“It Takes a Village:” Reentry Women’s Perseverance in Completing a Clinical or Counseling Psychology Doctorate

Abstract

Reentry women, or women who have reentered higher education after a gap in studying, are a population of graduate students who have a unique set of challenges compared to their traditional counterparts. In addition, professional psychology programs place additional demands on students that can add to the unique challenges of reentry women. This study sought to examine how reentry women persist in navigating and succeeding in the challenges of clinical or counseling psychology doctoral programs. A theoretical purposive sample of 21 women from the United States and Canada participated. Data collection methods included a semi-structured interview with each participant, and data were analyzed using the constant comparative method of grounded theory. As a result of data analysis, four factors emerged that aided women in their pathways to persistence. Each of the factors had multiple categories that contributed to reentry women’s persistence, including: (a) intrinsic factors: maturational competence and goal grit; (b) extrinsic factors: support village and a climate of belonging; (c) identity factors: academic emersion, navigating liminal space, and professional identity claiming, and finally, (d) reinforcing factors: mastering milestones, maneuvering through barriers by meaning-making, and lucky events. Definitions of the factors, the emergent theoretical model, and the research implications are presented.