research on mothering, including how to be a

mother and negotiate an academic career. From this association emerged a

number o projects, conerences, and essays that address motherhood in all

o its confgurations, including the Motherhood Initiative or Research and

Community Involvement. OReilly also helped spur a new area o interdis-ciplinary eminist scholarship on motherhood, called motherhood studies,

which is concerned with mothering not only as an institution, experience,

or identity, but also as an important site or empowerment (see OReilly

2010a, 2010b). As OReilly reminds us, eminists such as Adrienne Rich and

a long list o others have been grappling with the distinction between moth-

ering and motherhood or decades. Motherhood is not naturally, necessar-

ily, inevitably oppressive; reproduction and child rearing need not be per-

ceived as a private, nonpolitical undertaking limited to specifc patriarchalnuclear amily structures (OReilly 2010b, 18).

THE NEED FOR iNCLUSivE ACADEMiC CULTURES

iN NEOLiBERAL TiMES

The publication o Parenting and Professing (Bassett 2005), Motherhood,

the Elephant in the Laboratory (Monosson 2008), Mama Ph.D. (Evans andGrant 2009),and other such books in the past fve years remind us that there

is still much to do in terms o challenging the cultural notion that the ideal

intellectual worker in the academia is male gendered. As is made clear in a



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4 INTRODUCTION

report issued by the American Federation o Teachers (AFT, 2011), the acad-

emy as a whole continues to wane as a welcoming place or women. The

report oers recommendations or making positive changes, such as cor-

recting inequities in compensation, expanding amily-riendly policies oncampus, clariying and providing more exibility in hiring and promotion

policies, and ensuring that women have a voice in their workplace. A 2003

scholarly analysis o the Chronicle of Higher Education over the past decade

clearly indicates that issues related to amily and work are on the mind and

conscience o academicians (Wol-Wendel and Ward 2003, 112). Our own

search yielded more than seventy-fve articles on work and amily published

in the Chronicle between 2004 and 2011. In addition, the pool o graduate

students and junior aculty no longer consists predominately o young menwith stay-at-home wives; there is instead a generation o intellectual work-

ers who envision dual-career couples sharing in child care (Mason 2009a).

Yet the newer generation is operating within not only a cultural norm, but

an increasingly neoliberal ramework that requires unrelenting work hours

in higher education with little room or a gratiying amily lie (Mason and

Goulden 2002, 2004b; Mason 2009a). The Chronicle runsan advice column

called The Balancing Act that addresses workamily concerns, and it o-

ten eatures heated debates regarding the accommodations academe shouldoer to proessors who are parents.

See, or example, the barrage o comments in response to Mary Ann Ma-

sons recent article in the Chronicle on the pyramid problem, where she

addresses the act that women continue to heavily populate the lower ac-

ulty ranks: There are ar ewer women than men at the top o the academic

hierarchy; those women are paid somewhat less than men, and they are

much less likely than men to have had children (2011, para. 2). The nearly

all-male executive administrative team at Mari Castaedas university, orinstance, demonstrates this point. Mason argues that this pyramid o gender

inequity is unlikely to change its shape unless serious structural shits take

place in higher education. Interestingly, the comments page or Masons

article showed that in act many (male and/or nonparent) readers had an

aversion to such changes. Yet mothers learning and working in academia

are experiencing a reality that deserves to be acknowledged and taken into

account. Mary Ann Masons scholarship is particularly inormative on the

state o women and mothers in academia. More than 50 percent o recentPh.D.s awarded by American universities are now granted to women, with

women accounting or 38 percent o aculty members overall (American



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INTRODUCTION 5

Association o University Proessors [AAUP] 2006; AFT 2011; Mason 2011).

However, there continue to be marked gender disparities in terms o aculty

positions, pay, and amily ormation between men and women in academia.

Women are best represented in less-prestigious teaching institutions (e.g.,community colleges) and in less-secure positions (e.g., adjunct/part-time in-

structors or lecturer positions) (Wol-Wendel and Ward 2006; Mason 2011).

In addition, ull-time women aculty members tend to earn less than their

male colleagues at each o the proessorial ranks (AAUP 2010; College and

University Proessional Association or Human Resources 2011). Women in

academe are also ar less likely to become biological or adoptive parents

than other proessional women or their male counterparts and are more

likely to remain single or the purpose o achieving career success (Masonand Goulden 2002, 2004a, 2004b; Drago and Colbeck 2004). Moreover,

the proessoriate as a highly male-dominated occupation creates a chilly

climate or women aculty. As Cheryl Maranto and Andrea Grifn (2011)

examine, the reality and even the perception o exclusion, devaluation, and

marginalization in academia serve as major impediments to women aculty

members achievements.

Some exemplary reviews have been made o the status o women in aca-

demia (Hornig 2003; Ropers-Huilman 2003a; Philipsen 2008), but more tell-ing are the personal narratives that describe college and university climates.

As the volume editor oGendered Futures in Higher Education notes in her

introduction, Higher education is one o the primary institutions that shape

culture. While those o us who participate in that institution cannot take the

blame, credit, or responsibility or current gender relations, we can insist that

gender discrimination will not be perpetuated in the very institutions that hold

promise or developing both knowledge and peoplea development that is

certainly stymied by gender discrimination (Ropers-Huilman 2003b, 9).The personal narratives expressed in Ropers-Huilmans anthology and a

variety o others illuminate the challenges that researchers, writers, teach-

ers, and students ace as women in academiachallenges that are oten

exacerbated or them i they are also mothers (Coiner and George 1998;

Evans and Grant 2008; Monosson 2008). For example, having a child with

any type o disabilitychronic or notadds to the long list o potential

barriers or mothers in academia. There are indications that those individu-

als who are parenting children with disabilities may orego job changes thatinvolve geographic relocation (something quite common in the academic

job market) and experience a higher rate o marital disruption (Mailick



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6 INTRODUCTION

Seltzer et al. 2001; Yantzi and Rosenberg 2008). In their study o moth-

ers o young children who are on the tenure track, Lisa Wol-Wendel and

Kelly Ward (2006) ound that there is great diversity in how women experi-

ence academic lie across disciplines and institutional types. Women ac-ulty members with children are oten encouraged to pursue their careers at

lower-tier institutions (e.g., community colleges, our-year programs). This

push has the potential to steer talented women away rom pursuing aculty

careers at Research I and II institutions based on the implicit assumption

that the roles o scholar and mother are incompatible. Furthermore, even

i women (with children or not) are granted tenure, ewer o them are pro-

moted to ull proessor, which is oten the result o poor mentoring and

networking once women achieve tenure and the lack o standardized poli-cies across departments (Stout, Staiger, and Jennings 2007). Such circum-

stances aect not only tenure and promotion, but also the uture o leader-

ship development and capacity building in all academic felds (Castaeda

and Hames-Garca orthcoming).

Moreover, the chilly climate or mothers in higher education is com-

pounded or women o color (Williams et al. 2005; Gonzlez 2007; Flores

and Garcia 2009). Although aculty positions have almost doubled in the

past two decades, most aculty o color (except Asians and Asian Americans)remain underrepresented in higher education, and minority womenes-

pecially Latina, Arican American, and Indigenous womenare ar less

likely than their male counterparts to be on tenure-track lines (Tuitt et al.

2009; Cotera 2010; AFT 2011). Numerous scholars have written about the

problematic climate or students, aculty, and administrators o color in

higher education, noting the Anglo-centric paradigm that shapes the cul-

ture o many colleges and universities (Padilla and Chvez 1993; Valverde

and Castenell 1998; Brown-Glaude 2009). Other collections have pointed tothe particular challenges all women o color ace due to the structural and

personal racism and sexism on college campuses (Benjamin 1997; Johnson

and Harris 2010). Despite some gains in position in the ivory tower or e-

male students and aculty as a whole, many women o color who are both

scholars and mothers fnd they continue to be blocked in their progress by

sex and racial prejudice and biases.

Since 2008, Inside Higher Ed has hosted the Mama Ph.D. blog, in which

various women with or working toward doctorates share almost daily theireorts in balancing parenthood with academics. Many women describe the

productive intersections o such balancing acts as well the challenges, some



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INTRODUCTION 7

o which are made more difcult by institutional bureaucracy. Despite the

growing body o blogs, literature, research, and media commentary on moth-

erhoodas both an institution and an experiencethe topic is ar rom ex-

hausted. I truth be told, the issues acing mothers in the twenty-frst centuryare perhaps more complex than in previous decades, thus making mothering

and motherhood continual compelling topics or exploration (OReilly 2010a).

In attempts to navigate the less-than-hospitable culture o academia,

many women (regardless o motherhood) have ound particular strategies

to (re)balance worklie priorities and stressors. For many, the degree o

occupational stress in higher education is clearly gendered, where women

experience heavier workloads and signifcant stress in managing multiple

roles, juggling the workhome interace, and negotiating in a sometimesnonsupportive organizational climate (Michailidis 2008). The occupation-

al stress o higher education oten inhibits womens (and mens) ability to

maintain lie-afrming and health-promoting liestyles. As some scholars

have ound, academic mothers sometimes engage in negative stress-man-

agement behaviors such as smoking, drinking, overeating, and maintain-

ing a sedentary liestyle (Michailidis 2008; Vancour and Sherman 2010).

For other academics, sel-care and stress management mean seeking out

peer mentors that afrm ones work and create a more collegial work envi-ronment (McGuire and Reger 2003; Goeke et al. 2011). These individual

eorts are only a ew o the ways to deal with the hypertransormation o

higher education that is ueled by neoliberal practices and the increasingly

commercialization o academia.

Katherine Romack argues in her commentary on the corporatization o

the academy that, given the negligible impact o education on the wage

gap, womens continued legal and civic privatization within globalization,

and their declining economic status, it is reasonably certain that womenwill continue to be second-class citizens o the corporate academy (2011,

245). Over the past thirty years, state unding or higher education has been

dramatically reduced, and, as a consequence, an inversion o the academic

labor orce has occurred wherein almost 75 percent o todays instructional

workorce is employed on a contingent basis (AFT 2011). This move to a

contingent model o employment or higher-education proessionals also

coincides with the increased numbers o women entering the instructional

workorce, especially as the roles o community colleges expand, and thereis an increased preponderance toward online teaching in order to raise

more revenue by serving student customers in and outside the United



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8 INTRODUCTION

States. These changes aect emale contingent labor disproportionately and

more so those who are mothers because o the impression that there is ex-

ibility in part-time (online) appointments. Higher education at the admin-

istrative level is simultaneously being touted as primarily a tool or securingeconomic achievement in a global marketplace as many progressive people

on campuses argue or global citizenship (Gildersleeve et al. 2010).

In order to deal with the social inequalities that are deeply ingrained in

higher education and the larger contemporary society, a undamental shit

needs to be made in how resources and power are managed. The AAUPs

Statement o Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work

argues that the development and implementation o institutional policies

that enable the healthy integration o work responsibilities with amily liein academe require renewed attention (2001, 216). At the time this inu-

ential AAUP document was published, it gave new lie and attention to the

struggles mothers in academe ace and oered instrumental principles and

guidelines or academic institutions to construct appropriate policies and

practices regarding amily leave. It suggests amily-riendly policies that in-

clude the creation o modifed-duty policies to allow aculty to obtain relie

rom some teaching or service obligations while remaining in active-service

status; provisions or child, elder, and other amily care; and ability to cratexible work policies and schedules. Yet even when amily-riendly poli-

cies exist, aculty members may not know about or take advantage o them.

The AFT revisits the negative impact that the lack o amily-riendly policies

has on the hiring process, retention, and womens prospects or career ad-

vancement. This national organization takes the position that eectuating

a diverse aculty and sta [is] an essential element in achieving a greater

measure o economic and social justice in America (2011, 6). Both the

AAUP and the AFT documents highlight the double bind women acultymembers with children may fnd themselves in because they are bearing

and raising children at the same time that they are building their careers.

These organizations point to the ways in which the creation and support o

amily-riendly policies may lead to the retention and promotion o wom-

en in higher education. Although the broader goal may be to change the

sociocultural landscape o colleges and universities, it is undeniable that

achieving success in changing the institutional policies is an important step

toward shiting structural and cultural eorts. As a consequence, this bookis an attempt to make transparent how mothers voices about their lives in

academia are critical or inspiring policy and cultural shits.



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INTRODUCTION 9

iMPORTANCE OF TESTIMONIOS

Despite emerging changes, many mothers continue to struggle or a voice

in an academic landscape that privileges Western, competitive masculinerameworks or learning, teaching, and research. In 2008, Mari frst con-

ceived o this project as discussion circles where academic women would

share their stories about mothering. From these discussions, developed with

the help o a mentoring grant rom the University o MassachusettsAm-

herst Graduate School, it was apparent that women have many thoughts

and eelings on the topic o parenting in the academy. The very act o tell-

ing personal narratives reveals how the sel is constructed, disclosed, and

implicated in a society that has mixed messages about women, mothers,and parenting. Inormed by eminist researchers and activists who have

theorized the relationship between sel and culture, the narratives includ-

ed in this volume expose the politicalsocial dimension o motherwork

(OReilly 2010a, 14), thus giving agency to the women who are mothering in

all sorts o circumstances. As is evident in the essays included here, several

amily structures are represented in academia: single, blended, traditional,

and same-sex amilies. We are concerned with how mothers in academic

settings have been represented and valued (or not) in the multiple ormso work we do in higher education. We are convinced that personal narra-

tives have the potential to serve as a critical intervention in the social, politi-

cal, and cultural lie o academia. Patricia Hill Collins is but one o many

eminists who assert that ones lived experience can serve as a criterion or

making meaning and producing knowledge. She argues that in the Unit-

ed States a scholar making a knowledge claim typically must convince a

scholarly community controlled by elite White avowedly heterosexual men

holding U.S. citizenship that a given claim is justifed (2000, 253).Inspired by the Latina Feminist Groups process o collaborating, we ap-

proached this project with a commitment to creating knowledge and theory

through our personal experiences as mothers in academe. This writing col-

lective arrived at the importance otestimonio as a crucial means o bear-

ing witness and inscribing into history those lived realities that would other-

wise succumb to the alchemy o erasure (Latina Feminist Group 2001, 2).

The result is a volume that provides a polyphonic testimonioaccounts

by dierent women who have studied, worked, and taught at the collegeand university level (Beverley 2005, 549). We frmly believe in the impor-

tance and value o womens autoethnography and oral history, and, as a



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10 INTRODUCTION

result, our own volume gives voice to women who are or have been mothers

as undergraduates, graduate students, administrators, sta, and proessors o

various ranks in order to bear witness to their lived experiences o mothering

and motherhood while learning/working in academia. These narratives o-ten coincide with Patricia Stout, Janet Stagier, and Nancy Jenningss (2007)

fndings that emale aculty, students, and sta eel demoralized based on

their experiences in higher education, oten as a result o believing that they

have no voice or agency. The act o writing our testimonials is an attempt or

us to maintain a level o agency in our birthing/parenting experiences, in all

o their confgurations, while collaborating with community and producing

intellectual work. Each o the stories perceives mothering in a slightly di-

erent way, thus shedding light on how power and domination have uneveneects o those o us working in academe.

Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner suggest that personal narratives serve

as a mode o inquiry; the stating o ones own experiences oer lessons

or urther conversation rather than undebatable conclusions (2000, 744).

Some scholars argue that, borne out o the desire or solidarity, personal and

testimonial narrative is undamentally a democratic and egalitarian orm

that afrms the authority o personal experience (Beverley 2005). This de-

scription is particularly relevant to those whose voices have been marginal-ized, such as, in our case, women who are mothers in higher education. As

Ellis and Bochner explain, testimonials raise questions such as: What are

the consequences my story produces? What kind o person does it shape

me into? What new possibilities does it introduce or living my lie? The

crucial issues are what narratives do, what consequences they have, to what

uses they can be put. . . . Oten our accounts o ourselves are unatter-

ing and imperect, but human and believable. The text is used, then, as an

agent o sel-understanding and ethical discussion (2000, 746, 748).We share these testimonios as a way to illustrate what much o the emi-

nist and higher-education scholarship has pointed to over the past twenty

years: there is much to be grateul or, but there is also much work yet to

be done within the walls o the ivory tower. The testimonios also illustrate

how the complex contingencies o race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, age,

sexuality, and ability are intertwined into these womens lived experiences

in higher education. Many o the authors included in this anthology have

specifcally drawn on the work o Patricia Hill Collins and her discussionso the importance o dialogue, an ethics o caring, and the signifcance o

black women as agents o knowledge. For scholars such as Collins, the use



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INTRODUCTION 11

o an intersectional paradigm examines mutual systems o oppression in

social organizations, with the potential to stimulate new interpretations o

womens experiences.

Many o the authors in this volume also echo what Juliann Emmons Al-lison describes as psychological adjustments (2007, 26)contradictions

that repeatedly surace or women engaged within academic settings who

are balancing dual roles as mothers and scholars. Although many academic

institutions have made considerable progress in accommodating academic

parents pragmatic concerns, there is still a systematic ailure to recognize

the ways that motherhood can alter a emale academics career in proound

ways (Mason and Goulden 2002, 2004a; Allison 2007; Mason 2011). This

anthology conronts these biases and reveals the strategies we as mothersmay engage in so as to not jeopardize our academic lives. Our collection

aims to oer counterstories as to who constitutes a viable and reliable col-

league, scholar, and student, which ollows in the tradition o Chicana/La-

tina scholarship on counterstorytelling while also adding to the voices o

women who are in academia (Yosso 2006; Chvez 2012).

Many o the essays in this volume push us to consider how parenting is

gendered in the contexts o interlocking systems such as colonialism, rac-

ism, sexism, ethnocentrism, ageism, and heterosexism. They are in conver-sation with each other, revealing the oten stark dierences in how people

experience the academy. What we expose are structurally inormed dispari-

ties between ranks o women working in academia. The authors in this vol-

ume embody a variety o academic positions, working as administrators, pro-

essors o all ranks, graduate students, and academic support sta. As editors

o this volume, we imagine the ollowing pages as a orum where we can not

only see the nuanced dierences between mothers in the academy but also

understand our commonalities. As a consequence, several authors in thiscollection discuss their experiences in academia as scholars and mothers o

colorexperiences that include a lack o valuable networks o mentors, the

presence o tokenism, and the constant need to prove their academic quali-

fcations. The women o color contributing their voices to our project bear

witness to and also share their insights regarding what policies and cultural

changes need to happen or more scholars o color to eel welcomed and

taken seriously in academe.

In addition to the testimonial accounts, which lay bare womens lives asmothers in academia at various stages, the book also includes chapters that

discuss theoretically and empirically the material and labor conditions o



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12 INTRODUCTION

mothers learning and working in increasingly inaccessible sites o higher

education. As the political economy o academic institutions shits toward

corporate-based models o teaching in both blatant and subtle ways, it is

critical to ascertain how womens lives in the academy and by extensiontheir amilies will be aected by these structuralcultural changes. Gaye

Tuchman describes in Wannabe U the growing organizational cultures in

higher education that prioritize institutional branding and marketing, di-

minishing resources, increasing workloads, and a structural ambivalence

toward diversity in all its orms. The global competition to become elite

institutions is deepening the eorts by universities and colleges to promote

the transormation o knowledge into capital (2009, 59). There is also the

pressure to brand onesel as a proessorin short, to become known or aspecifc (scholarly) product. Although personal branding allows each indi-

vidual to be more marketable, the consequence is a lack o participation in

or decreased service to his or her present institution.

The capitalist approach to academia inherently assumes an approach

to the liework balance that is unortunately in act imbalanced because

revenue generation through research and teaching can occur only through

longer work hours. Such hours disproportionately aect mothers, oten

negatively, and in the status-conscious consumer culture o the higher-ed-ucation industry it is becoming progressively more difcult or all parents

to keep up with the academic lie. In the new transormed environment

where universities and colleges are also struggling with the tension o edu-

cation as a public good and commodity, it is more important than ever to

reveal emerging aspects o American lie and to bear witness to how moth-

ers in academia are situated personally, culturally, and structurally in the

context o contemporary American higher education (Tuchman 2009, 21).

Through such bold acts, we are making visible what is oten invisible and inthe process shiting the conversation so that mothers experiences are on the

radar or university ofcials. Taking womens issues into account is vital i

any institution o higher education wants to be successul in the twenty-frst

century, and motherhood is in the top ten o those issues.

BEARiNG WiTNESS iN THREE PARTS

This volume is divided into three parts that are interrelated but distinct in

particular ways. Each part eatures short testimonial chapters rom mothers



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INTRODUCTION 13

who are students, administrators, and aculty, demonstrating the oten tricky

balance between home and work lie. The collection also includes several

lengthier research-based chapters. Part I, Working/Learning in the Acade-

my While Working/Learning as a Mom, oers readers a larger political, so-cial, and economic context o what women working in academia are acing.

Part II, Unexpected Challenges and Momentous Revelations, discusses

some o the serious unexpected challenges and unanticipated revelations

mothers in academia have encountered. These unexpected circumstances

include cultural relocation and acculturation, terminal illness and disabili-

ties, and overt and covert orms o heterosexism, racism, sexism, and clas-

sism. Part III, Creating More Parent-Friendly Institutions o Higher Learn-

ing, contributes to the larger conversation on how academia can includemore amily-riendly institutions in order to change the ivory tower.

Our book ultimately demonstrates that testimonios are powerul tools or

the production o new knowledge and that by ocusing on mothers lives we

are contributing to the eminist epistemology about gender, race, sexuality,

and class in the twenty-frst century. It is tempting to make gestational analo-

gies when discussing a collaborative writing project pertaining to mothers in

higher education and including more than thirty authors. Like many preg-

nancies, this project took on a lie o its own. Spurred on by our belie thatthere is more to be said, this collection o frst-person narratives sheds light

on the lives o women who parent while learning, working, teaching, and

researching in twenty-frst-century colleges and universities. We acknowl-

edge that most o the authors in this collection are rom the humanities or

social sciences. Although our initial call or papers was distributed widely,

we did not receive any submissions rom emale aculty and students in the

natural and physical sciences. For those readers interested specifcally in

the experiences o women in science, technology, engineering, and math(STEM) felds, Emily Monossons excellent anthology Motherhood, the

Elephant in the Laboratory (2008) addresses an array o issues or mothers-

scientists. Many o the contributors to Monossons book wrestle with what it

means to be a scientist and how to reconcile various career trajectories

that may or may not include mainstream academic or research positions.

Clearly there are ewer women in the hard sciences than in the humanities

and social sciences, although the percentage o emale Ph.D.s in STEM

felds has grown since 1958, when the National Science Foundation begankeeping track (Burrelli 2008). Nonetheless, STEM emale aculty continue

to represent a microscopic percentage o all aculty, and, despite increases



15/15

14 INTRODUCTION

in the number o awarded doctorates, the wide discrepancy in career paths

demonstrates a rampant disregard or women proessors, postdoctorates, and

students in these particularly male-dominated/male-oriented felds. The

Chronicle of Higher Educations coverage o a particular emale postdocscareer derailment in physics due to the lack o institutional support during

and ater her pregnancy points to the highly competitive nature o aca-

demic science, which leaves little time or emale scholars to have children.

Young scientists who works as postdoctoral researchers are particularly vul-

nerable because their careers are dependent on the goodwill o a single ac-

ulty supervisor, who is oten a man (Wilson 2005). Disciplinary dierences

do exist between the natural and physical sciences on the one side and other

felds o study on the other (or instance, the emphasis on laboratory-basedresearch in STEM felds); however, we do believe that many o the larger

cultural and structural issues or mothers are similar across academia.

We thus took great pains as editors to make sure that the chapters spoke

to these broader realities o how to balance children with an academic

career. To do so, we negotiated with and coached the women authors in

this book, much as a midwie does with a woman who is in the throes o

labor. We also ensured as much as possible that the writing process was

humane, transparent, and encouraging, while also being rigorous. Whilethe project was being born, at least three o the contributors literally gave

birth to children; other women tended to a sick or dying child or parent,

prepared lectures and conerence papers, wrestled with research projects,

and attended to an array o administrative tasks. At least two o our authors

obtained their doctorates as the book developed, and our o the authors

were granted tenure and promotion. Thus, some o the stories included

here reect the authors positionalities prior to obtaining their degrees or

tenure. We tell our readers this because it is this type o emotional andphysical labor that is oten invisible in academia. In the very act o writing,

editing, and rewriting our manuscripts, we experienced uidity between

our proessional and personal lives as academic mothers. It is our hope

that through these narratives, we both reveal and revise the world o higher

education as mothers know it.


mothers in academia

Documents