Surprises: Maternity, Scholarship, and Politics in the Academy
Pamela M. Rossi-Keen
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When I examined the third pregnancy test, hoping for some oracle of promise, I was disappointed to find that it, too, had one solid purple line and one faint shadow of another. The first two had been equally unconvincing. Or maybe I was praying against a bold positive. I wanted to enjoy—for just a little longer—the possibility that my husband and I were not about to be parents. Little did I know that this vague, seemingly variable, and certainly inconclusive stick was to be a metaphor for my life as a mother/scholar.
The next week, a blood test confirmed my fear: I was expecting our first child. The timing could not have been worse: At age 25, I had just completed my first term of courses toward my doctorate. I was impressing my faculty, and frankly, myself with my work. I was drawn irresistibly to the game of academe: big ideas, grappling for position, the library. My recent feminist awakening, the final catalyst that pushed me back to school, was invigorating my ambition and my independence. And then this baby.
The spectrum of emotions I experienced initially—regret, anger, fear, embarrassment, mourning—soon gave way to practical concerns. How would a child impact my young marriage? How would two graduate students on stipends with no maternity insurance fund the expenses of getting the child here? And what about the diapers and bottles and food once she was here? (I say “she,” because I was at least certain of the mission I was being given: to train a liberated woman from the time of conception, imbuing within her freedom of thought, the right to yell about injustice, and the love of her beautiful body.) Would my faculty and colleagues think that I didn’t take seriously the rigor of my work? Most pressing, would my colleagues take my feminism seriously when it seemed that I had jumped right into the wife/mother role? At the crux of this fear was my own deeply held belief in separate spheres: a myth—one of many—that constitutes the subjectivity of such a state.(1)
The myths and realities of my continuing experience as a mother/scholar will serve as the frame for this essay. For me, motherhood has been one surprise, negotiation and revaluation after another (including the announcement that my little feminist would be a “he”). In this essay I discuss the experience of the mother/scholar: in my case, a heteronormative, white, middle-class American woman who gives birth and nurtures a child while living the life of an aspiring academic.
Myth #1: The academy is a place of liberal thought and consequent accommodations.
Faculty and colleagues should congratulate my enacted independence and appreciate me for my scholarly contribution alone. My university should support the constraints of my life, because it wants the use of my mind, and my body goes with that. The academy is a place of equal opportunity for those with and without physical liabilities.
Reality #1: The academy is often a conservative place, holding the corporeal male experience as normative, and thus makes few concessions for academics who do not share this experience. But others do make room.
I received my first reality check while searching for a place on campus to nurse my son. The health center told me that there is no such designated area on campus, but I could do it on a bench outside, covered with a jacket. I declined, reminding the nurse that I teach nineteen-year-old boys. Though my unwillingness to expose my breasts to my students mystified her, she conceded that I could feed Owen in a basement restroom.
I contacted the Office of Institutional Equity, the university president’s office, and the women’s studies department asking them for a location or advice. I never heard from any of them.
Disappointed and perplexed, my husband and I figured something out: Daniel would bring Owen to school three times each day to eat. This meant that: 1) Owen was nursed in the car parked on the edge of campus; 2) Daniel had to ready Owen, leave his own work, and wait while Owen ate every day; and 3) I could count on no institution, but only on someone who claimed to love and then did it. This has far more merit than relying on an organization that claims to be based on equal opportunity and progressive thought.(2)
Myth #2: Scholars with families divide their attention. Something is going to suffer.
This myth was handed to me without delicacy or nuance, but simply stated (ironically) by a women’s studies professor. I believe her exact words were, “You cannot do it all. If you have children, you’ll never be a successful scholar.” Before gagging on this bit of doom, let’s explore what is meant by “suffer.”
Reality #2: Scholars who live an identity of scholarly inquiry and love find both aspects of their lives richer for participation in the other.
Does “suffer” mean that, in fact, I will not be able to bake cookies biweekly? Or that, in lieu of philosophizing interpersonal dynamics I may be forced to go home to live them? Do we mean that the last ten pages of Nietzsche might not be read in time for class because of the burgeoning Übermensch in my home?
In my experience, I would not consider these trade-offs to be of the negligent sort. I do concede, however, a level of unpredictability and alternative nature to my education.
When Daniel and I are not in class, we split our time with Daniel. One person works and the other tends to Owen. We come together at dinner to share our days and strategize about the next few hours. On weekends, my parents make a four-hour car trip to spend Saturday with Owen, thus freeing Daniel and me to work unhindered. Several times, Daniel’s mother has spent many days at our home, simply keeping Owen occupied while we do school.
This is the fruit of lived education: the realization that our parents still uncompromisingly love us and want us to succeed professionally (a fact that makes my devotion to Owen appear seminal and grand); the awareness that I detest being away from my baby for any stretch of time; that I am humbled by the experience of generational interconnectedness. And through the tools granted by my formal education, I can theorize this experience, understanding it in relation to the subjectivities of others. And I can realize my ability to accomplish more in half the time that I did before Owen.
Myth #3: Your body has nothing to do with your work. Keep the personal and private separate and you and the academy will be happy.
I was reminded of the impracticality of this nightmarish Cartesian assertion the morning I awoke late for the eight o’clock class I teach. The clock flashed 7:47. Barring the shower, makeup and breakfast rituals I usually perform, I still needed to feed Owen (now five weeks old), drive to campus and walk to my class. As Daniel gathered clothes for me, I frantically bundled Owen and put him in his car-seat, trying to ignore the fact that my chest was swollen to three times its normal size—needing to feed Owen—and that my son would not nurse for a few hours to come. In addition to the physical discomfort in my breasts and the psychological discomfort resulting from what seemed like cruelty (and the confused stares at my new voluptuous body), I had sat on a wet baby wipe the whole way to school, and my backside was now thoroughly soaked. It was time to face my 126 students.
Reality #3: Your mind and your body are inextricably linked, and, if you opt to nourish your child from said body, then your mind, body, and the body of another are codependent—in and out of class, all day, every day.
There was no hiding my predicament from my class. And frankly, why should I? Why should my students believe that I am nothing but a vehicle for conveying information, in the same way that a television does? I am not plastic or inalterable. I am penetrable. I am irritable. I have wet pants and a disproportionately large chest this morning, here’s why, and let’s talk about art because aside from these sometimes-uncomfortable bodies, we share a corporeal creative impulse and a need to commune about our distinct and shared realities.
Myth #4: You’ll fit it all in! Get your child on a schedule, hire a babysitter, and the baby can be inserted into your life.
I was still in the “this-cannot-be-happening-to-me” stage when I told my brother and sister-in-law that I was pregnant. I was particularly animated as I tried desperately to convince myself that this child would not end my life. I was strategizing that we would hire a babysitter and I could take Owen with me to class, and Daniel could watch him the rest of the time. I don’t think I convinced anyone—my more realistic siblings or myself.
Reality #4: Your consciousness is consumed by the needy, disruptive, delicious child who has come from your body, and no amount of day planner negotiating will allow a compartmentalization of your life that alleviates the fullness of being that has overtaken your formerly cold regimen. Your former life is just that— former.
But really, this is not something to mourn. Sitting in class becomes at once two things: distracting and empowering. I recall a particular seminar discussion in which I was tormented by thoughts of Owen: how I wanted to be with him, to know what he was doing, how he was feeling, if I was missing anything new, and wondering if he’d sleep in time for me to work that evening. Simultaneous to this reel of thoughts, I was successfully arguing feminist theory with my colleagues and faculty. The two worlds were one in my mind and in my lived experience.
The Final Myth/Reality: Conclusion
The most exciting realization, in interpersonal, intellectual, and feminist theoretical terms, is that the changes brought into swift focus by Owen’s arrival began before his coming and continue to go on as he grows: my concerns as a feminist have changed as my life changes. School, scholarship, mothering and loving have merged together into an identity: the life of the mind/body with all its tensions and exhaustions and fears and joys. Mothering has become theory in practice; scholarship has become mothering in dialog. And the forces in my life will continue to negotiate an identity of welcomed surprises, at home in the academy.
ABOUT PAMELA ROSSI-KEEN
PAMELA ROSSI-KEEN is a doctoral candidate in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University. Her research focuses on the aesthetic intersection of art, Christian theology, and feminist thought. She has presented her work in both domestic and international conference venues, and in addition to other article publications, has co-edited a volume entitled Considering Evil and Human Wickedness with her husband, Daniel Rossi-Keen. Pamela’s dissertation is an attempt to explore human life as an icon of God and art as the inevitable consequence of this status. Pamela lives in Athens, Ohio, with her husband and their extremely distracting (and absolutely wonderful) son, Owen.
1 I do not use myth in this essay as a story that explains the way things are. Rather, I employ this term as a friendlier way of saying lie.
2 And sometimes there are surprises. A professor whom I thought (wrongly) would be the most rigid about
necessary adjustments for my maternity offered to let me nurse during his Medieval Art class. I never did, but
I was always endeared to him for his kind offer and interpretation of motherhood as part of the package of a
familial scholar, rather than as a nuisance..