Lectures, Evaluations, and Diapers: Navigating the Terrains of Chicana Single Motherhood in the Academy

Using the personal experience of a junior faculty member in a women’s studies program as testimony, the article explores the numerous penalties that women of color in the academy endure during pregnancy, childbirth, and early child-rearing years. It highlights the sacrifices paid as a result of motherhood not being closeted. Based on gendered, racialized, and classed assumptions of who belongs in the academy, it argues that family-friendly policies that allow for faculty members to choose having both family and career are largely insufficient, nonexistent, or unmonitored. The article centers the lives and stories of the often invisible mothers of color in the academy to critique the misaligned rhetoric for diversity that exists within the universities they serve. It seeks to facilitate the inclusion of their voices and experiences in the reimagining and transformation of university culture, while focusing on several practices that could help shape this vision.