Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family

Chapter 3. Understanding the Existing Narratives and Counternarratives

28 There is a “narrative of constraint,” reinforced in the research literature and in academic lore, which suggests that tenure-track faculty life is not compatible with outside pursuits, like motherhood. The label was introduced by KerryAnn O’Meara and her colleagues, Aimee LaPointe Terosky and Anna Neumann (2008), who pointed out that the tone of existing research imposes internal and external constriction, control, and limits on how people view academic work. Although their monograph maintains that there are important experiences that counter the narrative of constraint, when one reads the academic literature on the topic of work and family (in all domains, but in higher education in particular), a narrative of possibility is hard to find. The existing narrative is clear that motherhood and work as a tenure-track faculty member are difficult propositions separately, and are especially challenging when taken together. It is helpful to understand the perspective that emanates from the literature, even though it is negative, because it provides an opportunity to explore the strongly held beliefs in the field. Dominant norms and existing literature, as in most research, provide important reference points for understanding the phenomena under study, even though they can also be limiting in terms of how people think about particular problems. The goal of our work is to present a counternarrative of what it means to be an academic and a mother. To get to this counternarrative we rely on the stories that emanate from the personal experiences of women who have managed the rigors of academic life and the realities of motherhood in early and mid-career. We also use theory as a way to help us think differently about chapter 3 O Understanding the Existing Narratives and Counternarratives narratives and counternarratives 29 these experiences. It is superficially easy to rely on pipeline arguments—as more women enter the academic workforce and have children, the problems associated with work and family will dissipate. Yet our research, as well as the research of other scholars, points to the flaws in this line of thinking. We have found theory to be helpful to guide and broaden our thinking as we grapple with the different aspects of what it means to be a mother and an academic. We note that initially, the role of theory in the project was minimal. We went into the study focused on faculty career stage and institutional type, and intentionally selected participants who met our criteria in these areas; as such, we analyzed the data mindful of these perspectives. We also wanted to be sure to include women from different walks of life in terms of demographics and other background characteristics. Beyond that, in the initial stages of the project, we had not been very attentive to other theoretical perspectives. Although we both consider ourselves to be feminists, we did not set out to deliberately take on a feminist project. Tenets of feminism were part of the project in terms of the questions we asked and the assumptions we had about women and work, but it was not a deliberate focus and not integrated into our early analyses. Once we started conducting the interviews, however, we continually came across situations and findings that defied simple explanation. We needed more explicit theoretical frameworks to help us fine-tune how to make sense of what it was that we were starting to find. Accordingly, we turned to existing research to find theoretical grounding. There are four different theoretical perspectives we now use as lenses in our work. The first lens is rooted in the writings about ideal worker norms. We present it as a means to understand the negative narrative. The other three frameworks provide a means to grasp more fully what is involved to get to a counternarrative. The first of these is focused on life-course perspectives, which is especially important because our study looks at women in two distinct periods of their lives, early career when their children are young, and mid-career when their children are school aged. Parenthood and careers are not static. Understanding how career and life development, with special attention to the career stages of an academic life, may influence these women’s perspectives and experiences is very important to provide a holistic (and realistic) view of career development and family formation. The next theoretical lens, feminist theory, helps to frame the lives 30 academic motherhood of women...