A Mother’s Work Is Never Done: On Being a Mother in Academia
两位学者母亲通过亲身经历，揭示学术界对母亲身体和情感的忽视，提出三项建议以改善包容性，适合关注性别平等和学术政策的读者。
This essay is a call for recognition of the physical and emotional toll of motherhood on women in academia. Drawing on our experiences as Mothers–Professors–Researchers, we demonstrate how maternal bodies are experienced as being out of place in academic environments, existing in spaces where the rules of the game are made for bodies that do not look like our own. We offer some solutions to make academic spaces more inclusive and equitable for all. Motherhood arrived at different moments in our professional journeys. Soraya became a mother as her academic career began to take off. But even before her son was born, Soraya came to experience the push and pull of being a Mother–Professor–Researcher, the tripartite identity our academic lives have imposed on us. As months passed and Soraya's pregnant body continued to grow, she felt obliged to take on additional teaching duties due to pressure from colleagues and academic leaders who framed her pregnancy (and subsequent maternity leave) as an abdication of duty. Where Soraya's growing size betrayed her pregnant status, a lifetime of being socialized as a woman taught her to put a smile on her face and act in a way that made others comfortable, even if she was exhausted and swollen. In her book, The Managed Heart, Arlie Hochschild (1983) introduces the term emotional labour, which refers to the ways in which women are taught to manage their own emotions to make other people feel better. For pregnant Soraya, putting on a smile and taking on more work was her way of engaging in the emotional labour required to reassure her colleagues that her pregnancy would not turn her into a liability for the department. However, the smile did little to address the resentment Soraya felt for forgoing special moments during her pregnancy, like attending prenatal courses, in favour of teaching a night class at the university. It also did not settle her sense that despite having been a rising star prior to her pregnancy announcement, her new maternal status was making her something of a pariah in the department. Conversely, Erica became a mother 9 months before starting her PhD. She spent the first year of her PhD balancing coursework with childcare for a son who was born premature and was too young and too sick to attend daycare. Erica haphazardly pieced together childcare from her mother, mother-in-law, and cousins to care for her son while she attended classes. She worked on coursework at home with her son strapped to her body in a baby carrier, her chin leaning beside his small head, and her nose taking in his ‘baby smell’ as she worked. The toll of balancing motherhood and doctoral studies came to a head when Erica received an email at 11 PM from the PhD programme coordinator stating that she was expected at a research workshop the next morning at 9 AM, a day she did not have care planned for her son. This was just too much. Erica broke down in tears under the burden of mothering a sick baby, giving up her identity as a professional to pursue her dream of becoming an academic, and trying to go back to school as an adult. Erica's emotion boiled over into a tersely worded email response to said administrator about how she found the programme's demands unreasonable. This attempt at resistance resulted in a scolding for being unable to attend the workshop, as PhD students were expected to make themselves available for all academic events in the department. Erica felt frustrated and isolated, incapable of being an available mother to a baby who needed her and a dedicated student who could meet the minimum expectations of the doctoral program. Our early motherhood experiences reinforced what we would come to understand as an unspoken rule that motherhood is expected to take second place to our academic vocation. We were instructed to either act like childless people or be disciplined for prioritizing the needs of the small humans we recently brought into this world and that, quite literally, were dependent on our bodies for survival. In academia, motherhood becomes a punishable offence when it constrains a mother's ability to make herself available for work. However, in our hearts, motherhood could not take second place to our vocation. We were drawn to our boys and felt unconditional love for them. We realized that we needed to prioritize work and motherhood – both needed to be number one at the same time – if we wanted to be the kinds of mothers our sons deserved and the kinds of colleagues our universities demanded. Managing our conduct in light of expectations about how academic mothers ought to behave is made more complex by the fact that maternal bodies can be difficult to control. Maternity, and particularly the postpartum stage, made us deeply aware of how little control we have over our biology. Gatrell (2013) describes maternal bodywork as the lengths to which mothers go to discipline their bodies into conforming to professional expectations based on a masculine ideal. For Soraya, breastfeeding brought pride in the fact that her body could produce the nutrients necessary to nourish her growing baby. However, it also meant that for the 2 years she breastfed, she experienced irregular menstruation. The absence of menses creates two stresses: First, not being able to reassure oneself of not being pregnant again, and second – perhaps more importantly – not being able to control the arrival of one's period. Soraya experienced the humiliation of being in the middle of a lecture and feeling a rush of warm liquid running down her thigh. When she looked down and saw blood seeping through her pants, she felt as if the room was collapsing in on her. She immediately prayed for the earth to open below her so that she could be swallowed up to hide in shame or be teleported elsewhere to escape the classroom. Soraya felt ashamed of her ‘leaky body’ (Gatrell, 2013), which was seen as out of place in a research institution. Pregnant bodies are rarely seen in those hallowed halls, and the abnormality of women's bodies in these spaces makes the challenges of motherhood even more palpable. Reflecting on this experience over a decade later, Soraya can still relate to the feeling of being ashamed for not having prophylactically worn a feminine hygiene product or not bringing a change of clothes to work. Inhabiting an uncontrollable body can feel like living through a moment of extreme deviance. Reflecting on the place of maternal bodies in academia, we have come to understand that maternal bodies, particularly in the postpartum period, are experienced as being out of place. Not only do they not belong, but mothers are expected to engage in a sort of ‘presenteeism’ (Gatrell, 2011), where they set aside their biology and comfort in favour of complying with social norms. For instance, a lactating mother will make sure she wears breast pads before putting on a blouse for work. This imposes unrealistic (and unnecessary) demands on mothers who are occupied with the demands of raising a new baby and must also be concerned with their wardrobe in ways others are not. Ultimately, balancing the demands of becoming mothers in academia with the logistical challenges of being Mothers–Professors–Researchers has required a new organization of our lives. This has meant that our days have extended to include two full shifts: eight working hours bookended by eight mothering hours. This is to say that becoming Mothers–Professors–Researchers imposes not only a physical toll but a mental one as well. Soraya and Erica recently travelled to Romania for a week to present their work at a prestigious conference. While at the conference, Erica received a tearful Facetime from her son, where he expressed feeling like ‘he didn't have a mom anymore’ because Erica had been away for too long and begged her to come home right away. From halfway around the world, Erica looked into her son's eyes over Facetime and felt a wave of guilt and shame come over her, taking her back to those feelings of having abandoned this same little boy to pursue her PhD all those years ago. The following month, Erica attended another conference closer to home in Canada, so she resolved to fly 3 hours to the conference in the morning and fly back home at night so she wouldn't be away from her son for too long. Driving back home from the airport, Erica totalled her car. Waiting for a stop light to turn green, she became distracted by too many things on her mind and advanced into an intersection, where she was t-boned by an oncoming vehicle. Thankfully, no one was hurt. When she regained consciousness after the accident, Erica shakingly got out of the car to survey the damage. She sat down on the curb, staring at her car, which was now steaming and in pieces. She started bawling, overwhelmed with the pressure of being on the tenure track, trying to be a supermom, and feeling like she couldn't do any of it right. Her car was a representation of how she felt: broken and immobile. Her mind was constantly running, flipping between making sure her son had everything he needed, and that her tenure dossier was shaping up. However, this balancing act had become untenable. Erica's struggle reveals how motherhood is not just a way of being; it is also a way of doing. Being Mothers–Professors–Researchers means our minds never stop working, trying to optimize everywhere we can. Motherhood involves adopting practices like compulsive scheduling and extensive planning, which have become embedded in the modern expectations of the perfect mom (particularly in the upper-middle-class circles in which we find ourselves). At the same time, academia has instilled in us a desire to be the best versions of ourselves. We leverage our mothering practices in service of our academic careers, like using our extended workday to get more done and satisfy increasingly demanding tenure requirements, trying to excel both at work and at home. Yet, as Erica's car accident revealed, this careful balancing act can have major consequences on our mental and physical well-being. Given our experience as mothers in academia, we are adamant that things need to change. Below, we outline our three-pillar suite of proposals to make academic spaces more inclusive and equitable toward mothers. In writing this essay, we have become quite aware of the ways in which we've been socialized to grin and bear the trials and humiliations of being Mothers–Professors–Researchers. We've given examples of only a few of the many times we've put our own desires second to make sure our sons don't miss anything and that our institutions get our best. Reflecting on these experiences, we're livid. Livid that we said yes to work when our bodies said no. Livid that we tried to achieve logistical miracles while suffering on the inside. Livid for accepting that we shouldn't stand up for our own well-being. This is not to individualize a systemic problem but to recognize our own role in perpetuating reductionist roles for women and mothers in academia. Something must change. We call on mothers to be reflexive and oppose efforts to pigeonhole them. This starts by challenging the idea that a mother's work is never done. One way to achieve some sense of logistical normalcy is by enlisting allies and delegating motherhood responsibilities to others. We must enlist our partners, family members, and friends to share in our children's care. Some of our colleagues have hired nannies to fill in when they could not be present (we recognize the tremendous privilege of this practice). We urge universities to offer on-site, affordable childcare to help bridge the gap, particularly for parents of young children. We also need institutional policies that recognize the logistical challenges of parenting. For instance, Erica has been candid with her associate dean of faculty about her parenting responsibilities and their impact on course timetabling. He has been instrumental in helping her navigate university politics to obtain a schedule that allows Erica to align her familial and teaching responsibilities. However, Soraya has not been so lucky. When she asked for a course schedule that would accommodate her role as a single mother, she was told that she should be grateful for the accommodations she was given. Her university administrator explained quite frankly that she did not want to be seen as playing favourites, as there were other mothers on campus. Rather than make certain mothers grovel for accommodations, we call for institutional policies that are favourable to all mothers concerning issues like timetabling or progressive return from maternity leave. While mothers have a role to play in resisting societal norms, we cannot affect change alone. We need to cultivate allies, both at home and at school, particularly in institutions where non-mothers occupy most of the positions of power. This is achieved by raising the consciousness of these non-mothers who can advocate for change on our behalf. For all the ways we try to be superwomen, our bodies are not invincible. Caring for others can be physically exhausting, and we have all experienced our fair share of physical ailments due to using our bodies beyond what they can handle. We call for the normalization of maternal bodies. Pregnant bodies are rarely seen in academic environments, which is why they are such an aberration. The normalization of maternal bodies includes breaking down taboos around breastfeeding by creating dedicated breast-pumping spaces and sensitization campaigns to normalize this behaviour on campus. This can also be achieved by creating affinity groups of mothers on campus that can create a sense of community while enabling collective action to support maternal bodies on campus. The most obvious way to normalize maternal bodies is to have more of them around by hiring more women (particularly in leadership roles). Creating policies that make motherhood visible makes mothers – and their children – feel seen on campus. When women's bodies do not feel like they belong, this can have long-term implications for expectations around how Mothers–Professors–Researchers present themselves on campus. We call for pushing back against societal expectations of how maternal bodies ought to look. Normalizing maternal bodies means recognizing these physical forms can exist in many shapes and sizes and that it is, quite summarily, no one's business to police or comment on how these bodies look. Erica had the unfortunate experience of having a male student ask her about her choice to have a second child (she was not pregnant at the time and only had one child). Erica looked at the student with a puzzled look. He pointed at Erica's stomach and answered, ‘Well, aren't you pregnant?’ Looking down and noticing that her abdomen was not flat, Erica caught on. She looked up and answered in a sarcastic tone, ‘No, my dress is just unflattering’. Erica was quite offended by this encounter because she felt it crossed a boundary where students wouldn't normally be commenting on her physique, but this student felt entitled to do so because, apparently, maternal bodies are fair game. When maternal bodies are common on campus and are normalized, they no longer become worthwhile topics of conversation. As the experiences disclosed above have evidenced, we see parenting as more than a biological imperative or a logistical challenge; it is an opportunity to have a hand in shaping the heart and mind of a new life. The emotional burden of parenting, like taking the time to imbue a child with the right values and helping guide them to make good decisions, is what is most taxing about being a parent. Recognizing the emotional cost of parenting could mean re-designing performance evaluation systems to more appropriately recognize the time and energy necessary to satisfy the pastoral role mothers – and parents more generally – occupy. From a university's perspective, giving faculty the time and space to become emotionally invested in becoming good parents is not only a contribution to society but is also a human resources and equity issue. This could mean adapting performance and tenure evaluation criteria to consider the personal situation of parents – for example, giving parents the possibility to extend their tenure clock to account for the ways in which the emotional burden of parenting may undermine productivity. This could also mean considering parental and caregiving roles in the annual performance evaluation criteria when considering a faculty member's service commitment to the university. If universities can become more hospitable to mothers (and fathers), this can have a significant impact on whether these institutions become employers of choice for young professionals. We call for the inclusion of flesh-and-blood mothers in the process of reevaluating tenure and evaluation guidelines within universities to ensure these policies include explicit considerations for the emotional and physical costs of motherhood. We also call for the inclusion of mothers on tenure and evaluation committees. Not only would this raise the prominence of maternal bodies on campus, but it would also ensure an ongoing voice for mothers in the implementation of policies on a case-by-case basis. This would guarantee that tenure and promotion decisions for mothers are made with the constraints of maternal bodies in mind. We can each name close friends who suffered through stillbirths or miscarriages and who were penalized by their universities for not being productive after these traumatic events. Placing a mother in a decision-making role on evaluation committees would ensure that someone having experienced a leaky and unpredictable maternal body can weigh in on its impact on tenure qualifications. By enlisting allies and resisting attitudes about motherhood, normalizing maternal bodies, and recognizing the emotional cost of mothering, we can support mothers in having a more inclusive and equitable experience in academia than the one we've had thus far. We need to do this if we want to retain the best and brightest in our institutions and, perhaps more importantly, set the example for our students as they decide what types of adults and mothers they might want to become. We hope our essay will empower mothers in academia to demand conditions that are more supportive and, where possible, help create them for others as well.