Abstract
The pre-tenure period is a critical time within the career span of an academic that overlaps key years within the life span of a mother. The purpose of this study was to describe music teacher educators’ lived experience of pregnancy and motherhood during their pre-tenure years while in a tenure-track position. In this descriptive phenomenology, I engaged a purposive sample of nine music teacher educators who were pregnant during their pre-tenure years in a series of interviews to identify the invariant structures of the experience. Music teacher educator mothers (MTEMs) identified motherhood as a life-altering experience that expands one’s identity and enriches their lives at home and at work. Negotiating the roles of mother and academic is a juggling act for music teacher educators, managed with the development of new tools, various supports, and fated occurrences. Elements that were seemingly unique to MTEMs’ experiences included the impact of maternal age on family planning, challenges associated with an MTEM’s teaching schedule, and the physicality required of their position. Implications for policy, mentoring, and allyship are shared.
Keywords
Earning tenure can be a fraught time in the career span of academics. Opaque criteria, departmental politics, and high expectations for teaching, scholarship, and service can generate stress and overwhelm for those navigating the tenure process (Greene et al., 2008). Pre-tenure work demands typically occur while one is also acclimating to a new location, learning the norms of an institution as well as the culture of and resources within the broader community. Therefore, time and energy must be spent not only on the day-to-day tasks required in an academic position but also on finding one’s footing within the localized structure and system of an institution to meet tenure expectations. These circumstances present a challenge to all academics; for women hoping to become pregnant during this time, the challenge is greater still.
The pre-tenure years often coincide with key years of fertility, another time-pressured period. In 2023, the median age of all female doctoral recipients was 31.7 years. In the fields of education and the visual and performing arts, the median age was 39.1 years and 34.4 years, respectively (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2024). According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (2014), female fertility begins to decline at approximately age 32 years, and the rate of decline increases at age 37 years. Women bearing children over the age of 35 are considered advanced maternal age (AMA), and AMA is associated with increased risk of pregnancy complications, including fetal growth restriction, preeclampsia, and stillbirth (Lean et al., 2017). Although it is estimated that about 13% of women pursuing doctorates already have children (Mirick & Wladkowski, 2020), the vast majority of female academics who wish to have children must negotiate coinciding biological and tenure clocks (Dickson, 2018). Many seeking progression within the pipeline model of academia (i.e., obtain a tenure-track position, earn tenure, be promoted to full professor) have exhibited bias avoidance behaviors (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012) by delaying pregnancy until tenured or forgoing motherhood altogether (Ahmad, 2017; Trussell, 2015; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004). Some have navigated an anticipated incongruence between a life in academia and motherhood by seeking a non-tenure-track position, working at an institution perceived to be less prestigious (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2017), or purposefully parking (i.e., not seeking advancement) their careers (Hardy et al., 2016). Others have sought tenure-track positions while simultaneously becoming a mother.
Academic mothers on the tenure track have described childbearing and rearing while earning tenure as both a joy and a challenge. They have found fulfillment in living the dual roles of tenure-track faculty member and mother and have expressed the many ways one role enriches the other. For example, fulfillment in one role has had a buffering effect to the stress in the other (and vice versa; Dickson, 2018; Gallin-Parisi, 2015; Hermann et al., 2020). Engaging in academic work has provided a space of competence and a sense of knowing oneself as one navigates the unknown of new motherhood (Huopalainen & Satama, 2019). The flexibility of an academic schedule (Hermann et al., 2020) has allowed faculty to respond to the sometimes unpredictable nature of caregiving. Additional examples of work-family enrichment (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006) include positive impact of in-field learning on one’s parenting practices and the avoidance of burnout through established work boundaries (Vomvoridi-Ivanovic & Ward, 2021).
Alongside consideration of the ways academia and motherhood are complementary are stories of constraint and stress. Academic mothers have felt a sense of vulnerability, isolation (Dickson, 2018), overwhelm, and inadequacy when juggling to meet the demands of both roles (Hirakata & Daniluk, 2009). They have voiced concerns about postpartum erasure from the academy (James et al., 2021) and described feeling the need to separate work from their bodily self (Ollilainen, 2020), thereby keeping their maternal experiences invisible (James et al., 2021). In a society where an intensive mothering model is idolized (Huopalainen & Satama, 2019), academic mothers are responsible for more care work than men and experience higher levels of stress (James et al., 2021; Simmons et al., 2021).
Early career academics in particular experience several tensions between their professional and maternal lives. The significant cost of childcare coincides with the greater financial risk of junior rank salaries (Rosa, 2022). Mobility required to present professional work juxtaposes the homebound (or body-bound) work of infant care (Huopalainen & Satama, 2019). A lack of professional travel limits fieldwork, networking, collaboration, social support, feedback, and visibility in the field (Moors et al., 2022; Tower & Latimer, 2016). The greater demands of parenting young children (Dickson, 2018) have a material impact on productivity, an expression of currency and excellence in the neoliberal academy (Rosa, 2022). In the years that immediately follow childbirth, a short-term decrease in productivity is observed for early career academic mothers at doctoral-granting institutions (Morgan et al., 2021). Although there appears to be little impact of motherhood on long-term productivity (Morgan et al., 2021), this dip in publication output comes at a critical time for those seeking tenure. While tenure clock extension policies can be beneficial to maternal health and well-being, these policies may also negatively impact salary and promotion trajectories (Antecol et al., 2018; Peuler, 2024).
Within the music academy, descriptions of navigating academic motherhood have lately started to emerge. Researchers who have explored gender bias in the music academy have touched on the impacts of motherhood and discovered gender-based differences in balancing family and work life, concern about tenure and promotion, and carrying the household workload (Baughman & Baumgartner, 2026). Music teacher educators (MTEs) in VanDeusen and Wagoner’s (2026) study of gender bias in the music academy expressed how systemic socialization created different expectations and resultant internal and external pressures in their work and home lives, with mothers “carrying ‘the mental load’ in family life and in academic teaching and service expectations” (p. 38). In a targeted exploration of academic motherhood throughout the career span, Fitzpatrick and Sweet (2024) shared insights from six music faculty mothers through a multiple critical case study in which they unearthed three themes: (a) living within two worlds, (b) motherhood and gender equity, and (c) navigating the academic world: structures and people. Participants described the maximum efficiency, scheduling problem-solving, multitasking, and resourcefulness required to make what felt like two separate worlds work, at times at the expense of their own well-being. Due to negative encounters rooted in the gender bias of administrators and peers, these faculty mothers carried fear of discrimination alongside the “heavy load” (Fitzpatrick & Sweet, 2024, p. 383) of gender-specific caretaking (e.g., pregnancy, breastfeeding, loss) and gender-normed expectations at home (e.g., mental load). Although some received support from mentors and peers, all encountered adversarial interactions with colleagues, often other women. Childcare costs and the need for professional travel created financial strain, particularly during the pre-tenure years. Finally, participants’ highly gendered experiences were entangled with the tenure process as they impacted timelines, family size, policy use, and behaviors (e.g., attending musical events, saying yes to all requests). The intersecting tenure and childbearing timelines were a point of tension in navigating the academic world.
Because the pre-tenure period is a critical time within the career span of an academic that overlaps key years within the life span of a mother, in-depth study of this juncture is warranted. The purpose of this study was to describe MTEs’ lived experience of pregnancy and motherhood during their pre-tenure years while in a tenure-track position.
Method
I engaged in descriptive phenomenology, a vein of phenomenology stemming from the transcendental tradition of Husserl, because I was interested in uncovering the invariant structures of the experience. I recruited a purposive sample of MTEs who were pregnant during their pre-tenure years while in a tenure-track position. The pregnancy needed to have occurred within the last 10 years, an attempt to have the experience somewhat fresh in one’s mind. I strove for maximum variation in the sample regarding rank, location, specialization, and number of children; variation in race and sexual orientation proved challenging due to the relative homogeneity of the profession. Of the nine participants, four were currently pre-tenured assistant professors, four were tenured associate professors, and one was a tenured full professor. Music education specialization varied, with four general music, three instrumental, one choral, and one general/choral specialist. All participants were married and heterosexual. Five participants gave birth to one child, four gave birth to two children, and two of the participants had stepchildren. Participants’ institutions at the time of data collection included three R1 institutions, two R2 institutions, three research colleges and universities, and one baccalaureate college. Institution locations categorized by the National Association for Music Education divisions were Eastern (n = 4), Southern (n = 1), Southwestern (n = 2), and North Central (n = 2). Three participants explicitly discussed being neurodivergent; others mentioned various health conditions (e.g., diabetes, depression, anxiety). The median age at which participants began their first tenure-track position was 33, and the median age of participants when they gave birth to their first child (if they had more than one) was 36.
I used Seidman’s (2013) three-interview series structure to learn about participants’ life history related to motherhood (e.g., how motherhood was modeled, views on the potential of motherhood), details of the pregnancy and motherhood experience (e.g., how pregnancy impacted work, key remembrances of the postpartum period), and reflections on the meaning of those experiences (e.g., reflections on satisfaction, suggestions for individuals and the field). Each interview in a cycle occurred a week apart, and participants received the questions via email ahead of each interview. Following recommendations by King and Horrocks (2010) to do phenomenology not only in terms of analysis but also in approach to data collection, I used imaginative variation within the interview process (i.e., asking participants to consider how the experience would have been different if certain conditions changed) and remained sensitive to the embodied experience of participants as best able via video conferencing. Some participants wrote or recorded responses ahead of or as a follow-up to the interview; in one instance, a fourth interview was needed due to length of conversation. The average interview length was 59 minutes, with roughly 27.5 hours of interview data collected in total.
After cleaning each transcript in a series, I wrote analytic memos to note connections and wonderments and to question whether my interpretations were related to my pre-understandings. Working with one interview series at a time, I divided the transcripts into meaning units. I was committed to the phenomenological concept of horizonalization (Moustakas, 1994), meaning that no aspect of the described experience may be more important than others, and therefore coded all units to facilitate clustering meaning units. After an initial round of coding all data, I revised codes as needed and continued to form and reform clusters. I then transformed each cluster into a description of the constituent (Moustakas, 1994). At this juncture in the process, I was purposeful in slowing down to dwell in the data. Inspired by Dahlberg’s (2006) concept of bridling, I aimed to channel “energy into an actively waiting, disciplined, ‘nonwilling’ dwelling-with” (Finlay, 2013, p. 177) to resist coming to an understanding too quickly. In considering emerging constituents, I attended to what was experienced (i.e., noema) and how it was experienced (i.e., noesis), and I checked for participant representation as well. Finally, I crafted several drafts of an essence statement, arriving at a final draft before crafting a detailed description of each constituent using participant’s first-person accounts, striving to provide a “fresh, complex, rich description of [the] phenomena as concretely lived” (Finlay, 2013, p. 173).
Despite working within the descriptive phenomenological tradition of Husserl, I aligned with others (e.g., Finlay, 2013; King & Horrocks, 2010) who critiqued the notion that it is possible to bracket oneself completely. There are limitations to how much one is able to set aside; still, I adopted the “lived posture” (Walsh, 1988, p. 212) of epoché, a key marker of rigor in phenomenological work (Abraham & Padmakumari, 2024) in which we “free ourselves from the captivity of the unquestioned acceptance of the everyday world” (Cogan, n.d.). As a researcher, I needed to set aside my own natural attitude, identity, and prior experiences, such as my valuing of working motherhood, identity as an academic mom, and experiences with medical complications during birth. My initial assumption of this stance was facilitated by the writing of my own narrative twice navigating pregnancy while on the tenure clock (see Bond, 2025). Through writing, I made my experiences and preconceptions surrounding them conscious. Next, I maintained a phenomenological attitude through data collection and analysis, striving to manage “intrusions of pre-understandings” (Finlay, 2013, p. 175) and avoid influencing participant understanding. It was a “continuous process of self-restraint” (Butler, 2016, p. 2036) felt most acutely while interviewing as I resisted the urge to validate participants by chiming in with similar remembrances. Slowing down to sit with the data and using free imaginative variation during analysis, “a kind of internal validity check” (Finlay, 2009, p. 14), also allowed me to maintain a phenomenological attitude in the vein of Finlay’s (2013) “reductive-reflexive dance” (p. 179) in which “the researcher slides between striving for reductive focus and reflexive self-awareness; between bracketing pre-understandings and exploiting them as a source of insight” (Finlay, 2008, p. 1). I have striven to describe the phenomenon of pregnancy and motherhood during the pre-tenure years in a way that maintains layers of complexity and ambiguity, another criterion of trustworthiness. In the “Findings” section that follows, I first share the essence of the phenomenon prior to a detailed description of each constituent.
Findings
Essence
For MTEs on the tenure track, motherhood is a life-altering experience that expands one’s identity. The identity expansion begins with a multiphased period of vulnerability, strain, and intensive navigation as one decides to try to conceive (a decision influenced by maternal age), experiences pregnancy while working, maneuvers through birth-related policy, endures the postpartum period, and transitions back to academic life. Through these phases and beyond, negotiating the roles of academic and mother is a juggling act managed with the development of new tools (e.g., being efficient, holding boundaries, satisficing), various supports (e.g., academic peers, administrators, policies), and fated occurrences (e.g., timing, colleagues with children). As MTE mothers (MTEMs) begin to hit their stride, typically 2 years after a birth, they note the ways dual roles enrich their lives in both domains.
Deciding to Try
Motherhood was the communicated expectation for MTEMs growing up and for most, a personal aspiration. For some, children were not a “must have” or initially desired. All MTEMs came to the decision to pursue motherhood, however, and the timing of that decision was largely driven by age. Acutely aware of their advanced maternal age but unsure of their ability to conceive, MTEMs did not want to risk the “window closing” on their fertility. Alice
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shared, “I didn’t want to wait too much longer. You know, I’m 37 now, so I don’t want to get too far into the geriatric pregnancy land.” Although the coinciding tenure and biological clocks were a consideration for participants, ultimately, delaying motherhood felt too risky.
I really considered not trying to have a child until after I went up for tenure and then I would have been like 40 and higher risk. But then I said, you know what? Whatever. Just gonna do it and it works out how it works out. (Krystal)
As Catherine noted, “The biological clock was the clock I was more concerned about than the tenure one.” For most, concern about biological clocks also overrode intent to plan a birth for a certain time of the year. For the few that did consider time of year, their intent was to minimize impact on their institution and maximize time with their child.
Pregnancy
Once pregnant, an initial consideration became how and when to announce the pregnancy at work. Many chose to confide first to close colleagues or those that were fellow parents to seek emotional support and gather information. Leave policies differed substantially across institutions, and interpretations of those policies varied within an institution. Although MTEMs typically announced their pregnancy to an administrator once in the second trimester, administrators were not always well versed in their institutional policy. Consequently, MTEMs had to figure out the policy and uncover what options existed for living within that policy. That navigation process required using policies that, save for one participant, did not align with a 15-week semester. MTEMs planned varied combinations of family leave, sick leave, and paid, unpaid, or modified leave with the intention of working as long as possible during the pregnancy.
For most, pregnancy brought physical discomfort, particularly during the first and third trimesters. Nausea, vomiting, temperature dysregulation, reduced breath capacity, and sleep difficulties added increased challenge to teaching and presenting. Krystal recalled the challenge of teaching classes during a window in the day when she was often ill:
I really was not feeling great, but I also have a pretty high pain tolerance. So, I just kept kind of powering through. I would go out [of the classroom], throw up, brush my teeth, and come back in because there was nothing I could do about it.
Extreme fatigue was mentioned in most recollections of the embodied experience of pregnancy (e.g., “just wiped,” “so stinking tired all the time,” “definitely exhausted”), which impacted all aspects of the job but especially those without a deadline or required deliverable. Alex recalled, “I just would come home and sleep after teaching. And so I basically didn’t get anything done at all aside from my must-do responsibilities of teaching.” The physical exhaustion that marked pregnancy was exacerbated for those simultaneously caring for other young children. Lisa noted, “I am sure that I pushed myself harder than probably was smart, just from an exhaustion standpoint, and also having a 4-year-old at home and trying to be the best I can be for all roles and all people.” Pregnancy also necessitated a significant number of medical appointments. Because all participants were considered of advanced maternal age and therefore higher risk, these appointments could occur as many as three times per week in the final trimester. The time required for these visits constrained MTEMs’ schedule at a moment when they were eager to prepare for the future.
Pregnancy was a period of preparation. For some, preparing to welcome a baby became a motivator to get things done, including finishing research projects, organizing finances, frontloading presentations and clinician engagements, putting together a tenure dossier, and helping to prepare those who would be covering their course load. All MTEMs were responsible for or had to give input into who would be teaching their classes while on leave. Although this often happened well in advance of a birth, some were forced into last-minute communication about coverage. In one extreme instance, a participant attended a Zoom meeting about their replacement from a hospital bed a day after they gave birth: “And I’m like, ‘Thanks for having this ready ahead of time, guys.’ . . . All things considered, it was fine. It was just kind of like, seriously?” (Clara). Considering the inability to hide a full-term pregnancy, the lack of preparation by department administrators in this case was surprising.
The public nature of pregnancy forced a blurring of public and private lines for MTEMs. Catherine, for example, was reluctant to share news of her pregnancy: “There was something about it that made me feel very nervous . . . it feels very intimate . . . but you can see what’s happened. It’s private and so public at the same time.” The forced vulnerability was a noted difference between a birthing parent and fathers or those who bring children into their lives through different means. Lisa shared, “You can be a dad and nobody know it if you want to be those people who [are] really private about it . . . but you cannot have been [secretly] pregnant. It is highly unlikely.” This period of extreme visibility was followed by an acute phase of challenge that was mostly invisible to others in academia—postpartum.
Postpartum
Postpartum was an intense time marked by exhaustion, feeding difficulties, struggles with competence, and maneuvering through cognitive, physical, and psychological changes. It was a period of trial and error for MTEMs in which they “kept throwing things at it [the problem] and figuring out what was going on” as they learned how to care for their newborn while recovering from delivery. Despite preparing for motherhood by reading with academic fervor, MTEMs felt a lack of competence as they began to mother their new child, “not really knowing what the hell [or] who I was or if I could do it” (Hope) while doing “so much stuff that you’re told is so natural and it’s really not” (Catherine). The “feeling really unsure of a lot of things, not knowing if we were doing the right thing” (Lynne) was particularly jarring for MTEMs who, because of their thriving careers and age, were used to a high level of competence in other areas of their lives.
A prime example of the trial and error experienced during this period was newborn feeding. Most MTEMs encountered difficulties with infants not gaining weight, attached breastfeeding,
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and navigating pumping breastmilk, bottle feeding, and/or finding a formula that would work for their child. Alex noted:
We spend a lot of time fretting over how she wasn’t gaining weight and wouldn’t eat . . . [trying] different formulas. And you think you’re going into this breastfeeding? . . . They’re like, “Well, you don’t produce enough.” But then the lactation consultant’s like, “Just keep trying.” . . . And just all this back and forth—it was just maddening in your head.
Although feeding a newborn is a concern for all parents, the embodied experience of being that source of sustenance brought a wave of emotions for some MTEMs. “I just was so filled with guilt,” Rebecca recalled. “I could see how little I was yielding. And, you know, your life is measured in ounces, or your contribution is measured in ounces, and it was just devastating every time.”
MTEMs were also figuring things out through sleep deprivation and the psychological and cognitive changes that result from pregnancy and giving birth. Exhaustion made it difficult to problem-solve and added a sense of relentlessness to the newborn days. Catherine remembered, “Just being so tired and every little thing I was like, ‘This is the way it’s gonna be now. I’m never gonna sleep again.’” For some, depression marked their postpartum experience in which they felt “adrift on an endless sea of no hope” (Hope). Clara recalled,
After that initial euphoria [giving birth], I remember having a slump of “When will the joy happen? Everybody keeps telling me that having children is a joy. When will that start?” I remember asking that question out loud a couple of times.
MTEMs also noted cognitive changes in their memory and being able to talk and think clearly. “People talk about losing themselves once they have kids and I didn’t. I felt like the only losing myself I did was the cognitive fuzz that you have for a while. That’s the only way I really lost myself” (Alex).
The majority of MTEMs continued in some aspects of their job while on leave. Faculty served the institution by attending meetings and organizing student teacher placements. Some maintained their full service load, and others were able to completely relinquish their service duties. Most MTEMs taught courses that lived outside of the fixed weekly schedule, such as student teaching supervision, student teaching seminar, master’s project advising, and teaching that was adjacent to their full-time work (e.g., children’s choir, early childhood classes, summer camp). Although some intended to do research, most did not or only touched work that was already in progress and had a deadline, such as completing edits on work that was in review. For some, this reflected the intense preparation completed prior to giving birth: “The research always stayed in the back of my mind, but I was at a place where I knew it would be okay. I knew I could coast for a little bit. My [tenure] documents were in” (Clara). One participant who had children earlier in their tenure period needed to finish her dissertation with a newborn home and wrote around her child’s sleep schedule:
Writing it with the new baby was crazy. But it was [COVID] lockdown, so my husband was stuck at home, anyway. So, I did a lot of writing at night . . . at the end, I was writing most of the day. I would take breaks to nurse her and then give her back to Daddy.
For all, no new data collection or analysis occurred.
Ultimately, MTEMs spoke about “getting through that [newborn] period” and its many challenges. Feelings of competence returned as MTEMs became more confident in mothering tasks (e.g., establishing sleep routines) and they moved beyond the “fourth trimester” (i.e., first 3 months of life). “There’s something about going through the nights by myself with them that just made me go, ‘I am pretty damn good at this. I’m strong enough to do this’” (Rebecca).
Transitioning Back From Leave
Transitioning back from leave was challenging for the majority of MTEMs. Participants felt “pulled in a lot of directions,” experiencing the juggling act that is academic motherhood but to a more acute extent. The trial and error from postpartum continued but was now related to figuring out new work-life habits and routines.
For example, my children’s choir gig . . . I thought I would just bring her with me to rehearsals and put her in a swing. Make that work. Yeah, I tried that once, and once was all it took because it was so much energy. (Clara)
MTEMs described living in a state of “triage mode,” assessing what were the must-do tasks, completing them, and letting go of others. Typically, these tasks were teaching and infant care, two multifaceted tasks that left little room for anything else. “I was quite honestly in survival mode and focusing on being good at the teaching. And yeah, the rest kind of fell by the wayside” (Krystal).
At times, teaching and infant care conflicted with each other. Alice recalled,
It was tricky . . . because we have some student teachers that are up to an hour or a little over an hour away from campus. . . . You drive an hour there. You’re there for an hour/an hour and a half. You drive an hour back—it was pushing the maximum amount of time that she could be away from me, or that I could be away from her [for feeding].
Being able to teach also depended on reliable childcare, which was challenging for some to find.
We could not get into a daycare. There were none open, and we were on four or five waiting lists . . . so, we had to hire a nanny . . . and the nanny, the sweet pea undergraduate nannies . . . she just had no concept that when she bailed at the last minute that it affected my job. (Clara)
The nomadic life of an academic also meant family usually were unable to fill childcare gaps: “It was super hard. It was really challenging. But when we don’t have family in the area . . . anytime we would need care, we would have to consider the financial aspect of that” (Lynne). Although all participants’ husbands were involved in caretaking and were generally supportive of their partner’s career, spouses typically had jobs with fixed hours. These set schedules put the burden of filling in childcare gaps on MTEMs.
Feeding was also a consideration as MTEMs returned to the conference travel that is expected for scholars.
I fed them directly as much as I could, but I also was pumping all the time, and we had as much of a backstore in the freezer as possible of breastmilk because between traveling to conferences and also just having an academic schedule where I can’t always be home at the time that baby’s going to be hungry, I was grateful to have all those options. (Lisa)
For infants who refused to take a bottle, MTEMs were limited in how long they could be away from their baby. “We tried literally every single bottle, and she would just scream and cry until I fed her. So . . . he [spouse] was driving to campus every 3 hours and carting her up to me” (Alice). MTEMs referenced their exhaustion, rocky mental health, and difficulty connecting with others at work during this time. Feeling “really not on solid footing,” they still made it work, but it was hard. Transitioning with a modified leave was a different experience.
Those with a modified leave were able to “ease back” into work life because the partial teaching load allowed them to connect with a piece of themselves that “give you a sense of you” (Rebecca) without having to take on a full-time schedule. “Going back part-time in January was just such a relief to realize, ‘Oh my gosh, I like this [work] so much’” (Hope). Work within a modified leave schedule provided time alone, time with adults, and some buffering against home stress. Rebecca recalled,
To have that modified leave it kind of stepped it [up] just a little bit. You’re sort of starting to get into your work groove, but it only has to be for one day at a time, and then you can go back to being a mom. So, there’s this nice little like back and forth between this thing that is brand new and you’re still figuring out, and [then] I can go back to this thing that you know. Returning to work in a limited capacity provided a return to a sense of competence while also allowing for caretaking.
As their children grew, MTEMs got back into a groove. That groove took longer than anticipated, with some feeling a shift after 6 months and others at 2 years. “Nothing really clicked in until this year . . . my brain is back to normal. I feel good and I feel myself . . . it took 2 whole years to feel myself again” (Lynne).
Juggling Act
Throughout the phases of pregnancy, postpartum, transitioning back from leave, and beyond, MTEMs described navigating academic motherhood as a juggling act. Many specifically used the term “juggle,” with others referencing an analogy of spinning plates, an activity that requires one to work hard to find balance while keeping things in motion. Lynne shared the juggling stemmed from tension between wanting to parent and teach well:
I love working in music education. I love being with my daughter. I want to do both things, and I think the frustration and tension comes when those things actively butt heads against each other, either with the time I’m having to spend with one and not the other or with the amount of responsibility with both of those things and trying to juggle all of that.
Others shared anecdotes exemplifying how “the day-to-day is hard” (Lisa), including trying to write their tenure dossier during baby naps, taking meetings on the go in between kid events or daycare pickup, scrambling for sick kid coverage, carrying the mental load of scheduling children’s appointments and activities, and making the combined family schedule work. The feeling that there was always something to do loomed for some and seemed to be specific to academic life:
There’s always something you could be working on . . . there’s always articles to read, there’s always a new assignment to create . . . it’s definitely not a job where you get to the end of the day and you’re like, “Okay, I’m done.” (Lynne)
Alex reflected on the intensity of this juggling act, wondering how it was impacting quality of life:
It feels like everything’s a sprint . . . we just get out of bed every day, and we just run, I’ll say, as fast as we can and then somehow collapse at the end of the day, and it’s wild. Like, when will it slow down? When do we get to enjoy? I mean, I am enjoying . . . but savor, I think maybe would be the word. . . . We’re enjoying. I wouldn’t say we’re savoring.
Despite the intensity and consistent reference to motherhood as “hard,” MTEMs found ways to navigate it, feeling that the juggling act was worth it, “a good kind of hard, the right kind of hard” (Lisa). For Alice, being able to juggle it all came from lowering expectations:
I feel like I’ve been able to do that, to juggle it . . . I just had to let certain things go. I was like this might not be perfect or I might not get this done as quickly as I want to.
Lowering expectations, or satisficing, became one of the many tools MTEMs developed to manage academic motherhood.
How Music Teacher Educator Mothers Manage Academic Motherhood
Life was different in “all ways” after the participants became mothers. MTEMs learned that constraints on time, such as not being able to work late at night, at home, or in larger chunks of time, necessitated figuring out new ways to manage work and family. “I’ve tried to make it the same as it was before,” Lynne remarked, “and I think it took me honestly until this semester, this year [2 years after birth] to realize that my life’s not the same and I can’t do things the same that I did before.” MTEMs’ priorities shifted, and to be present for their children, they were careful in how they spent their time. They tackled their new normal with new tools and navigated the transition into academic motherhood with the help of various supports and fated occurrences.
New tools: holding boundaries, being efficient, and satisficing
Prior to becoming a mother, most MTEMs worked “all the time,” and the lines between work and home were blurred. Motherhood obliged these scholars to create and maintain stronger boundaries between their work and home lives, between “mom mode versus work mode.” For example, MTEMs were purposeful in not working on weekends, left meetings that were scheduled during childcare pickup hours, attended fewer (if any) nighttime performances, declined to teach in the summer, and implemented stricter late work policies in classes. Motherhood clarified priorities, which for most meant prioritizing their families because of their children’s needs and because it was where they wanted to be. Repeatedly, time was referenced as a precious commodity because MTEMs were conscious of the fleeting years of childhood.
So much is happening in these first 5 years of life and I have the luxury, the opportunity to be there during part of it. So, I’m gonna try to make some decisions that allow me to be there during part of it. Because time is precious. (Rebecca)
Viewing time in this way translated to using that time more efficiently.
Constraints on the number of hours they could work meant MTEMs became more intentional with their time. Rebecca explained,
The margins are so much more narrow, right? The room for getting it done and not getting it done are just like this [makes a gesture to indicate small], so yeah, the difference is I have to be so much more effective and efficient with my time.
Being efficient meant academic moms prepped for teaching, assessed student work, and engaged in scholarship in the windows carved out for work and did so in less time than they might have prior to motherhood. MTEMs did not believe this translated into lower quality work; rather, being forced to be “aware of how much time I’m spending in the various areas of my life” (Hope) provided the benefits of more focused work hours, a carefully curated calendar of obligations, and reduced anxiety about writing (“I don’t have time for that anymore,” Clara). As Catherine stated, “I’m doing my job, and I’m doing it well, and I’m doing it in a few hours.”
For many, managing academic motherhood became possible with the tool of satisficing, meaning they opted for “good enough” rather than striving for perfection. MTEMs went through a process of coming to terms with their limitations and chose to let things go. As Alice noted, “My kids get time with me. My students get time with me. And it all works out, but sometimes you have to let certain plates stop spinning.” For example, MTEMs chose satisfactory over optimal by relinquishing time for socializing at work, eliminating assignments, or engaging in less scholarship. When MTEMs felt overwhelmed, scholarship was often the first element they let go. For those at primarily teaching institutions, this sacrifice aligned with their institutional mission and had little impact on their standing on campus. For those at research-intensive institutions, less scholarship added to the stress of the tenure process.
I’m facing my tenure deadline and feeling panicked about that ’cause I am going to be at the bare minimum . . . like skin of my teeth . . . I don’t want to feel like that going into tenure, but it is what it is. (Alex)
Supports within the structures of academia
Academic mothers were supported in their dual roles by academic peers, administrators, and for some, policies at their institution. The greatest source of support appeared to come from fellow academic mothers inside and outside their departments and campuses. Those with in-department colleagues were assisted in concrete ways, such as sharing templates for a stop-the-clock letter or supporting scheduling changes, and through their emotional support and general “we’ve got you here” sentiment. For example, Alex mentioned her colleague
was a really good sort of person to have in my ear, as far as “None of this here sort of matters that much, right? So, enjoy it while it lasts and take care of what you need to take care of first because what’s at home is more important than what’s going on here.” . . . She will just jump in and take over if I needed to get anything off my plate.
Colleagues were helpful in sharing how they navigated institutional policies and providing validation in discussion of daily work-family wins and woes. In general, the empathy colleagues were able to offer due to shared experience seemed critical for those who had fellow academic parents in their orbits and a challenging void for those who did not. Rebecca reflected:
I benefited so much from having community, and I can imagine if I didn’t have community how hard that would have been, and I don’t want that for somebody. I don’t want them to feel invalidated on a daily basis because no one around them has experienced what they’re currently experiencing. That sounds awful.
Those who were the only mothers in their departments yearned for academic mom peers. Still, some found support from childfree colleagues either through omission (i.e., did not get in the way or show negativity, “kind and supportive but not overly involved or interested”) or explicit acts (e.g., covered some service, threw a baby shower). Lisa recalled a coauthor on her writing team who was childfree and made a point to carry the heavier writing load while she was on maternity leave, stating “this is our opportunity to carry you and support you through a field that does not always carry and support moms.” For Lisa, this became a core memory of that time:
The fact that she was the one who said it first where, very kind of stereotypically, I guess, I felt like she could be one who was potentially feeling a bit resentful of, you know, she does not have these additional responsibilities in her life and so now is feeling like she has to help carry me because I’ve got this other stuff going on. And instead, it was completely the opposite: “No. I love you. I support you. This is hard and I want, I am able to do this for you. So, I want to do this for you.” And how powerful that was.
Regardless of the availability of colleagues who were also parents, MTEMs specifically sought community with academic moms in music education through mentors, peer groups, and social media groups. For example, Catherine was purposeful in cultivating a group of peers who happened to also become pregnant at the same time, which served as an important source of strength: “They were my support system, my strength as far as I can do this.” Social media groups became a point of connection in a sometimes isolated profession. One group in particular was referenced again and again, and the online space was a place to ask field-specific questions, seek support, and find validation, knowing “other people are also struggling on it [the Facebook group], just like I am” (Alex). Private groups on social media also provided a space to seek perspectives in the safety of a peer group who, unlike immediate colleagues or administrators, would not be a part of their tenure and promotion process.
The discretionary power of administrators positioned them as a potential source of support, and that support typically came in the form of favorable interpretation of policies and assistance in maintaining boundaries. For example, Hope’s administrator was her “saving grace in so many ways” and encouraged her to exercise her right to say no to summer teaching or service requests. She also promoted protecting workdays off campus: “My classes happen to be not on the days of our faculty meetings, and so she fully supported me, and being like, ‘Well, I guess you’re not on campus on Monday, so you can’t come to faculty meetings.’” Others recalled how their administrator allowed them to manipulate the leave policy to maximize time with their infant or alter their teaching schedules to better align with childcare needs. MTEMs were acutely aware of their good fortune in having supportive administrators. Lisa noted, “your director can just decide. . . . Thankfully, up to this point, [it] has typically worked in my favor. But there’s no guarantee that that will always be true.” In an example where administrator discretion did not impact her favorably, Lynne shared that her administrator did not stretch policies to eliminate her service load while on leave as she witnessed others doing: “Her [a colleague] department chair just said ‘I know we’re gonna say that you’re doing service, but you’re not gonna come to anything.’ So, she really did get a full 16 weeks with nothing connected to work.” Despite their generally positive personal experiences, MTEMs shared their concerns about this power structure, particularly with administrators who did not have intimate knowledge of childbirth. Hope wondered if administrators understood what they were asking when making requests:
Now I’m Full, I’m tenured. I would go to our school director and say, “You will not ask that person to do this. Do you know that you’re bleeding? You’re wearing mesh underpants? You’re bleeding.” I had black eyes the day after. Like, I would just put it out there. I don’t care if you think it’s gross and you don’t want to talk about any of it. That’s what it is. Once you know what it really is, then are you still going to insist?
Finally, policy, including federal law, was an impactful source of support in how MTEMs navigated pregnancy and motherhood during the pre-tenure years. All participants used a maternity leave policy for at least one of their pregnancies. The most common policy was to avail themselves of the 12 weeks guaranteed in the Family Medical Leave Act, which MTEMs utilized creatively to cover a full 15-week semester. For some, that meant continuing service throughout a leave. Others chose a modified leave in which they could return to work with a reduced schedule after 8 weeks. Only one participant was given the option of a complete semester of paid leave. Although a stop-the-clock policy existed at all but one institution, most chose not to use it because they felt ready to submit their tenure file without the additional time. Ultimately, regardless of what official policies were available, MTEMs’ level of support was dependent on people and how those people chose to implement policy:
Most of it boils down to people, right? . . . The policies that have applied to me as I’ve gone through this process have had a lot of flexibility around them for better or worse, right? So, because of the good people that I had around me to interpret/enforce whatever those policies, they were utilized in the most supportive way possible. When, had there been different people around me, that could have gone very, very differently. (Lisa)
In this regard, the happenstance of who was serving in various colleague roles at the time of one’s pregnancy became quite impactful.
Fated occurrences
MTEMs credited fated occurrences as playing a significant role in how they managed pregnancy and academic motherhood in the pre-tenure years. Because maternal age was a primary timing consideration for becoming pregnant, most MTEMs did not focus on aligning pregnancies with a certain time of the year or during a particular moment in their tenure clock. However, the timing of their births “serendipitously worked out” (Hope). MTEMs felt lucky to “hit a certain window to make my sick leave work” (Krystal) or to experience the strain of the third trimester during summer, when the physical demands of teaching were less. Pregnancies happened to occur at the extremes of the pre-tenure window, either happening so early that there was still time to produce work that met tenure criteria or so late that their dossiers already met tenure criteria. The timing of when tenure documents were submitted also worked out positively:
By the time I went on leave, I turned in my third year review materials. That timing was beautiful and how it worked out where I could have somebody else finish off the semester and then have the half-time release for the next semester like that timing was amazing . . . whereas, if it happened any other time during the year, I don’t think that would have happened. Then, moving forward into my fifth year review and then promotion to Full, I just feel like it happened in these little magic windows where it wasn’t close enough to the next checkpoint that I had to stress. I had a little breathing space.
Fate was also referenced regarding community—MTEMs who had a cohort of peers that were pregnant or had young children at the same time felt fortunate to be surrounded by those going through a similar experience. Although these occurrences could not be predicted and therefore did not aid in alleviating stress prior to the experience, retrospective accounts were filled with a sense of gratitude that “fate has been there for me” (Rebecca).
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to describe MTEs’ lived experience of pregnancy and motherhood during their pre-tenure years while in a tenure-track position. In the discussion that follows, I connect MTEMs’ lived experiences to the literature to highlight points of convergence, note points of divergence, and address how the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted participant experiences.
Identity Expansion
Similar to experiences of other working mothers (Huopalainen & Satama, 2019), at the core of MTEMs’ experience is the identity process of becoming. As MTEMs take on the identity of mother, how they view themselves in relation to their work and how they move through academia shift. Work, which may have always been a source of competence, takes on additional meaning in juxtaposition to the uncertainty and lack of competence felt in the early days of motherhood. As reported by other academic mothers (Swanson & Johnston, 2003), a sense of their professional identity is strengthened as they feel confident in their choice to work and are proud to provide a model of working motherhood to others.
Although one’s connection to work remains strong, how they experience work is vastly altered. Similar to other reported experiences (e.g., Peuler, 2024), motherhood causes one to confront and reconsider their priorities. How time is spent and organized daily and over the long term dramatically changes, which impacts how MTEMs navigate their academic lives. MTEMs noted how they could not ignore the impact on the rhythms of their work and instead of proceeding as usual, had to relearn how to exist in academia. As with James et al.’s (2021) findings, “caring becomes entangled with the academic process at every turn; effectively reorganizing how they move through the tenure track system and experience academia” (p. 95). The tendencies in one identity also seemed to transfer to the other; the focus, desire for knowledge, and striving for achievement that tends to accompany success in pursuing a life in higher education align with the intensive mothering ideal that was present in MTEMs’ descriptions. While an intensive mothering ideology permeates society in general, such messaging seems to find a stronghold with academic women who are already prone to approaching a task with academic zeal (Swanson & Johnston, 2003). The intensity of expectations placed on women in both roles spawns the daily juggling act MTEMs reported in this investigation and that are echoed in the literature.
Juggling
The metaphor of juggling that surfaced in MTEM experiences is found repeatedly in the literature (e.g., Baughman & Baumgartner, 2026; Dickson, 2018; Hirakata & Daniluk, 2009). To meet the high demands of both roles, academic mothers feel pulled in many directions and as though they need to settle for “good enough” in their work and home lives, satisficing (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2012) in roles in which more can always be done. Societal pressure and norms of being a “good” mother add to the balancing act; breastfeeding, also highlighted in the literature (e.g., Huopalainen & Satama, 2019), was a notable point of angst in regard to being able to successfully attached breastfeed children and in navigating feeding around work demands. General characteristics of academic life also impacted day-to-day juggling. The flexible nature of academic work served as a double-edged sword, allowing for more wiggle room in schedules to negotiate care but also creating more working hours and fewer boundaries around those working hours. Like other academics’ experiences (Martucci, 2023), this led to tension in the work-family interface. MTEMs also had limited local familial support because of academics’ nomadic lifestyle (Hirakata & Daniluk, 2009). Despite these challenges, MTEMs followed the trend of academic peers in not using tenure clock extension policies (Vomvoridi-Ivanovic & Ward, 2021), choosing instead to remain on track for the stability and salary increase tenure provides.
Work-Family Enrichment
MTEMs identified many positive outcomes of being a professor and a mother, sharing examples of what Greenhaus and Powell (2006) termed “work-family enrichment.” Time became a precious commodity when MTEMs became mothers. Similar to other academics, time constraints forced MTEMs to be efficient (Dickson, 2018; Fitzpatrick & Sweet, 2024), to be more selective in their commitments (Hirakata & Daniluk, 2009), to maintain their boundaries (Gallin-Parisi, 2015; Hermann et al., 2020), and to be more appreciative of focused family time (Dickson, 2018; Trussell, 2015). Home life provided buffering effects (Hermann et al., 2020) to the stress felt at work and vice versa. Knowledge obtained through training and scholarship impacted their parenting choices, and parenting influenced their teaching practices (Hermann et al., 2020; Neale-McFall, 2020). Rather than a burden, their identity as a mother was viewed as a strength in their work. As Huopalainen and Satama (2019) noted, “motherhood includes a plethora of embodied experiences that might equally empower us, as well as give us long-term inspiration, joy and happiness as workers” (p. 114)—MTEMs shared in this sentiment.
Conducive Conditions
MTEMs credited several types of support with assisting them in navigating pregnancy and motherhood in their pre-tenure years, including affinity group, peer, and institutional support via colleagues, administrators, and policies. Modified leaves appeared to be an especially impactful condition in assisting with the challenging transition back to work. Overall, intermingled with discussion of supports was a sense of luck that is also seen in the literature, such as the good fortune to have colleagues who are also parents or supportive administration (Peuler, 2024). In a country without national paid parental leave, one of only six in the world (Bipartisan Policy Center, 2022), participants were dependent on localized policies. The importance of one’s direct manager (Hardy et al., 2016), therefore, loomed large in mitigating the impact of motherhood on MTEMs’ careers. As others have noted (e.g., Fitzpatrick & Sweet, 2024), policies are only as effective as the people implementing them. If administrators are unaware of what institutional policies exist, as was the case for several MTEMs, they are unable to promote them or use them effectively (Ahmad, 2017). In cases where administrators hold discretionary power over how policies are implemented, they can be applied to varying degrees (Ahmad, 2017), leaving academic women at the mercy of whomever is in the administrator role. It is no wonder, therefore, that “luck” was a pervasive sentiment expressed in MTEMs’ experiences.
Elements Specific to Music Teacher Educators
Several elements that were seemingly unique to MTEs’ motherhood experiences emerged in this investigation. Striving to time a pregnancy for a particular point in the year was less of a factor for MTEMs than seen in the literature (e.g., Peuler, 2024; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2017). Instead, maternal age was the overwhelming consideration. This factor may be more pressing in our field where the norm is to spend time working in the PK–12 schools prior to obtaining a terminal degree, thereby making doctoral recipients older on average than in fields outside of education (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2024). Alignment or avoidance of tenure clocks was less of a consideration. MTEMs referenced certain challenges that appear to be field-specific. For example, participants noted the difficulty of teaching graduate classes scheduled at night to accommodate current practitioners while also teaching methods courses at 8:00 a.m. for undergraduates. The physicality of the job, particularly for general music specialists, was a hurdle to modeling effectively during pregnancy and recovery. Other subfield (e.g., choral, general, instrumental) differences were rarely mentioned, although general music teacher educators seemed to feel less pressure to attend student performances than choral or instrumental specialists. Finally, the variability of scheduling student teacher observations was seen as a benefit but also viewed as a challenge by some who would have preferred a fixed schedule known in advance to facilitate childcare coverage.
COVID-19
Due to the sampling criterion of having given birth in the past 10 years, MTEMs in this study all had young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although I did not intend to focus on mothering during COVID-19, because it is not a part of the general phenomenon of pregnancy and motherhood during the pre-tenure years, participants referenced the pandemic frequently. From MTEMs’ perspectives, the pandemic created some affordances and some constraints. Positively for MTEMs, working from home during the pandemic allowed women to have more agency over choosing when or if to disclose a pregnancy. Norms were altered across academia at a time when norms were disturbed for MTEMs, thereby drawing less attention to changes in workplace engagement. Online conferences became the primary means of sharing scholarly work, which allowed MTEMs to attend when their mobility was hindered and their finances were stretched, as was seen in other fields (Mollet & Wolf-Wendel, 2022; Peuler, 2024). Negatively, MTEMs experienced the constraints shared by fellow academic moms, namely, that they lost support systems and experienced heightened teaching intensity when switching to online (Mollet & Wolf-Wendel, 2022). The flexibility of their job also became the justification for more childcare responsibility in their homes. As one mother referenced in comparing her pandemic work experiences to her husband’s, “He is working from home and I am at home trying to work” (Martucci, 2023, p. 307). Overall, the pandemic piled on exhaustion, stress, and fatigue for MTEMs and academic mothers in general (Mollet & Wolf-Wendel, 2022).
Implications
Although I was able to identify the invariant structures of the experience of pregnancy and motherhood for MTEs in their pre-tenure years, MTEMs’ experiences were not identical. A lack of uniformity in institutional culture and policy generated vastly different contexts in which MTEMs had to navigate the phenomenon. For example, each family leave policy shared within this sample was different, and only one institution offered a clear-cut, complete semester of leave. Tenure timelines and criteria also differed considerably, from a list of the needed number of publications to more opaque criteria, timeline models between 5 and 7 years, and other distinct processes (e.g., a candidate could resubmit after an unsuccessful attempt the year before). MTEMs had to find their way through these contexts mostly supported by insider knowledge at one’s institution. Although many were impacted by the apprenticeship of observation they experienced in witnessing a mentor’s motherhood journey, few had explicit mentoring conversations about varied structures, contexts, and career decision-making through the lens of parenthood. Graduate socialization is powerful and can frame whether work-family integration is viewed as possible (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2017). In light of this, it seems critical to have explicit discussion about the potential impact of pregnancy and parenting on one’s career, including the affordances and challenges of navigating motherhood in various institutional contexts or considering opportunities beyond the professoriate, when mentoring future MTEs. Doing so might allow us to support graduate students in acquiring both the career and the work-life integration that they desire.
Systemically, academia continues to view pregnancy as an exception rather than a common occurrence in our policy and language. Seen in MTEMs’ experiences and broadly in the literature, academic institutions pathologize birth by requiring women to use accrued sick leave and referencing leaves with terms such as “sick,” “disability,” “emergency,” or “temporary,” insinuating that they “view family-related incidents as aberrant and not a normal part of faculty life” (Ahmad, 2017, p. 225). Doing so allows one to disregard it, make it invisible, and make it individual (Rosa, 2022). Higher education constrains women by limiting tenure clock stoppages and family leaves and by adhering to a strict pipeline model. Women are disempowered when policy is left to the discretion of administrators who are positioned to implement it to varying degrees (Ahmad, 2017). Instead, leaders in higher education might normalize pregnancy with faculty policy that is specific to childbirth—one that aligns with the academic calendar and allows for maximum flexibility when submitting tenure and promotion materials. Then, they can demonstrate commitment to implementing that policy by promoting it, evaluating it, and providing opportunities for feedback on the policy (Ahmad, 2017).
In addition to being thoughtful about how we frame and conceptualize family leave policy, it became evident in this investigation that the transition back to work from leave requires our attention. MTEMs must reorder their academic lives after maternity leave while experiencing the tenderness and strain of parenting an infant, yet they are given little material or intangible support to do so. We must recognize the emotional, cognitive, and logistical challenges within the first years after birth and provide “concrete transitional support” (Hirakata & Daniluk, 2009, p. 292). Suggested support might include flexible work arrangements (Peuler, 2024), counseling (Hirakata & Daniluk, 2009), modified leaves that allow for a gradual return to full-time work, childcare leave to account for likely daycare illness that is separate from personal sick leave, virtual access to conferences, promotion and tenure criteria that explicitly value collaborative work, and peer-mentoring programs. A structural shift in academic positions, such as a half-time tenure-track option (Moors et al., 2022), might also create a pathway that eases the transition into academic motherhood and provides greater accessibility to academia for women in general.
Finally, MTEMs expressed gratitude and relief to talk about their experiences of academic motherhood. As Finlay (2013) noted, this can be a great benefit of phenomenology because
the experience of engaging deep description while being truly seen by another can be profound. In addition to knowing that one’s perspective is witnessed, being listened to opens up potentially transformative space and time, allowing the person to make sense of their experience, perhaps going beyond previous understandings. (p. 181)
And yet, these conversations should not be relegated to the research space or isolated within a circle of fellow academic mothers. “As long as work–family topics are relegated to women and dismissed as a function of individual choice, creating equity for women in all spheres of higher education will remain unrealized” (Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2017, p. 241). Therefore, MTEMs need allyship to fully thrive in academia. Colleagues can support MTEMs in their choice to use institutional policies (or not), hold “the university socially responsible for providing support” (Rosa, 2022, p. 66) through policy and resources, consider evening care restrictions when assigning courseloads and daycare hours when scheduling meetings (Baughman & Baumgartner, 2026), and be aware of the “pervasive discourse of choice [that] serves to obscure the gender inequalities” (Rosa, 2022, p. 61) in academia. Creating a culture of care (James et al., 2021) is a communal responsibility that requires the effort of all academics if we are all to thrive.
Limitations and Future Research
Limitations of this work are related to sampling criteria. Participants were academic mothers on the tenure track; however, women enter the tenure track at lower rates than men and are overrepresented in nontenured positions (Ahmad, 2017). Therefore, the majority of women experiencing the broader academic motherhood phenomenon are contingent faculty, the largest block of instructional staff positions in American higher education (Colby, 2025), and it is likely they experience academic motherhood quite differently. In addition, I focused on the embodied experience of pregnancy, and yet there are many pathways to making children a part of one’s family. Fostering and adopting, for example, have the potential to add a host of financial, logistical, and emotional challenges that future researchers should explore. Finally, despite seeking maximum variation within the sample, all participants were White, heterosexual, and married; therefore, the experiences here are not representative of many other, often marginalized identities. Researchers might explore the experiences of MTEMs from various marginalized populations and those who were denied tenure in future work.
Other suggestions for future research include adopting a theoretical framework to explore this phenomenon, addressing other career stages, or exploring the post-maternity leave transition back to work. Although I was purposeful in coming to this work without a priori theory, adopting a particular framework or perspective, such as feminism, might be illuminating given that entering and navigating academic motherhood is “a process loaded with gendered norms, beliefs and expectations” (Huopalainen & Satama, 2019, p. 114). The emphasis on pre-tenure years and study inclusion criteria narrowed the focus of this work to early career and early childhood parenting experiences. To understand how academic motherhood is experienced throughout the career span, researchers might explore academic motherhood at mid- and late-career stages and during one’s doctoral studies. Finally, “returning to work after a period of maternity leave is a key aspect in the personal and professional trajectory of women” (Franzoi et al., 2024, p. 738). Yet it remains an understudied experience. Of the studies that do exist, most researchers have reported on nonacademic work settings and focused on how returning to work impacts breastfeeding, thereby reducing women’s experience to a singular function “instead of taking up the challenge of constructing a prismatic image of women’s identity that encompasses being a worker, partner, mother, daughter, etc. A person, in its different declinations” (Franzoi et al., 2024, p. 745). Researchers might explore this significant transitional phase through narrative or case study to present a nuanced picture of this intense and complex moment.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.