Professor Mommy: Finding Work-Family Balance in Academia - Softcover

Ghodsee, Kristen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442208597 ISBN 13: 9781442208599

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014

Synopsis

Professor Mommy is designed as a guide for women who want to combine the life of the mind with the joys of motherhood. The book provides practical suggestions from the authors' experiences together with those of other women who have successfully combined parenting with professorships. Professor Mommy addresses key questions—when to have children and how many, what kinds of academic institutions are the most family friendly, how to negotiate around the myths that many people hold about academic life, etc.—for women throughout all stages of their academic careers, from graduate school through full professor. The authors follow the demands of motherhood all the way from the infant stages through the empty nest. At each stage, the authors offer invaluable advice and tested strategies from women who have successfully juggled the demands and rewards of an academic career and motherhood.

Written in clear, jargon-free prose, the book is accessible to women in all disciplines, with concise chapters for the time-constrained academic. The book's conversational tone is supplemented with a review of the most current scholarship on work/family balance and a survey of emerging family-friendly practices at U.S. colleges and universities. Professor Mommy asserts that the faculty mother has become and will remain a permanent fixture on the landscape of the American academy.The paperback edition features a new Preface that addresses the public conversation about mothers and work raised in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. The new Preface also answers frequently asked questions from readers.

The paperback edition features a new preface that brings the book into conversation with Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” as well as a new afterword providing specific suggestions for institutional change.

About this title

About the Author

Rachel Connelly is the Bion R. Cram Professor of Economics at Bowdoin College and the mother of four children. As an economist specializing in labor and economic demography, she has spent her career dedicated to the investigation of the intersections between work and family life.

Kristen Ghodsee is the Director and John S. Osterweis Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College and was a single mother during the tenure process. She has received numerous honors for her work, including grants from Fulbright, and the National Science Foundation, as well as residential fellowships at Harvard University and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. In 2012, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her work in anthropology and cultural studies.

https://www.facebook.com/ProfessorMommy

Review

Bowdoin faculty members Connelly and Ghodsee are mothers who've struggled with the challenges of research, teaching, publishing, and caring for children in defiance of the conventional wisdom that women in academia have to choose between family and career. They devote an entire chapter to debunking the myths that discourage many women from pursuing tenure during their most fertile reproductive years. Drawing on their experiences and on surveys of and interviews with a variety of women in academia, they first review the decision to have an academic career and the decision to have children, including how many and when to have them. They proceed with a detailed chronology of the tenure track, a comprehensive guide, and unwavering encouragement. They are frank about sacrifices and challenges encountered during graduate study and the PhD dissertation, and they detail the hurdles presented by low salaries, undesirable work locations, and long working hours. But they also note the rewards of both academic life and motherhood. Women interested in careers in academia should appreciate this helpful, encouraging resource. (Booklist)

In Professor Mommy, Rachel Connelly and Kristen Ghodsee present a thorough set of questions for women to consider and strategies to utilize in order to make informed decisions about pursuing both an academic career and family life. ... Professor Mommy is a practical guide written for women who are considering or currently combining family life and the pursuit of tenure. The authors recognize that tenure-track fathers have challenges when they are involved parents of small children, but Connelly and Ghodsee intentionally speak to the particular concerns and situations that mothers face. ... Professor Mommy has many helpful insider tips for any junior faculty member or graduate student who has not had these conversations with a trusted (mommy) mentor. ...[F]or those of us who desire to seek tenure within the existing system, having access to the information in Professor Mommy is invaluable. The book does what it sets out to do, providing information and options for women to make decisions that will position them as best as possible for tenure and promotion within the existing system. Recognizing that the assimilationist approach will not work for every woman, it provides guidance for the many. (Feminist Collections: A Quarterly Of Women's Studies Resources)

Don't believe the myths―you can conquer the academy while raising children. It isn't easy, but few worthwhile things in life are. Connelly and Ghodsee show, step by step, how smart women win at work and win at home by protecting their time and focusing on what matters most (hint: it's not grading papers or ironing shirts!). (Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think)

Do read this 'can do book for mothers who want to pursue an academic career! Yes, you can succeed and this book guides you through every step and pitfall―from choosing the type of institution that is for you to coming up for full professor. It doesn't shy away from the very real obstacles, like exhaustion during the early child-raising years, but offers alternative strategies for climbing the ladder. The sound advice is aimed at mothers―but it could be the handbook for any Ph.D. who is deciding on an academic career. I will recommend it to all my graduate students. (Mary Ann Mason, professor and co-director of the Center, Economics & Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; a)

Rachel Connelly and Kristen Ghodsee have written a book that is not just a must-read for anyone contemplating the intricate and as-yet imperfect balance of academic life and family life, but for anyone at all interested in promoting equity in the workplace and more importantly, in the world of ideas. Professor Mommy lays out in stark detail the dismal record and very real statistics of the “maternal wall,” “glass ceiling” and the steep personal costs that women academics often face. But rather than stop there, they offer detailed, practical and user-friendly guidance on how to set your own priorities, draw boundaries and forge a path through this thorny obstacle course. They show it is not easy, but it is indeed possible to be both a successful academic and a loving parent with a rich family life. More, Professor Mommy is a call to action: that lasting change and that longed-for balance will come only when men become aware of the stacked deck against women and when women academics make the hard decision not to opt out, but to opt in, writing, publishing, thinking, promoting their ideas, and by their very presence, change the calcified system from within. (Brigid Schulte, Washington Post; Pulitzer Prize co-winner)

Professor Mommy is a well-researched, yet anecdotal account of parenting across disciplines relevant to all family forms in academia. It’s one-of-a-kind, doesn't present 'defeatist' statements of sacrifice, but provides real strategies and support for anyone in their child-bearing years attempting to navigate this challenging yet rewarding period in life. (Tiffany Jenson, Brigham Young University-Idaho)

Professor Mommy is designed as a guide for women who are trying to combine the life of the mind with the joys of motherhood. The book addresses key questions — when to have children and how many, what kinds of academic institutions are the most family friendly, how to juggle research and teaching with your children's needs, etc. — for women throughout all stages of their academic careers, from graduate school through full professor. The authors tackle these issues not only during the infant/toddler stages, but also follow the demands of motherhood all the way through the empty nest.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1442208597
• ISBN 13: 9781442208599
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 246