Susan Bassow earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1995; her disser­tation on climate change and its impacts on forests led to an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship in Washington, D. C., where she worked (before and throughout her first pregnancy) for the Environmental Protection Agency and President Clinton’s White House Office […]

Or, Anybody Have Time for a Change? judith sanders A friend and I were watching her plump, luscious twin toddlers laugh themselves silly as they learned to roll downhill. She confided that she was pregnant with her third child, so she was leaving her job. “They’ll never be like this again,” she said of her […]

Affirmations for the Academic Mother cynthia kuhn, josie mills, christy rowe, and ERIN Webster GARETT As graduate students in a rigorous PhD program, we often marveled at the professors raising young children amid the intense demands of academia. Such conversations took place in private, however, as anything outside of publishing and landing a job was […]

tedra osell My baby helped me write my dissertation. Or rather, my baby plus my hus­band’s job. After his birth (the baby’s, not the husband’s), we were able to afford three hours a day of child care. From nine to noon, Monday to Fri­day, Lena came over to take Linus out in the stroller, put […]

On Choosing Children and the Academy lisa harper In my earliest years of graduate school, it seemed the perfect plan: I could finish my course work, pass my preliminary exams, and get pregnant while writing my dissertation. No matter that a father existed neither in theory nor in practice; my thinking was captive to the […]

Negotiating Guilt and Shame in Academe jean-anne Sutherland A few years back I presented at a sociology conference, discussing my dis­sertation on mothering, guilt, and shame. I spoke of the social construc­tion of the good mother ideology, the impact this ideal has on the lives of women, and specifically the manifestation of guilt and shame. […]

Nicole Cooley and JULIA SPICHER KASDORF Utopia la. An ideally perfect place, especially in its social,political, and moral aspects.[6] Nicole I had driven by the building several times, intrigued. At home, I looked it up online: “The Orange Kangaroo, Children’s Art Studio and Cafe, Open­ing Soon!” And I was one of the first customers, with […]

Jennifer margulis Jenny flounced into my office and threw herself in a chair. She was crying before I had even managed to say hello. She gripped a cloth handkerchief in her hand as tightly as my daughter held Blue-Blue Blankie at home, draw­ing it rather brutally across her eyes to wipe away the tears. She […]

rebecca steinitz I had my first child in 1996. I received my PhD in 1997. I had my second child in 2000. Now it is 2007, but I am not the tenured professor my timetable suggests I should be. Ah, you think, you’ve heard this story, in all its variations. She and her husband met […]

At Home with Children and a PhD susan bassow, dana Campbell, and liz stockwell Every year, PhDs leave academia to raise their children; many, perhaps even most, find fulfilling, nontraditional ways to remain intellectually productive. It is difficult to track those who leave for family reasons, since most lose any formal institutional affiliation. Social scientists […]