Review: Mama PhD

When I saw MotherTalk's announcement for the Mama PhD tour, I was at a vulnerable place, wrestling with my identity as Mama J.D. and Mama Professor. I got my invitation for the five year reunion for my law school class, and I hid it under the toaster. I'd just sent out a request to a lovely friend to re-do my masthead, because it seems like the Mama part of my identity is subsuming everything else, and it's just not accurate to pretend otherwise right now. To be honest, I have a hard time mentioning law school and teaching when I'm hanging out with my other mother friends because it seems so irrelevant. But it's not, and that's why I needed Mama PhD.

The book is a lovely series of essays, divided into sections: The Conversation (having kids/being pregnant in the academy), That Mommy Thing (juggling child raising and life in the academy), Recovering Academic (nontraditional ways of combining higher education and child raising), and Momifesto (Why the academy needs to change). I loved that a wide range of disiplines, ages, geography, and experiences are represented by the essays. The women representing the sciences, psychology, economics, and history add a depth to the conversation, one that I'm not sure could be achieved in a book of MFA's and English PhD's. Consequently, I would make this book a must-read and a must-gift for any woman contemplating or living with a graduate degree.  Because so many of the women report being blindsided by parenthood and its impact on their careers, I think this is an especially important read for those considering a graduate degree.

I was not blindsided by parenthood's impact on my career.I was blindsided by my career period, and I spent the five years prior to Tavy's arrival wrestling with the fact that I just didn't want to be a practicing attorney. I'm not sure if I've put it that bluntly before. I always blame my health first, which to be sure, was a major contributing factor, but if the passion for law was there, I'd have found a way to be practicing right now. I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to teach, and I think I knew this as far back as high school, but I got a law degree to have more options. I'd heard too many horror stories of PhD's doomed to a life of adjuncting and ramen.

I'd like to slap my 20 year old self, and show her how satisfying a life of adjuncting, motherhood, and yes, rice noodles, can be. I turned immediately to the Recovering Academic section before returning and reading the whole book (and discovering that many of the writers are also recovering academics), because I wanted to connect with others who have chosen not to go the full-time route.

The theme of discovering a new direction is echoed by all the essays. All the women were profoundly changed by motherhood, and the shape of their careers transformed. Martha Ellis Crone finished her dissertation with no intent to "use" her PhD. She writes, "I won't say I never wonder what would have happened if I'd made a different decision . . . There's a certain degree of guilt and regret in my story, as  I think there must be in everyone's, because every chose we make entails a universe of unlived possibilities. My life is different than the one planed by the idealistic and driven young woman I was two decades ago. But I set out to become anything I wanted to be, and that is what I have become."

Get out the highlighter. I wanted to leap through the book and give her a giant hug, while offering to be her BFF and start a super-secret Ya-Ya club for women with advanced degrees who ended up 45 degrees west of their intended landing zone. And who were still happy. Because the happy part resonates just as loudly as the guilt part throughout Mama PhD.

Jennifer Margulis writes, "I realized then that I was always doing what I had longed to do: teaching people who wanted to learn, exchanging ideas with students who had as much to give to me as I to them, exposing and expanding minds to new ideas and new ways of thinking."

Now, admittedly, she went halfway around the work to Nigeria to come to this epiphany, but her words inspire me to take more pride in what I do. I LOVE teaching basic writing. I do. But, I often offer up apologies as to why I'm not currently teaching law classes. Honestly, I'm not sure I have as much to give law students as I do my students, and I'm not sure that they have as much to give me. Margulis's story is particularly inspiring because she didn't let lack of university affiliation stop her from getting a Fulbright. Rebecca Steinitz walked away from tenure at a good school (as did several of the other writers). The gutsiness involved in walking away from the academy enabled me to frame my own experience more accurately, and for that, I'm profoundly grateful.

The five year reunion invitation still stings. It does. But, for the first time ever, I wouldn't change anything right now. I'm not looking to change--this is remarkable, really. I like my life as Mama first, adjunct professor second, and writer-waiting-in-the-wings. And I'm so glad to find other women struggling with the same identity questions, and coming up with their own answers. (And solutions--the discussions of how Academia can better accommodate mothering highlight that this isn't just a matter of individually reconcliling two competing parts of the self, but also reconfiguring the academy so that the distinction is less harsh). Mama PhD is must read for Mama J.D., Mama MFA, Mama MBA, Mama M.S., and all those other mothers in the classroom, and those with degrees in the attic and babies on the hip.

(To see a neat trailer for the book, click here, and to visit the great website the editors have set up, click here).

 

Comments

[Erin]

I reviewed the book also, and I love your review and take on it. I found it a really enjoyable read, mostly because it told me that what I'd believed about academia in research schools is true. I couldn't have the life I want if I were working at one. I'd be miserable. I'd be stressed. I wouldn't know my kids, or get to cherish so much time with them.

It's OK for motherhood to consume our lives at the expense of work. If we find work that makes us happy and allows us to see our children, why should we allow ourselves to feel like we're "less" in the academic world? We just have different priorities in our lives than those whose priority is tenure and publishing.

[Katie B.]

I think I need to read this book! I don't regret walking away from my MA program 4 years ago... but I'm feeling weird about my complete lack of interest in going back to finish it. I keep saying I want to, but do I really? I like my life right now; I'm not sure I want to go back to the wank-tastic world of English lit. I could use a dose of someone saying, it's ok not to want to go back!

[Katie B.]

Oh! But at the same time, I still enjoy a good academic-style conversation. *sigh*

[Dissertations Writing]

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