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.
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Speaking Truth to Power to Change the Ivory Tower
- PART ONE: Working/Learning in the Academy While Working/Learning as a Mom
- 1. How We Learned to Stop Worrying and to Enjoy Having It All
- 2. Academia or Bust: Feeding the Hungry Mouths of the University, Babies, and Ourselves
- 3. Diverse Academic Support for an Employee, Mother, and Nontraditional Student
- 4. Breaking the Glass Ceiling While Being a Mother: Parenting, Teaching, Research, and Administration
- 5. To Tell Or Not to Tell: Single Motherhood and the Academic Job Market
- 6. Class, Race, and Motherhood: Raising Children of Color in a Space of Privelege
- PART TWO: Unexpected Challenges and Momentous Revelations
- 7. Four Kids and a Dissertation: Queering the Balance Between Family and Academia
- 8. "Tia Maria de la Maternity Leave": Reflections on Race, Class, and the Natural-Birth Experience
- 9. Threads that Bind: A Testimonio to Puerto Rican Working Mothers
- 10. Parenting Within the Nexus of Race, Class, and Gender Oppression in Graduate School at a Historically Black College/University
- 11. Sobreviviendo (and Thriving) in the Academy
- 12. Revolving Doors: Mother-Woman Rhythms in Academic Spaces
- PART THREE: Creating More Parent-Friendly Institutions of Higher Learning
- 13. Academic Library Policies: Advocating for Mother's Research and Service Needs
- 14. Reimagining the Fairytale of Motherhood in the Academy
- 15. Tales from the Tenure Track: The Necessity of Social Support in Balancing the Challenges of Tenure and Motherhood
- 16. How Higher Education Became Accessible to Sinle Mothers: An Unfinished Story
- 17. Making It Work: Success Strategies for Graduate Student Mothers
- 18. Academic Mothers on Leave (But on the Clock), On the Line (and Off the Record): Toward Improving Parental-Leave Policies and Practices
- 19. Supporting Academic Mothers; Creating a Work Environment with Choices
- Epilogue: Find Reflections
- References
- Contributors
- Index
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