Academic Mothering

Featuring forthright testimonials by women who are or have been mothers as undergraduates, graduate students, academic staff, administrators, and professors, Mothers in Academia intimately portrays the experiences of women at various stages of motherhood while theoretically and empirically considering the conditions of working motherhood as academic life has become more laborious. As higher learning institutions have moved toward more corporate-based models of teaching, immense structural and cultural changes have transformed women's academic lives and, by extension, their families. Hoping to push reform as well as build recognition and a sense of community, this collection offers several potential solutions for integrating female scholars more wholly into academic life. Essays also reveal the often stark differences between women's encounters with the academy and the disparities among various ranks of women working in academia. Contributors--including many women of color--call attention to tokenism, scarce valuable networks, and the persistent burden to prove academic credentials. They also explore gendered parenting within the contexts of colonialism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, ageism, and heterosexism.

Inspired by those who mothered before and through the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a book about, for, and with those who live different embodiments of academic mothering—mothers, othermothers, academic mothers, and mothering academics. In this book, mothering is defined broadly, encompassing those who are biologically or legally mothers with children; those who are “not-mother” but who nonetheless understand and practice mothering; those who do identify as mothers but not as women; and all those who take on mothering roles in academia and beyond. Through poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, image and text, the authors in this edited book creatively explore academic mothering through their unique lived experiences, illuminating three ideas that comprise the three sections of this book: mothering as practice, mothering in precarity, and mothering as relational. Through considering—and in many cases, writing about and through—their own mothering practices, this diverse collection of authors critique the systemic failures of academia in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, fabulating new possibilities that envision a future in which mothering is valued and supported in (and by) higher education.

Academic Motherhood tells the story of over one hundred women who are both professors and mothers and examines how they navigated their professional lives at different career stages. Kelly Ward and Lisa Wolf-Wendel base their findings on a longitudinal study that asks how women faculty on the tenure track manage work and family in their early careers (pre-tenure) when their children are young (under the age of five), and then again in mid-career (post-tenure) when their children are older. The women studied work in a range of institutional settings—research universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges—and in a variety of disciplines, including the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. Much of the existing literature on balancing work and family presents a pessimistic view and offers cautionary tales of what to avoid and how to avoid it. In contrast, the goal of Academic Motherhood is to help tenure track faculty and the institutions at which they are employed “make it work.” Writing for administrators, prospective and current faculty as well as scholars, Ward and Wolf-Wendel bring an element of hope and optimism to the topic of work and family in academe. They provide insight and policy recommendations that support faculty with children and offer mechanisms for problem-solving at personal, departmental, institutional, and national levels.

This volume focuses on the diverse ways in which mothers working within academia seek to find others with similar experiences to build virtual communities. Although the faculty and student populations of universities have diversified, mothers in academia are disproportionately overrepresented in precarious faculty and staff positions and continue to experience myriad institutional and interpersonal barriers, such as gender wage gaps that are exacerbated by stop-the-clock tenure policies, inadequate parental leave policies, expensive or scarce local childcare options, and social biases. The book gives space to the many ways women create and challenge their own versions of motherhood through a digital “village,” examining how academic mothers use virtual communities to seek and enact different kinds of support.

"In Mothering by Degrees, I show how single mothers who pursue college degrees in early 21st century America must navigate a difficult course as they attempt to reconcile their identities as single mothers, college students, and, in many cases, employees. As they combine these multiple and often competing roles and responsibilities, they must also negotiate a balance between cultural ideals of motherhood and their own definitions of what it means to be a "good" mother, particularly as those ideals and definitions are shaped within context of post-welfare reform America and the post-secondary institutions they attend. By comparing the experiences of nearly 100 single mother college students attending three postsecondary education institutions in the United States, I illustrate how these women navigate the various obstacles they encounter, especially obstacles related to financial concerns, child care, time constraints, and the "chilly" climate of higher education. In addition, I demonstrate that the women regard postsecondary education not only as a means of escaping poverty but also as an extension of their mothering work, something they do to help ensure the long-term health and well-being of their children. Thus, this project provides a situated, comparative account of the experiences of single mothers who are college students in order to foster a better understanding of the complex ideologies and social structures that influence the life choices and education experiences of members of this important but understudied student population. Finally, the project discusses policies and programs that can help provide better support to single mother and may diminish the challenges they face as they endeavor to complete their education"--

Mothers, Community, and Friendship is an anthology that explores the complexities of mothering/motherhood, communities, and friendship from across interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. The chapters in this text not only examine how communities and friendship shape and influence the various spectrums of motherhood, but also analyze how communities and friendship are necessary for mothers. Through personal, reflective, critical essays, and ethnographies, this collection situates the ways mothers are connected to communities and how these relationships forms, such as in mothering groups and maternal friendships. By calling attention to these central and current topics, Mothers, Community, and Friendship represents how communities and friendship become means of empowerment for mothers.

Lived Experiences of Women in Academia shares meaningful stories of women working in the academy, from numerous disciplines, backgrounds and countries, to unveil the complex and distinct dimensionalities they experience in their life and work. Chapters are written using a range of responsive, personal and aesthetic techniques, including metaphor, manifesto and memoir, with reflections inspired by textiles, online blogs and forums, theatre, creative writing, fiction and popular culture. They engage with themes and ideas including gender roles, family-making, work-life balance, motherhood, institutional violence and harassment and the self and identity, revealing how these uniquely manifest for women in academia. This collection takes account of the experiences of female academics from previous decades and the experiences of those to come, as well as those outside the academic system entirely. Lived Experiences of Women in Academia aims to liberate thinking around the life of a female academic through collaborative storytelling and discussion, to encourage new conversations and connections between women in academia across the globe

There has been little public discussion on the devastating impact of Covid-19 on mothers, or a public acknowledgement that mothering is frontline work in this pandemic. This collection of 45 chapters and with 70 contributors is the first to explore the impact of the pandemic on mothers' care and wage labour in the context of employment, schooling, communities, families, and the relationships of parents and children. With a global perspective and from the standpoint of single, partnered, queer, racialized, Indigenous, economically disadvantaged, disabled, and birthing mothers, the volume examines the increasing complexity and demands of childcare, domestic labour, elder care, and home schooling under the pandemic protocols; the intricacies and difficulties of performing wage labour at home; the impact of the pandemic on mothers' employment; and the strategies mothers have used to manage the competing demands of care and wage labour under COVID-19. By way of creative art, poetry, photography, and creative writing along with scholarly research, the collection seeks to make visible what has been invisibilized and render audible what has been silenced: the care and crisis of motherwork through and after the COVID-19 pandemic.