Composing a Life in Twenty-first Century Academe: Reflections on a Mother's Challenge

Faculty women who are mothers experience overwhelming pressures associated with meeting their institutions' standards for tenure and fulfilling their responsibilities as parents. In this article, I draw on personal experience and scholarly debate to demonstrate that while many academic institutions have made considerable progress in accommodating academic parents' practical concerns—i.e., accessibility to quality childcare and reduced time for teaching and research—they still fail to recognize how thoroughly motherhood can alter a female academic's career. I argue that the psychological adjustment to motherhood required of female academics who bear children early in their careers calls for serious reconsideration of the timing and requirements associated with the tenure process. In response to this psychological and emotional consideration, I suggest a triplet of modifications to the standard research-driven tenure model intended to emphasize individual academics' experiences and interests, in general, and the ways in which the experiences of academic mothers, in particular, might positively transform academe.