The MotherTalk Blog Tour!
August 20th, 2008We’re thrilled to announce that the MotherTalk blog tour for Mama, PhD has begun with a great post from blue milk:
“Mama PhD is not just a shoulder to cry on for readers grappling with what they may have thought were unique troubles in juggling academia and motherhood, it is also a call to arms for women and men in academia to make change happen, to make academia a place consistent with the lives of both men and women. Evans and Grant, the editors of the book, understand that there is a power in speaking out, that when women hear many other women are struggling in exactly the same fashion we suddenly see our experiences not as personal incompetence but as a larger injustice.”
Today, Compost Happens (I have to say, I am loving the blog names almost as much as the reviews) weighed in with this:
“I hope that Mama, PhD will spread the word through the bastions of higher education: policies that marginalize women also marginalize our children, our future, and our present. The glass ceiling is cracking in the business world; the marble ceiling has shattered, but gender equity hasn’t cracked the ivory tower yet.”
Twenty bloggers will review the book over the next two weeks; you can check for updates here at MotherTalk.
A room of their own for breastfeeding moms…
August 7th, 2008One of the many memorable moments in Mama, PhD is this, from Jennifer Eyre White’s essay, “Engineering Motherhood,” in which she recounts working toward a Masters in Engineering as a new mom:
“For the first six months I’d race to school for class and race home for the next feeding. Sometimes [my husband] Frank would bring Riley to school to meet me, and I’d take her into the women’s bathroom and sit with her on the floor while she slurped like a piggy at the trough. One of the nice things about being a female engineer is that the bathrooms are always empty and peaceful.”
In her essay, “I Am Not a Head on a Stick,” Libby Gruner writes about the first semester back on the job after her second child was born:
“I remember little from that fall other than the constant fear that I’d forget to lock my office door while pumping.”
This week, Metro State College in Denver made all this unnecessary:
“Metro State, in accordance with the new workplace breastfeeding legislation, has created a room for students, faculty, and staff to use for the expression of breast milk. This room is a comfortable and private space where breastfeeding mothers can use their own personal pump for breast milk expression. There is also a refrigerator in this room that can be used for milk storage.”
Congratulations to all the moms and babies at Metro State, and now we look forward to hearing about the next school establishing such a space!
Question, Question, Who’s Got a Question?
August 5th, 2008Tedra Osell, aka Bitch PhD, is now fielding questions about combining family and academic life over at the Mama, PhD blog on InsideHigherEd. Click on over and send her your questions; she’s got answers!
Mama, PhD on The Debutante Ball
July 28th, 2008Months ago, the lovely and talented Gail Konop Baker, a former Literary Mama columnist, invited Elrena and me to guest blog at The Debutante Ball, a group blog for writers publishing their first book. It was a fun post to write — and I hope a fun post to read! Here’s an excerpt from “3,000 Miles, Two Writers, One Book:”
Meet over email. Of course; you live, after all, 3,000 miles apart, but it helps our relationship get into writing right away. We are literally words on a page (screen) to each other for the first year of our collaboration (we don’t even talk on the phone!) It doesn’t hurt that we meet via Elrena’s submission to the section of Literary Mama that Caroline is editing at the time.
Meet when one of you is pregnant. This helps get the conversation personal, pronto, as Caroline cautions Elrena that she might not get back to her very promptly with edits.
Don’t always stick to the point. We know we are both writers, and mothers, and if we’d stayed on topic it might have stayed at that. Instead, we digress into breastfeeding and parenting and graduate school and ivory tower life — and friendship. And then, ultimately, a book.
Click on over to The Debutante Ball to read the rest!
Review on Author Magazine
July 27th, 2008Check out the review by Kevin Lauderdale in the new edition of Author, which highlights the essay by Jamie Warner:
Contributor Jamie Warner and her husband endlessly debate whether or not to have children. In what is the book’s most crucial and telling line, she writes that their indecision comes from “the same skills that got us our degrees and jobs in the first place: fertile imaginations, a compulsive need to make lists, the ability to see problems from a variety of perspectives, and worst of all, the need to question societal norms.”
Click here to read more.
Survey of PhDs in the Nonacademic Workforce
June 23rd, 2008Listen up! Paula Chambers, of WRK4US, is conducting a survey of PhDs and ABDs who have left the academy and entered the nonacademic workforce.
“The purpose of the study is to provide a credible, research-based description of what those individuals feel, do and experience while transitioning into
post-academic careers. This information will be very helpful to
graduate students who feel anxious about making that decision, and
also to those who counsel them on career choices, such as career
counselors and professors.
I am looking for people who meet the following criteria:
* are PhD or ABD in any discipline (i.e., must have at least taken
qualifying exams)
* do not also have a JD, MD or MBA degree
* currently have a post-academic career (between jobs OK)
* are not currently a graduate student, tenure-track faculty member or
academic researcher in any academic department
* are not a K-12 teacher
* do not currently spend more than 10% of their total paid working
hours teaching or doing scholarly research.
If that’s you, you meet all the criteria and are invited to participate.
The study will be conducted by means of an online survey which will
take about 20 minutes to complete, plus however much discursive
writing the respondent chooses to do. All questions are optional.
Respondents can even go away and come back later: there is no pressure
to finish the whole thing in one sitting.
I cannot offer monetary compensation, but there are benefits.
Participating offers a rare opportunity to…
* Reflect on this important career transition
* Express your thoughts, feelings and experiences to a keenly
interested audience (me and my collaborator Dana Landis)
* Contribute to scholarly knowledge about people like you
* Relieve pain for grad students who would like to know what to expect
in this type of career transition
If you meet the criteria and would like to participate, here’s the link to the survey. If you’d like to know more about it, click anyway
and you will get more information. Clicking on the link does not
commit you to participate.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6PpHNtwa06_2b8qjveb5xluA_3d_3d
If you know other PhDs and ABDs who meet the criteria, please forward
this post to them so they can join in. We want the study
population to be as big and diverse as possible. Anyone who meets the
criteria is welcome and every response will be valued.”
A Review!
June 15th, 2008Mama, PhD is getting out into the world now, making its way to readers and reviewers. Today, we spotted this review on Activistas, by the wonderful Bob Drago (whom we considered wonderful, for the work he does on academics and family life, even before he wrote this review). Here’s an excerpt:
This is easily the most important piece of work to date on academics and family issues, full-stop, because the editors draw out from the authors all of the messiness, the highs and lows, the fears and hopes, the pride, guilt, anger, love and sense of failure and accomplishment and mainly great stories that comprise life for so many moms who try to make it as academics. The panopoly of supportive or unkind department chairs and colleagues, high and low status schools, childcare arrangements that work or don’t work, supportive or non-existent partners, and perfect and not-so-perfect children is all here.
You can click on over to Activistas to read the rest!
Mama, PhD: The T-Shirt! and the hat! and the bag!
June 13th, 2008
Get your Mama, PhD shwag here at Cafe Press and let the world know you’ve got it going on , body and brain.
The Boston Globe on Work/Family Issues
June 3rd, 2008First, check out Mama, PhD contributor Rebecca Steinitz’s article titled “The Rest of Us:”
Summer vacation looms large among the specters that haunt the 2 a.m. anxiety fests of the working mother. While corporate titans turn to their nannies, and stay-at-home moms schedule swimming-lesson car pools, the rest of us lie awake, trying to figure it out.
Then, read Kristen Green’s terrific article, The write time, which focuses specifically on issues facing women working toward their doctorates who want to have children, too:
Terra Barnes is a 29-year-old neuroscientist working toward her doctorate at the Graybiel Laboratory at MIT, one of the most prestigious in the country. She’s also a smitten mother of 9-month-old Brayden.
Changing diapers and performing brain surgeries don’t exactly go together, but Barnes felt she didn’t have a choice. She wanted to have a baby, and she needed to finish her dissertation.
She’s still figuring out how to make it work. . . .
And of course, for more stories about how women in academia are figuring out how to make it all work, check out Mama, PhD.
Now Shipping!
May 31st, 2008We’re delighted to announce that Mama, PhD is in stock and shipping now, so if you pre-ordered, look for your copy soon!
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