Academic mothers finding rhyme and reason

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the ‘balancing two lives’ approach to motherhood and work has particular limitations for academic mothers. I interrogate the perceived oppositionalities in being mother, traditionally associated with nurturing, love and emotion, and being academic, traditionally associated with reason and logic. My purpose is to show that motherhood needs to be inscribed into intellectual work if the academic mother is to find a wholeness of self. A related point I make is that separating motherhood from intellectual work is tantamount to abandoning thinking and intellectual labour to be the preserve of a masculine terrain from which motherhood, emotion, love, nurturing is excluded.

Keywords:

• subjugated knowledges
• liberating thinking
• ontology of difference
• inscribe motherhood into thinking

Notes

1. I use the term township as a South African descriptor used to indicate an economically poor African (that is black South African of African origin) area. It is usually densely populated with houses often being makeshift or very low cost.

2. See her novel, Second Class Citizen (Emecheta 1983).

3. Harvard University Gazette, 17 March 2005, 1. For further information, see Slate, 28 January 2005.

4. For additional writings, see Crehan (1986), Grove (1987), Gieve (1989), and Lie (1990).

5. In the South African context this would be a post‐graduate student.