When the Irresistible Desire to Parent Meets the Immovable Object of Academic Life: A Tragicomedy

• In Event: Ghosts, Clocks, and (Re)Production: Strands in the Tapestry of Stability/Change in Motherhood

Abstract

The transition to motherhood can be tricky to navigate at any time. For women who work outside the home, this transition can be even trickier. To some, the academy might seem to be the ideal context in which to pursue career and family, but that seems to be a rare story (see edited collections of Bassett, 2005; Evans & Grant 2008), and academic women have the highest rates of infertility of any of the professions. As the scholarly and popular attention continues to grow in the area of career-motherhood, so does the silence seem to grow around stories of women to struggle to become mothers in the midst of an academic life. This narrative highlights the contradictions of stability and change inherent in pursuing reproduction (assisted or otherwise) while following the rules of academic advancement.

Author

• Elissa Foster, Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network