Academic Motherhood

I wrote this piece over three years ago when  my daughter was two years old. It was my attempt to work through my conflicting relationship between my academic work and parenting. I wanted to document how I always felt torn between my desire to be a “good” mother and a “good” academic. I felt I was failing at both. The expectations of both were too much. More importantly, I was too chicken to be marked by motherhood while still on the job market, so I let this post languish. I wish I’d been braver. I’ve added some reflections about how I feel now,

February 11, 2011

On my way out of the house earlier this week, the toddler asked me a poignant question, “Mommy, you go to work?”  I answered in the affirmative, and the toddler pushed the issue with the ever-present “Why?”

Why, indeed?

Now, I might normally shrug off this question as the inquisitive mind of the a young child, the insistent need to know why, but the question triggered my now familiar “mommy guilt.” Instead of “why are you working”, I heard something like “why are you abandoning me?” The question hit me at a vulnerable moment, in which I am doubting my ability to mother and to produce quality academic work (and wrangle 100 plus students this semester). How can I balance? Or juggle both? I left my toddler in the care of her other parent and stewed over my choices during the drive to the university. Perhaps, I should have kept my now romantic and nostaglic schedule from the fall semester, in which I taught only two courses and went into the university three days a week. Wasn’t that better?, I ask myself. Was the toddler better? More well-adjusted? Does my new spring schedule damage our tenuous child-parent relationship? One day am I going to be the festering source of all of the toddler’s, now adult’s, problems? The question that haunted me in the cold jaunt from my office to my car is: What if I am doing it wrong?

By the time the cold seeped through my jacket, fury replaced worry. Why do I do this to myself, I mutter. As I jab my hands in my pockets, I uncover a remnant of the toddler, a hair bow displaced and absently jammed in my winter coat. Fury melts into warm memories, and ambivalence is all that remains. I love my child, and I love my work, and I struggle to make it work.

This struggle of self-doubt and love, maternity and career, mother and child is an ongoing, frustrating public debate. And I usually duck for cover in the verbal volley between stay-at-home moms and working moms because until recently I felt like I was both part-time. The critiques of each type of mommy generally create maternity writ large, general and unhelpful. Yet Tina Fey’s recent piece in the New Yorker (February 14, 2011) clarifies this struggle with humor and wit. As Fey notes, “The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield” (64). Moreover, she argues that the worst question to ask a working mother is “How do you juggle it all?”, which equates to “You’re screwing it all up, aren’t you?” (64).  While Fey talks about the way others ask “juggling” questions as accusatory, she also alludes to the questions I ask about myself constantly. Am I screwing this up? Why, indeed?

Fey, of course, is talking about the particular pressures of Hollywood, and Hollywood isn’t my concern. My concern is the parallel to the academy and the place/status/opinion of maternity. As Fey agonizes other whether to have a second child and when, I agonize too. My book is coming out this Fall (yay!), other projects are piling up, and I wonder what will happen to my academic career if I have another child. How will I juggle? There, of course, are women in American History, American Religious History and American Studies, who have not only a child but children. This is not an impossible feat, but I wonder (“selfishly”, “awfully” and “narcissistically”) about me.

How will I juggle? Aren’t I just screwing it up? The questions repeat again and again. The constant refrain of the working mother/academic/historian of gender and religion/spouse/sister/daughter/instructor that I am. My tacit resolution has been to assume that my child will survive with my working, and that my agonizing is just that, a fanciful agony over my poor performance of a maternal role. Yet, I struggle with maternity.

In her excellent article (that is part of an equally excellent book), “Sacred Maternities and Postbiomedical Bodies: Religion and Nature in Contemporary Home Birth”, Pamela Klassen argues that not only is maternity under-explored and under-theorized but also there is a wariness about broaching such a topic. Maternity is its own minefield.

May 9, 2014

I found this post while writing a column about mothers in academia. I found this post with Mother’s Day only two days away. I found this post while the baby rolled over and played with his favorite frog toy, which was once his sister’s. I found this post at a moment where I once again find myself wrangling motherhood and career (or lack thereof).

Things, of course, have changed.

I no longer work at an university. I’m not sure that I’m still an academic. Instead, I’m staying at home with the baby while his big sister goes to pre-Kindergarten. I write in my “free” moments: nap time, early mornings, or those elusive pockets of time in the day when the children don’t need me.   I now feel guilty about abandoning my writing.

But, I no longer have the ability to toggle back and forth between my identities as mother and scholar. Motherhood consumes most of my time. What the baby needs is pressing and urgent. He can’t wait for me to finish a sentence, and he cares not for my deadlines. His sister needs to me to be present for her. To read to her. To cuddle her.  To listen to her. To make her realize that I love her more and more everyday even though her brother takes away much of my time. Writing, then, gets pushed aside in those moments of need and love. My loyalties feel torn between kids and career. Still.

My worries are now different. I want to write. I need to write, but I can’t necessarily find the time.

I’m typing right now with the baby asleep in my lap. His steady breathing becomes the soundtrack to my post. I stop occasionally to smooth his hair or pat his back. To tell him I love him more and more every day. To whisper that I’m his mother, but I’m also more. To assure him that writing takes away time not affection. To cuddle him while I still can. To let us know that I can be both a mother and writer. To hope that one day my guilt will dissipate as I’m realize that I don’t have to be a good mother, but just good enough.