The Parent Track: Timing, Balance, and Choice in Academia

Christina DeRoche · Ellie D. Berger

feb 2017 · Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Acerca de este libro electrónico

The Parent Track provides an in-depth understanding of parenting in academia, from diverse perspectives—gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, sexual orientation—and at different phases of a parent’s academic career. This collection not only arrives at a comprehensive understanding of parenthood and academia; it reveals the shifting ideologies surrounding the challenges of negotiating work and family balance in this context. Earlier research on parenting has documented the ways in which women and men experience, and subsequently negotiate, their roles as parents in the context of the workplace and the home. Particular attention has been paid to the negotiation of familial and childcare responsibilities, the division of labour, the availability of family-friendly policies, social constructions of motherhood and fatherhood, power relations, and gender roles and inequality. Studies on the experience of parenthood within the context of academia, however, have lacked diversity and failed to provide qualitative accounts from scholars of all genders at varying points in their academic careers who have, or are planning to have, children. This book addresses that gap.

Acerca del autor

Christina DeRoche is an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology at Nipissing University, North Bay. Her areas of research are special education, special needs, and family relations. She recently published an article on how parents seek out labels in education to afford opportunities for their children.

Ellie Berger is an associate professor of sociology at Nipissing University, North Bay. Her research focuses on age, gender, and work. She has published in the Gerontologist, Canadian Journal on Aging, Journal of Aging Studies, and Age Matters: Re-Aligning Feminist Thinking. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Ageism at Work: Negotiating Age, Gender, and Identity in the Discriminating Workplace.