Embodying Collective Care and Holistic Educational Attainment of Graduate Student Mothers of Color in a Digital Society

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Introduction
This panel examines the different approaches that graduate student mothers of color engage in parenting while not jeopardizing their academic pursuits. Additionally, we discuss the various layers of support systems they accrued spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and overall health-wise for themselves, their children, and the student-parenting community in the current digital society. The different digital tools that serve as the supportive mechanism will also be examined while leveraging the intersection of women’s identities. This panel captures the unheard voices of black Muslim women, women raising children with disabilities, and women creating a virtual “homescape” to support themselves as international black graduate students from West Africa as they juggle parenting transnationally while availing themselves of the different support systems in the ever-evolving digital society. Hence, we interrogate the intersection of race, gender, spirituality, well-being around m(othering), and sense of belonging in envisioning SDG Goal 5 of “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” In doing so, we shift from a lens of inefficient grounded perspective in perpetuating (m)othering and acquiring quality education towards perspectives of an abundance of care, well-being, and authenticity in affirming the unheard voices of graduate student-mothers of color, essential works, and successes. We gesture towards intersectional and interdependent conceptualizations of equity in graduate education to capture more just educational inclusion and praxis for women of color regardless of their spiritual, linguistic, economic, political, and cultural positioning.
Objective of the session
Parent scholars face challenges in balancing academic responsibilities with childcare duties. Specifically, student parents are consistently distressed with their field's family (un)friendliness within academia, as shown in a survey of 8,000 graduate students where 74% of male and 84% of female respondents confirmed this concern (Mason et al., 2009). Despite the advocacy for the inclusion of parent scholars, mother scholars are still overwhelmed with juggling academics and (m)othering duties. In recent years, digital spaces have emerged as crucial tools that mother scholars use to manage their education, foster learning, find community support, and achieve academic success. Hence, online platforms and digital tools have expanded learning opportunities and provided flexibility, enabling mothers in graduate programs to navigate parenting and academic life effectively.
With that, our proposed panel examines how digital spaces have become instrumental in the educational journeys of mother scholars of color in graduate school. However, this panel recenters how researchers, educators, policy-makers, and advocates in graduate school could work more intentionally to expand access to graduates who are student-parenting and specifically women of color by considering the diverse ways and intensity of their caregiving roles and the intersection of their identities as they desire their voices to be heard regardless of their linguistic, economic, political, and cultural positioning.

As such, in keeping with calls to envision education in the digital society and the goal of the cultural contexts of education and human potential SIG, this panel echoes the unheard voices of these women to make a case for the necessity of including their voices to promote better understanding and learning of their lived experiences and how they have been providing care and support within their networks.
Overview of the presentation
The first paper draws on Crenshaw’s (2013) intersection theory to examine the identity and strategies graduate-student-mothers adopt to support themselves and their kids. Specifically, the paper is a qualitative study that explores the unique experiences of graduate student parents of color who have children with disabilities, focusing on how they balance their academic, professional, and family commitments to their children who are on the spectrum.
The second and third papers center on the experiences of African-American black muslim student-mothers as they embody care, spirituality, and productivity while navigating the intersecting identities of race, religion, motherhood, and academia amidst resistance to oppression and discrimination in academic institutions and social climates. These papers draw on black feminists’ thoughts to center the lived experiences of Black women enacting ‘motherwork’ (Collins, 2016) while illustrating the labor mothers experience for their children and community to thrive.
The fourth paper is a multi-sited phenomenological study of how four mother-scholars from West Africa advocate for themselves by using the digital space to carve the education they want for themselves. The study draws on the Yorùbá philosophy of Ọmọlúwàbí and Crenshaw’s intersection theory to examine their lived experiences fostering a community of care and intimate activism (Tironi, 2018).


Significance
This panel captures a holistic perspective of how unheard voices of graduate student-parents of color with the intersecting identities of race, gender, spirituality, and cultural values create that community of care to cater to their loved ones while still thriving in their academic pursuit. With their desire to tap into the benefits of the digital space, the women in the studies share how mindfulness is crucial to how information from the digital space is utilized meaningfully without causing harm to themselves. By highlighting papers that investigate how parents with special needs children provide support for their children, how artists of color and black Muslim graduate-student mothers offer a space of care and advocacy that nuance their lived experiences, this panel brings to fore research on graduate student-mothers experiences across various contexts and multiple scales that both demonstrates categorizations of racial, cultural, and education opportunity differences in graduate education in the international context. Ultimately, by illuminating how mothers’ intersecting identities and practices are always positioned with each other, this panel positions us to foreground intersectionality and interdependence in our moves toward more just graduate educational opportunities and praxis for graduate student mothers of color.

Structure of the session
The proposed session is a 75-minute symposium comprising 12-minute presentations of four papers each, followed by 7-9 minutes of remarks from our two discussants, both graduate student parents of color at the start of their careers. They both engage in international and transnational research that entails the lived experiences of mothers in raising their kids while prioritizing care for the community and their well-being. The symposium will conclude with 10-15 minutes for questions and comments from the audience.

Sub Unit

• Cultural Contexts of Education and Human Potential SIG

Organizer

• Yetunde S Alabede, Michigan State University

Chair

• Yetunde S Alabede, Michigan State University

Individual Presentations

• Navigating Parenthood and Academia: Voices of Graduate Students of Color with Children with Disabilities - Anara na Akhmetova, Michigan State University; Zhamilya Yessirkepova, Michigan State University

• Creative Scholar Mothering in Academia and the Community - Tasleem Firdausee, Western Michigan University

• The Digital “Homescape” of Community Building by and for West African Graduate Student-Mothers - Yetunde S Alabede, Michigan State University

Discussant

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University