Caught Between Two Worlds: Mothers as Academics

Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Academic Career Goals

“…Another qualitative study (N ¼ 22) by Young and Wright (2001) reported that for academic mothers, "the balance of family and work was exhausting and overwhelming under the best of circumstances" (p. 560). The stigma around motherhood leads to a silence about the struggle of maintaining the dual identities of mother and academic (Leonard & Malina, 1994;Young & Wright, 2001). It is unknown how female doctoral students, particularly mothers, perceive the experiences of female faculty or how they make meaning of their faculty members' experiences.…”

A record of the brain fungus, Calvatia craniiformis (Schwein.) Fr. ex De Toni (1849) (Basidiomycota: Agaricaceae) from Maraylya, New South Wales, Australia

“…My record was also on a verge of disturbed rarely used four wheel drive track within a highly disturbed area of native Eucalyptus forest. Leonard's record was from Tenterfield, northeastern New South Wales on 8 March 2017 [11]. This locality is over 700 km away from Maraylya.…”

“…[3] noted that in the USA, the habitat of C. craniiformis was terrestrial with the fungus occurring in open areas, meadows, disturbed areas or in native habitats under Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis), Mesquite (Prosopis spp., Fabaceae), Oak (Quercus spp., Fagaceae), Pinyon Pine (Pinus edulis, Pinaceae), Juniper (Juniperus spp., Pinaceae) or Sage Brush (Artemisia sp., Asteraceae). For Australia, the only recent ecological data I have been able to locate is a note by Leonard [11] who noted the species grows in soil amongst grass on roadside verges but that it is also reported from pasture and parkland habitats. My record was also on a verge of disturbed rarely used four wheel drive track within a highly disturbed area of native Eucalyptus forest.…”

“…The fruiting body of the fungus consists of a gleba (or head) and a short pseudostipe; the turbinate head measures 50-160 mm in diameter [3]. The gleba is lobed and smooth at first but the upper surface develops into indentations and grooves and the whole head resembles a human brain; the spore mass is white with a slight yellowish hue at first [3], [11]. Virtually nothing has been described of its ecology in Australia.…”

Ethnography In and With Bodies

“…This is not uncommon, as evidenced by discussions in online groups such as the 'women in academia' or 'fieldwork with kids' Facebook groups, or Twitter hashtags such as #academicmama, as well as in popular considerations of the pleasures and challenges of combining parenting and research (see for example Sohn 2019). It is not just us who are disturbed by the daily transition between the intensive holding, touching, loving, empathising, and attunement to the non-verbal cues of infants or emotional tirades of toddlers, to a neat, ordered, intensively cerebral space in which emotions are usually kept tightly in check (Leonard & Malina 1994). And the issue is not limited to mothers -many academics struggle with the expectation to perform guarded professional subjectivities despite the intensely emotional realities of life as an academic, including rejection and personal investment in work (Paige et al 2019).…”