“He’s Not Good at Sensing That Look That Says, I’m Drowning Here!” Academic Mothers’ Perceptions of Spousal Support

“Stuck in the middle of what?”: the pursuit of academic careers by mothers and non-mothers in higher education institutions in occupied Palestine

“…[Table 1 near here] The persisting discrepancy between women's presence among academic staff and their representation in senior positions has given rise to many studies aimed at exploring the status of women academics within modern Western societies (Mirick and Wladkowski 2018;Ollilainen 2019), as well as in other, typically marginalized, contexts like South Africa and the Middle East (Bhana and Pillay 2013;Dickson 2020;Mahabeer et al 2018). Being largely concerned with the experiences of academic mothers, most such studies tend to explain women's susceptibility to remaining in lower and less secure positions as a result of being caught between two 'greedy institutions'-i.e., the university and the family (Acker 1980;Leonard and Malina 1994;Rhoads and Gu 2012).…”

“…They are also entrusted with tasks that go beyond the typical demands of academic work; tasks that, as Probert (2005) suggested, are intelligibly associated with women (e.g., student welfare and pastoral care). Within the family, traditional gender roles require women, including academics, to contend with greater responsibilities for family work (Dickson 2020;Eliou 1988;Romanin and Over 1993), hence reducing their ability to rely upon the "power of absence from home for work" (Probert 2005, p. 69).…”

“…Romanin and Over (1993), for instance, indicated that women are more inclined than men to subordinating career advancement to marriage, childcare, and domestic duties; Wilton and Ross (2017) suggested that women academics devote more time and energy to childcare at the expense of research; and, Magadley (2019) posited that women experience more frequent career interruptions than men due to family-related circumstances, and that this has detrimental consequences for their remuneration and success as academics (see Lovejoy and Stone 2012). However, Naz et al (2017) found that although, within a traditional context like Pakistan, women academics find it difficult to maintain a balance between work and family obligations, they often receive substantial support from parents and spouses, which contradicts the popular notion that women within conservative societies only encounter resistance to their career aspirations (see Dickson 2020).…”

“…Within the extant literature on women academics, much attention has been devoted to the experiences of mothers and to how the ideology of motherhood impedes their ability to achieve a healthy work/life balance and to progress to higher academic positions (Dickson 2020;Huopalainen and Satama 2019;Leonard and Malina 1994;Ollilainen 2019;Raddon 2002;Ward and Wolf-Wendel 2012). Less attention, however, has been given to the impact of motherhood on non-mothers and on their experiences in academia.…”

Trends in the association between educational assortative mating, infant and child mortality in Nigeria

“…According to Rauscher (2020), connections between family system theory and EAM may be explained from three perspectives, including stress/support, parenting practices, and pooled resources [12]. First, similarities in educational attainment could translate into better understanding and interactions between spouses [13], culminating in both emotional and instrumental support during prenatal stages, which may relate to better pregnancy outcomes [14,15] or improve infant and childcare [16]. Dissimilarities in educational attainment, on the other hand, may be associated with frequent friction [13], causing both emotional, mental, or physical stress on the part of the mother during the prenatal stage [17], or resulting in childcare neglect [18].…”