Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life [Paperback]

Elrena Evans (Editor), Caroline Grant (Editor), Miriam Peskowitz (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 2008

Every year, American universities publish glowing reports stating their commitment to diversity, often showing statistics of female hires as proof of success. Yet, although women make up increasing numbers of graduate students, graduate degree recipients, and even new hires, academic life remains overwhelming a man's world. The reality that the statistics fail to highlight is that the presence of women, specifically those with children, in the ranks of tenured faculty has not increased in a generation. Further, those women who do achieve tenure track placement tend to report slow advancement, income disparity, and lack of job satisfaction compared to their male colleagues.Amid these disadvantages, what is a Mama, PhD to do? This literary anthology brings together a selection of deeply felt personal narratives by smart, interesting women who explore the continued inequality of the sexes in higher education and suggest changes that could make universities more family-friendly workplaces.The contributors hail from a wide array of disciplines and bring with them a variety of perspectives, including those of single and adoptive parents. They address topics that range from the level of policy to practical day-to-day concerns, including caring for a child with special needs, breastfeeding on campus, negotiating viable maternity and family leave policies, job-sharing and telecommuting options, and fitting into desk/chair combinations while eight months pregnant.Candid, provocative, and sometimes with a wry sense of humor, the thirty-five essays in this anthology speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, as well as anyone who is interested in improving the university's ability to live up to its reputation to be among the most progressive of American institutions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is easily the most important piece of work to date on academics and family issues, full-stop, because the editors draw out from the authors all of the messiness, the highs and lows, the fears and hopes, the pride, guilt, anger, love and sense of failure and accomplishment and mainly great stories that comprise life for so many moms who try to make it as academics. The panopoly of supportive or unkind department chairs and colleagues, high and low status schools, childcare arrangements that work or don't work, supportive or non-existent partners, and perfect and not-so-perfect children is all here." -- Bob Drago, Take Care Net

"An engrossing collection of essays by women who have negotiated the complex challenges of parenting while pursuing an academic career. Unlike similar studies that focus primarily on mothers who have made it --i.e., those who have remained in the professoriate--Mama, PhD provides a balanced perspective from mothers who have opted to pursue other career options, from part-time contingent positions to non-academic writing. Celebratory but realistic, these essays illustrate the multitude of choices available (and still unavailable) to women and the great rewards (and considerable pitfalls) of fitting motherhood into the academic mold. In offering concrete suggestions to improve institutional support for women with children, the anthology connects personal experience to systemic change and gestures toward academe s potential to provide truly family-friendly workplaces. Its stories will be of interest to young scholars contemplating motherhood, to current parents who feel isolated by expectations that they perform childlessness, and to anyone wondering how mothers are faring within the academy. --On Campus with Women, Association of American Colleges

"This is easily the most important piece of work to date on academics and family issues, full-stop, because the editors draw out from the authors all of the messiness, the highs and lows, the fears and hopes, the pride, guilt, anger, love and sense of failure and accomplishment and mainly great stories that comprise life for so many moms who try to make it as academics. The panopoly of supportive or unkind department chairs and colleagues, high and low status schools, childcare arrangements that work or don't work, supportive or non-existent partners, and perfect and not-so-perfect children is all here." --Bob Drago, Take Care Net

"Mama PhD offers a series of lively personal essays from women who share varied experiences of being both mothers and academics, from struggling to keep down morning sickness while lecturing to a room full of students, to writing a dissertation while caring for a child with special needs, to negotiating viable maternity and family leave policies. Honest, funny, frustrated, provocative, and, yes, in love with their work, these writers don t claim that their experience in the academy is more difficult than any other working mother's." --Jo Keroes, Mommy Track'd

Review

"Mama PhD offers a series of lively personal essays from women who share varied experiences of being both mothers and academics, from struggling to keep down morning sickness while lecturing to a room full of students, to writing a dissertation while caring for a child with special needs, to negotiating viable maternity and family leave policies. Honest, funny, frustrated, provocative, and, yes, in love with their work, these writers don't claim that their experience in the academy is more difficult than any other working mother's."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (July 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813543185
• ISBN-13: 978-0813543185
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #441,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Caroline M. Grant is the Editor-in-Chief and a columnist for the website, Literary Mama. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught classes on film, women's studies, American literature, and writing; she has also taught at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her essays have been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons; she writes about family on her blog and, with Lisa Harper, about food at Learning to Eat. Visit her website (http://carolinemgrant.com) for more information, including clips from her radio and television events.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From women who have gone before: balancing the Mama and the PhD, June 30, 2008

By 

Merrie - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Paperback)

In today's world, a Mama, PhD, is (at best) an awkward thing to be. The glistening Ivory Tower is a place of the mind, and a place they try to make a disconnected mind. It is the realm of the intellectuals who are not busy with the physical realm. And the realm of motherhood is, firstly, a physical one. Making the two opposite spheres of "All Mind" and "All Body" mesh is an intense juggling act made worse by the academy's continued unfriendliness towards women, and in particular, mamas. If you try to balance both, the academy says, they must be in worlds as separate as the Mind and the Body. Parallel tracks that never, ever cross - and it would really be preferable if you'd just choose between one or the other.

And that's where this book comes in. As the Introduction explains, "With no easy solution for the struggles they encounter, women take a variety of different approaches as they attempt to reconcile family and academy." The essays anthologized are real women sharing their stories of bringing together both hemispheres, the Mama and the PhD; of women who have chosen to put one on hold for the sake of the other, and of women still deciding. They talk candidly of the difficulties and the sacrifices, and share how they've come to terms with their decisions regarding motherhood and the academy. There are stories of women who have not only not chosen, but have brought the two halves of themselves together into a whole. The last section of the book, "Momifesto", shares brighter hopes for change and a new future for the Mama, PhDs. And in the essay with the same title, women considering this balancing act will be encouraged by the compilation of ten things the authors wished they'd known.

In short, "Mama, PhD" is a necessary book for any woman considering, muddling through, or interested in the shaky balance between motherhood and the academy. And yet, while this is geared specifically for those in or through graduate school, many of the themes - balancing work, careers, and children - will ring true for women in the working world as well. It's a book where the authors write honestly of their struggles and consequent decisions, one that will make you better informed about the choices you may face (or have faced), and one that will spark plenty of discussion. But even more, it's one that will leave you encouraged, as you read the stories of those that have gone before.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for PhDs, July 27, 2008

By 

Suzanne Kamata (Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Paperback)

Although I am not an academic, (I teach as an adjunct and have occasional fantasies about becoming a professor), I found this book highly engaging. Who knew that the academy, that last bastion of liberal arts, was so conservative? The writers offer up stories of trying to accomodate both scholarship and motherhood - and occasionally giving up, as well as tips on how to deal with colleagues and antiquated policies regarding maternity leave and childcare, and ideas on how everything could be better. Some of my favorite essays were by the iconoclasts - Elrena Evans on trying to fit in as a feminist Christian while teaching barefoot, Angelica Duran on being a single mother from a low income family and making it work anyhow, and Jennifer Margulis on teaching (or trying to) in Niger.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Food for thought indeed!, July 4, 2008

By 

Elizabeth C. Kimmel (Cold Spring, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Paperback)

When I graduated from college with my BA, I never looked back. My mother/career tug of war was solved when I sold my first book three weeks after my daughter was born. I've worked at home ever since. I've certainly read my share of books on the issue of mothers in the workplace, but never one like this. I'm ashamed to admit that the plight of our most highly educated women ascending the ivory tower while endeavoring to begin families of their own had never blipped across my radar. Until now. I devoured essay after essay by these outstanding women, losing myself in their stories. I was astonished to learn the obstacles, the tribulations, and the plethora of unfortunate remarks they encountered and endured. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, but particularly women considering or enjoying a career in the realms of higher education. Well done, Mama PHDs!