Academic Motherhood Research Articles

Academic Motherhood: Considerations of STEM Postdoctoral Scholar Women

This instrumental case study explores the messages STEM postdoctoral scholar women received and understood from faculty about having children and an academic career. Of concern, women with children are less likely than men with children or individuals without children to be offered tenure-track positions or to be promoted. This reality suggests academic motherhood is in opposition to professional legitimacy in higher education. Furthermore, postdoctoral scholars who are mothers are more likely than their peers to cite children as their primary reason for not entering the faculty job market. Through inductive and deductive methods, interview transcripts of 22 demographically diverse STEM postdoctoral scholar women were analyzed using the ideal worker conceptual framework. Two themes were identified: (1) messages interpreted as disparaging suggest to STEM postdoctoral women they must sacrifice the choice to have children for an academic career and (2) messages interpreted as supportive promote the belief that academic motherhood is achievable. These findings illustrate a systemic conflict for STEM postdoctoral scholar women who have children or are considering becoming mothers in the future. Due to disparaging messages from faculty, most interviewees felt the constraints of ideal worker norms; however, through supportive messages from faculty, particularly positive modeling, these women saw the feasibility of having children and a successful academic career without the necessity of conforming to these norms. Inclusive, family friendly higher education policies and practices must be instituted to ensure more women enter and thrive in the STEM professoriate, and women who have or desire to have children are not marginalized.

Academic mothers and the practice of embodied care: navigating and resisting uncaring structures in the neoliberal academy

PurposeRecent research has captured the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in widening gender inequalities, by highlighting that academic women have been disproportionately affected. During the COVID-19 pandemic, women assumed most of the care labour at home, whilst working at normal patterns, leaving them unable to perform as normal. This is very concerning because of the short and long-term detrimental consequences this will have on women’s well-being and their academic careers. This article aims to stimulate a change in the current understandings of academic work by pointing towards alternative – and more inclusive – ways of working in academia.Design/methodology/approachThe two authors engage with autoethnography and draw on their own personal experience of becoming breastfeeding academic mothers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.FindingsTo understand the positioning of contemporary academic mothers, this study draws on insights from both cultural studies and organisation studies on the emergence of discursive formations about gender, that is “postfeminist sensibility”. Guided by autoethnographic accounts of academic motherhood, this study reveals that today academia creates an individualised, neutral (disembodied), output-focused and control-oriented understanding of academic work.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the conversation of academic motherhood and the impact of the pandemic on working mothers. The study theoretically contributes with the lens of “motherhood” in grasping what academic work can become. It shows the power of motherhood in opening up an alternative way of conceptualising academic work, centred on embodied care and appreciative of the non-linearity and messiness of life.

A Room of One's Own: Covid-19 Pandemic and Academic Motherhood in India

The paper examines the disproportionately adverse impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on academic mothers employed in higher education sector. By looking at global data as well as institutional and socio-cultural background of higher education in India, the paper argues for the need of a systematic and institutional Covid-impact stock-taking. Without such a measure, the author argues, the already existing gender-gap in higher education in India will be further widened, with the gap becoming starker at the higher professional levels within academia.

A humanist’s journey through the existential crises of academic motherhood.

A humanist’s journey through the existential crises of academic motherhood.

Conforming to and resisting imposed identities – an autoethnography on academic motherhood

PurposeThis research attempts to make sense of the experiences of two academic women who become mothers.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is an autoethnography. Applying the autoethnographic method allows us to discuss cultural phenomena through personal reflections and experiences. Our autoethnographic reflections illustrate our struggles and attempts of resistance within discursive spaces where motherhood and our identity as academics intersect.FindingsOur personal experiences combined with theoretical elaborations illuminate how the role of the mother continues to be dominated by such gendered discursive practices that conflict with the work role. Once women become mothers, they are othered through societal and organizational practices because they constitute a visible deviation from the masculine norm in the organizational setting, academia included.Originality/valueThis paper explores how contemporary motherhood discourse(s)within academia and the wider society present competing truth claims, embedded in neoliberal and postfeminist cultural sensibility. Our autoethnographic reflections show our struggles and attempts of resistance within such discursive spaces.

Care Work and Academic Motherhood: Challenges for Research and Tenure in the Canadian University

In Canada, women are earning an increasing number of doctoral degrees; yet, they are less likely to secure a tenure-track position. A feminist thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 20 academic mothers from two Canadian universities reveals the range of challenges that mothers encounter in relation to care on the tenure-track. First, the theme of “fear of post-partum academic erasure” captured faculty mothers’ experiences of feeling compelled to assert their physical and intellectual presence in post-partum during peak periods of infant care. The second theme, “the mommy tenure track and care choices,” encapsulated academic mothers’ experiences of feeling unsupported by the university in their pursuit of promotion and tenure given care responsibilities associated with motherhood. The final theme, “research while caring,” captured the tensions academic mothers experience between the research process and caring. The findings of this research are particularly relevant in a pandemic and post-pandemic environment, where academic mothers have seen their care work swell to unprecedented proportions.

Resisting and conforming to imposed identities – An autoethnography on the academic motherhood

This paper is an autoethnography attempting to make sense of the experiences of two academic females who become mothers. The autoethnographic method allows us to discuss cultural phenomena through personal reflections and experiences. This paper explores contemporary motherhood discourse(s) and its discursive practices by drawing on Foucault’s elaborations on discourses and its relation to knowledge and truth. Our personal experiences combined with intellectual elaborations lead us to believe the role of the mother continues to be dominated by gendered discursive practices. Once women become mothers, they are othered through societal and organizational practices because they constitute a visible deviation from the masculine norm in the organizational setting. Finally, we discuss possibilities of resistance in the Foucauldian sense towards the contemporary motherhood discourse(s).

Academic motherhood - what happens when you can't make it happen?

We need more openness about age-related infertility as it is a particular risk for many female scientists in academia who feel that they have to delay having children.

Academic Motherhood in Mathematics Education during COVID-19: Breaking the Silence and Shifting the Discourse

Despite decades of social change and institutional reform, the academic gender gap continues to exist in many countries around the world and disproportionately affects women with children. Early indicators suggest that COVID-19 will widen this gap and exacerbate issues academic mothers face. In this essay we seek to raise awareness to the challenges and tensions academic mothers in mathematics education face both outside of and during a pandemic. We use existing literature on academic motherhood to make sense of our lived experiences, working to reframe pieces that are so often viewed as deficits to assets for our work in mathematics education. We hope that this will bring visibility to the invisible ways our identities as mothers inform our work as mathematics teacher educators and researchers. We conclude this essay with a call for the university-based mathematics education community to break the silence around the inequities associated with academic motherhood in our field and to shift the discourse from deficits of academic mothers to asset orientated views.

The ethics of care and academic motherhood amid COVID-19.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has upended the lives of working parents as they strive to meet the conflicting demands of childcare and professional obligations. While growing evidence suggests the extraordinary challenges to time and work brought by the pandemic, this article explores the pandemic as an opportunity for stillness and reflection, a personal and professional recalibration. Through a personal narrative describing my experiences as an academic and mother before and during the pandemic, framed within the ethics of care, this article brings light to the untenable reality of working mothers pre‐pandemic, explores the ways in which the pandemic has positively facilitated caring relationships at home as well as the reallocation of time and household responsibilities, and argues for policy and legislative action at the institutional and societal levels that support and value the care work of women and men alike.

Academic motherhood during COVID-19: Navigating our dual roles as educators and mothers.

During the COVID‐19 crisis, being a working mother has taken on a whole new meaning, as mothers navigate working from home while juggling childcare, as well as coming to terms with their intersecting identities. The current article is a feminist, heartful autoethnographic account, couched in Relational‐Cultural Theory, surrounding our authentic experiences working from home and raising children during the worldwide pandemic. We explore academic motherhood, working from home, mental health, and coping during coronavirus and stay‐at‐home orders through engaged dialogue. We hope that showcasing our vulnerability can lead to change in the expectations we put on mothers in academia, while at the same time connect with readers who may be going through similar challenges.

Academic mothers as “ideal workers” in both the US and Finland

PurposeThe purpose was to explore how women academics in Finland and the US experience academic motherhood, how they time their pregnancy, and the ways in which the 10;different policy environments shape their decisions and experiences.Design/methodology/approachThe interviewer collected data through 10;semi-structured, long interviews with 67 academic mothers, 33 in Finland and 34 in the US. They were recorded and transcribed, then analyzed for themes.FindingsIn Finland, the insecurity of fixed-term contracts and the growing influence of the neoliberal “ideal worker” concept influenced decisions despite the generous work-family policies of the Government. In the US, meanwhile, concerns about age-related infertility had a bigger impact than career risks. One thing the US and Finnish women had in common was a feeling of being under pressure to maintain their presence at work while on maternity leave.Originality/valueCross-cultural studies of academic motherhood are rare. The choice of Finland and the US was instructive because of the different work-family policies in place. Finland has some of the most generous family leave policies in the world, whereas the US has not yet seen a federal, paid maternity leave policy.

Academic motherhood and fieldwork: Juggling time, emotions, and competing demands

The idea and practice of going “into the field” to conduct research and gather data is a deeply rooted aspect of Geography as a discipline. For global North Development Geographers, among others, this usually entails travelling to, and spending periods of time in, often far‐flung parts of the global South. Forging a successful academic career as a Development Geographer in the UK is therefore to some extent predicated on mobility. This paper aims to critically engage with the gendered aspects of this expected mobility, focusing on the challenges and time constraints that are apparent when conducting overseas fieldwork as a mother, unaccompanied by her children. The paper emphasises the emotion work that is entailed in balancing the competing demands of overseas fieldwork and mothering, and begins to think through the implications of these challenges in terms of the types of knowledge we produce, as well as in relation to gender equality within the academy.

Excellent and gender equal? Academic motherhood and ‘gender blindness' in Norwegian academia

This article explores Norwegian female academics' experiences with academic motherhood in an organizational perspective. A main finding is that academia as an organization is greedy, uncertain, and has ‘blind spots' that reveal gender bias related to gender and parental status, especially mothers. By analysing the link between gendered organization of work and the legitimatizing of gender inequality, the article reveals ‘gender blindness' in the academic organization concerning gender and parental status. The article concludes that changes in academia — in line with academic capitalism — may indicate that the Norwegian model of work–life balance is under pressure. This article suggests that the organizational conditions for academic motherhood are important factors in order to understand the persistence of gender inequality.

Academic mothers as ideal workers in the USA and Finland

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how women academics experience academic motherhood in the USA and Finland, how they time their pregnancy in an academic career, and the ways in which the different policy environments and academic opportunity structures in each country shape the management of academic work and care work during maternity leave. Design/methodology/approach Data collection involved a snowball, convenience sample of semi-structured, long interviews with 67 academic mothers, 33 in Finland and 34 in the USA. Recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed for emerging themes. Findings In both countries, women academics made fertility decisions by carefully deliberating their access to maternity leave, age-related concerns and the perception of job security. In Finland, the insecurity of fixed-term contracts and intensification of the ideal worker norm shaped fertility decisions and leave activities despite generous work-family policies. The US mothers’ timing of pregnancy was influenced by concerns of age-related infertility more than career risks. Women in both countries felt pressure to maintain presence at work even while they were on leave. Originality/value The paper addresses a paucity of comparative studies about motherhood (and parenthood) in the academe, an increasingly central question for today’s academic workforce.

Academic motherhood in the United Arab Emirates

Balancing the dual roles of mother and academic can be an intensive juggling act. Often, it is mothers who undertake the majority of domestic work in the household, and who tend to experience greatest consequences of this in the workplace; including stress, pressure and less likelihood of promotion. Research indicates that networks of support provided by families and friends can help alleviate these pressures. Academic parents who work outside of their home countries may not have access to these networks to share the work of raising children, but academics who work in the Arabian Gulf have inexpensive domestic help at their dispensation. The ways in which life as an expatriate affects academic mothers both professionally and personally is explored in this study set in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Interview data was gathered from ten expatriate academic mothers. It was found that, similarly to other studies in this field, mothers undertake the vast majority of coordination of domestic work and childcare in their homes, but that having domestic help enables them to enjoy more time with their families. However, there was no clear indication that having extra help at home enabled the women to partake more readily in their academic work. The majority of the women in this study considered that their lives as academic mothers are made easier by residing in the UAE, despite being far from family. This was in part due to ubiquitous domestic help, but also due to perceptions of the UAE providing a culturally family friendly working environment.

Teacher, Scholar, Mother: Re-Envisioning Motherhood in the Academy. Ed. Anna M. Young. Lanham, MD (Review)

Teacher, Scholar, Mother: Re-Envisioning Motherhood in the Academy offers a rich collection of perspectives that bring the everyday experiences of the 21st-century ‘mother-scholar’ into striking relief. As a whole, the volume deploys academic motherhood as a critical category of analysis and positions it as a nexus point through which individual stories of adversity and resilience coalesce. Its chapters collectively reveal the enduring hegemony of heteropatriarchal norms, policies, and structures within the interpersonal and institutional spaces of academia. Organized thematically into three sections, eighteen individual chapters unfold around a question editor Anna Young poses in the introduction: “why is the academy, so full of such accomplished and smart and curious people, such a difficult place for mothers?”(x).

Experiences of Pretenure Counseling Professor Mothers

Researchers have identified some of the factors that inhibit the success of mothers in academia, including overt and covert discrimination, inequitable teaching and service assignments, and the lack of policies that support combining motherhood and academic work. Pretenure mothers are particularly vulnerable, as they attempt to balance increasing demands for achieving tenure and the overlap of the tenure and biological clocks. In addition to further exploring these factors, this phenomenological study of 10 women counseling professors considered the impact of rising cultural expectations related to motherhood. Results of this study revealed that combining pretenure academic work and motherhood seems to be increasingly more challenging. Themes highlighted include instances of incompatibility in academic and motherhood roles and barriers in academic culture. Also provided are positive aspects of academic motherhood, strategies for success under current cultural and academic systems, and suggestions for advocacy efforts to further support faculty mothers.

The joys and challenges of academic motherhood

The challenges of the academic mother's juggling act are well documented in academic literature. In addition to the duties which most faculty members are responsible for such as teaching, research, community service and administration duties, it is frequently reported that faculty mothers are also responsible for the majority of childcare organization and domestic housework. Multiple studies have shown that faculty fathers tend not to be nearly as responsible for these aspects of child-rearing. Amidst the challenges though, there are also a number of studies which explore the ways in which women report the sense of joy and fulfilment their work as academic mothers gives them. In this study, twelve women from a higher education institution in the United Arab Emirates are interviewed to explore these themes further. They report ways in which they experience the challenges, but also the joys of their dual roles, and ways in which they felt the roles of academic and mother can be mutually complementary.

Academic Motherhood: Mid‐Career Perspectives and the Ideal Worker Norm

This chapter explores how mid‐career tenured women faculty, who are mothers and academics, manage multiple roles. The women represent faculty at a variety of institutional types and in a variety of disciplines. The chapter looks at these experiences in light of ideal worker norms.