Mama, Ph.D.
Women Write about Motherhood and the Academy
Edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans
The academic year 2001-2002 marked the first time that American universities granted over half of their earned Ph.Ds to women. Yet in that same year, over 70% of faculty teaching at the nation’s top institutions were male. (Wilson, Robin. “Where the Elite Teach, It’s Still a Man’s World.” Chronicle of Higher Education 51 (2004): A8.) American universities consistently publish glowing reports on glossy papers stating their commitment to diversity in the workplace, showing statistics of female hires as proof of their success. But the facts remain: women in the university make up a disproportionately large number of adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty, while the majority of tenure-track positions are granted to men. Women who do achieve tenure-track placement tend to report slow advancement, income disparity, and lack of job satisfaction when compared to their male colleagues.
The disequilibrium between male and female university faculty is perhaps seen at its strongest when looking at those who choose to be both professors and parents. Like in many other workforces, mothers in the academy stand at a significant disadvantage to their male and/or childless peers, as they struggle to balance the vagaries of academic life with the demands of biology, reproduction, and offspring. Women who choose to embrace both halves of this divide – the body and the brain – often find themselves caught between the demands of their families and the demands of the academy.
We are looking for essays from women who have faced, in any way, the challenges of raising or considering a family within an academic setting. We wish to hear stories from students, professors, and adjunct faculty, writing about their experiences having children, delaying children, or choosing not to have children at all. We are seeking essays about how women’s positions in the academy have influenced their decisions about mothering, and how their positions as potential mothers, in turn, have impacted their academic careers.
Editors: Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans
Deadline: August 30, 2006
Length: 1,500 to 4,000 words. Feel free to query first; complete essays also welcome.
Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and a short bio on the last page.
Submitting: Send essays saved as a Word or Rich Text Format file (with .doc or .rtf extension) to submissions@mamaphd.com. Put “Submission” in the subject line.
For more about the book & the editors, head on over to Mama, PhD.
May 27th, 2006
Caroline
Yes, I am throwing down a bit of a gauntlet here. Yes, I am happy to receive your recipes for your favorite chocolate layer cake. And no, I haven’t finished baking my way through Nigella’s Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame. But to be honest, her layer cakes haven’t thrilled me (though on review, I’ve only made 2 — old fashioned and malteaser, both of which were too sweet and too dry, I thought– so she’s still doing better than most cookbooks). Chocolate Guiness Cake, Chocolate Honey Cake, Chocolate Gingerbread: now those are some fabulous cakes, and I’ll be making them often.
But for a birthday (and we recently celebrated Eli’s), I want a layer cake, and this one is everything chocolatey and chewy and dense that I want in a layer cake. I got the recipe years ago from a friend who xeroxed it out of a magazine, which credited the recipe to The Casual Cafe in Sturbridge, MA. If anyone out there is near the cafe, go find it at the source and report back to me!
I’m giving you the cake recipe as published. However, if you feel, as I do, that there’s no such thing as too much cream cheese frosting, go ahead and double that part of the recipe to get an extra thick filling. I’ve also been known to split each cake layer (with toothpicks and dental floss: looks trickier than it is) and put cream cheese filling between each of four cake layers. Occasionally I even quadruple the cream cheese filling recipe, so that there’s enough to frost the middle, top, and sides of the cake (in this case, obviously, I dispense with the chocolate glaze). You get the idea: I like cream cheese frosting, and so do my boys.
For the cake layers:
2 c all-purpose flour
2 c granulated sugar
1/3 c unsweetened cocoa (not Dutch process; I’ve written that even though I can never remember what that means. Anyone want to refresh my memory?)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 large eggs
1 1/2 c vegetable oil
4 medium carrots, coarsely shredded (about 2 cups)
For the cream cheese filling
4 oz cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
For chocolate glaze
1/2 c semisweet chocolate chips
3 oz bittersweet chocolate
6 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c confectioner’s sugar
Make cake layers:
Preheat oven to 350 and butter and flour two 9×2″ round cake pans, knocking out excess flour.
Whisk or sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, baking powder and soda. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat together eggs and oil on low speed until combined. Add flour mixture and beat until just combined. Stir in carrots and divide batter between pans. Bake cake layers in middle of oven 40 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Cool cake layers in pans on a rack 10 minutes and invert onto rack to cool completely.
Make cream cheese filling:
Beat together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add vanilla and confectioners’ sugar and beat until creamy.
Spread filling on top of one cooled cake layer and top with other layer.
Make chocolate glaze:
In a small saucepan, combine glaze ingrediants and cook over moderate heat, stirring frequently, until chocolate is melted and glaze is smooth. Remove from heat, cool glaze slightly, then spread over top of the cake, letting it run down the sides.
May 24th, 2006
Caroline
20 inches at birth
19 pounds at 19 weeks
18 days old for his first movie outing
17 hours of labor
16 days old for his first playground visit
15 hours of sleep each day
14 days old for his first trip to the beach
13 people in his family
12 weeks old when he slept through the night for the first time
11 potential names on the hospital whiteboard
10 fingers, 10 toes
9 diaper changes a day
8 meals a day
7 rolls of fat along his arms
6 flights across the country
5 hours in the ER when he dislocated his elbow
4 teeth
3 words
2 dimples
1 sweet year
May 21st, 2006
Caroline
Ben is well known in his small social circle for his love of kitchen appliances. Over the years he’s been given two toy handmixers, two toasters, one stand mixer, and a blender, and before he had his own stash we used to let him play with the real ones, too. He’d ask to play with our friends’ appliances also, always reminding them politely to take out the sharp blades, first, please, and make sure the appliance was unplugged. He could give you an inventory of who has what appliance; one friend, not much of a cook, was surprised to learn from Ben that she even had a particular mixer. Stand mixers, stick blenders, hand mixers, milk frothers – he loves them all.
Ben’s always had a lot of sit and study in him. We never worried that he’d hurt himself or break one of our appliances by playing with it. When he got the toy ones, he would put his wooden vegetables carefully in the toy blender or mixer bowl, turn the machine on, turn it off when he was done playing with it. He always, that is, pretended to cook with these toys. I was surprised when a friend’s son used the toy blender as a crash-landing rocket ship; it had never been so abused.
Now Eli is quite a bit younger than Ben was when he first got a toy mixer, but he’s just altogether a different kind of person. To quote from Parenthood, he likes to ram things. For instance, knowing only that occasionally the toy hand mixer makes a nice noise, he will sit, pick up the mixer, look at it briefly, and toss it on the floor. Pick it up, look, toss it on the floor. After a dozen or so tosses, the mixer lands on its switch and whirrs to life. “Dah!” crows Eli, satisfied with his work, and watches happily as it buzzes along the floor.
Where the real appliances are concerned, however, we’ve learned he shares his big brother’s passion. Eli enjoys making cappuccino with Tony so much that when Tony comes downstairs in the morning, Eli dispenses with any hug or greeting and crawls straight to the kitchen, sitting on the floor near the machine gazing up at it like a pointer. The other day he was in the kitchen when I used the food processor to make biscuits. I feel like I’ve neglected his education, but obviously this was the first time he’d noticed another major kitchen appliance at work . He ran, if you can say that a crawling person ran, to the corner to watch, calling out excitedly “Dah! Dah! Dah!” For the rest of the day, he would occasionally go check out that corner of the kitchen, the first time that side has interested him as much as the side with the cappuccino maker, and he keeps “asking” me to turn the machine on again.
It wasn’t until Ben’s third birthday that I planned his birthday feast by how many kitchen appliances we could use together, but with his first birthday coming up, Eli has me thinking along those lines already…
May 20th, 2006
Caroline
This is delicious, easy to make ahead, and beautiful. Even if the kids think they don’t like beets, they might like the strikingly pink noodles!
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups (packed) peeled and coarsely grated uncooked beets (about 3 large beets)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
12 oz tagliatelle, fettucine, or other long pasta
8 oz sour cream (yogurt or goat cheese work, too)
6 tbsp chopped fresh Italian parsley, divided
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, coarsely chopped
Melt butter with oil in large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; saute until pale golden, about 1 minute. Add the shredded beets and cayenne; reduce heat to medium-low and saute until beets are just tender, about 12 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. (At this point, you can set the beets aside till you’re ready to boil pasta for dinner)
Cook your pasta in large pot of boiling, salted water, stirring occasionally, until tender.
Drain pasta and return to cooking pot. Stir in sour cream and 4 tbsp of parsley, then the beet mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer pasta to bowls, garnishing with remaining parsley and chopped walnuts.
May 19th, 2006
Caroline
The scene: The dinner table.
The players: Ben, Eli, Tony and me.
The meal: Pasta puttanesca and chard.
The line, from Ben: Thank you for such a healthy dinner, Mama.
May 18th, 2006
Caroline
The day begins around 6:30 when I hear Eli’s quiet “Tah! Tah! Tah!” from the next room. I roll out of bed, shrug into my robe, and open his door to see him sitting in the middle of the crib, the tag of his silky blanket clutched in his hand. He holds it up to show me: “Tah! Tah! Tah!” Then he drops it and pulls up on the side of his crib, suddenly impatient to nurse.
Ben usually wakes up before Eli and I are done – nursing only twice a day now, Eli takes his sweet time—and either joins us with a book or gets right to his trains. We’re downstairs eating breakfast by 7:30 or so, and embarked on an imaginary trip, via the collapsible firetruck-airplane, to Chicago or Connecticut by the time Tony, who sleeps in to recover from pulling the night shift with Eli, comes downstairs.
When Eli sees Tony, he bolts on all fours toward the kitchen, occasionally stopping to point toward the espresso machine. “Dah! Dah! Dah!” he repeats. He loves making cappuccino as much as he loves nursing, I think. When he’s querulous in the car we can calm him by asking, “Eli? Did you make a cappuccino today?” “Dah!” he laughs. We slowly narrate the whole process and can distract him enough to make the ride a bit more tolerable.
Eli’s ready for a nap around 9, and usually that’s when Ben gets to watch a video and I head out for a run. But this morning Ben got me; “Mama, will you cuddle wif me?” The sun was warming the couch and I couldn’t resist cozying up, inhaling the buttery nut smell of his head, to watch Rudolph, the seasonally-inappropriate video of the week.
By the time I got out, an hour later than normal, the sun was high and hot. I’ve been running in the arboretum this week, enjoying the heavy scent of azaleas and rhodedendrons. The sprinklers were on full-force. The cranky voice in my head wondered about the wasted resources, all that water evaporating in the heat, and groused about my painstakingly straightened hair, springing right back into its normal corkscrews. But the cool water on a hot day quickly silenced cranky voice. I felt a bit like a kid who’s only pretending to dodge the sprinklers, and I ran around to get sprayed again.
May 15th, 2006
Caroline
I was doing more than the usual baking last year toward the end of my pregnancy with Eli. It was a good antidote to the uncertainty of our renovation, and it was certainly making my friends and family happy. Even my doula, who wanted me to go on a no-wheat, no sugar diet because I’d cultured positive for group-b strep, acknowledged that it would probably be less stressful for me to be hooked up to IV antibiotics during my labor (to prevent transmitting the bacteria to my baby), than change my diet and end my baking tear. The day we discussed this, as I recall, I’d baked both bread and a strawberry-rhubarb pie. (In the event, my water didn’t break until the minute Eli’s head popped out, rendering the antibiotic issue happily moot). Ben, always an excellent kitchen assistant, would wake up those days, during that sweet season of baking, asking, “What kind of pandowdy will we make today, Mama?”
Ah, pandowdy. A classic American dessert which is essentially pie for slobs. It has all the just-dump-the-fruit-in-the-pan appeal of a crisp or cobbler, but with the slightly fancy touch of a pie crust on top. Except you don’t have to prebake the crust, or roll it out very carefully, or even crimp the edges. In fact, part way through baking you slice it up and push the crust down under the fruit a bit so that the juice runs over the top and carmelizes the crust. Yum. It looks a mess (hence the name: pandowdy = dowdy in the pan), but tastes fabulous. Here’s an adaptation from Joy of Cooking and Deborah Madison’s lovely Local Flavors.
For the crust
1 c plus 2 tbsp flour
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 c butter, in chunks
1/2 tsp vanilla
2-3 tbsp ice water
Using a food processor, blend the flour, sugar, and salt together, then work in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Add the vanilla and sprinkle in just enough water for the dough to clump together with a few pulses of the food processor. Shape the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill while you prepare the fruit.
Preheat the oven to 400. Lightly butter a 2-quart baking dish.
For the filling
7-8 c fruit, chopped into large bite-sized chunks (I used rhubarb and strawberries, but you could use apple and rhubarb, apple, blueberries, peaches and blueberries, whatever you’ve got and sounds good)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg
2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c maple syrup or brown sugar
Toss the fruit with the other ingredients and spread in the baking dish.
Roll out the chilled dough to about 1/8 inch thick and about an inch wider than your dish (but don’t sweat it if the dough is a slightly different shape than your dish, leaving some gaps where the fruit is uncovered; this is pie for slobs, remember?). Lay the dough over the fruit, tucking the edges into the fruit.
Bake until the crust is light gold, 30-35 minutes. Remove the pandowdy from the oven and lower the heat to 350. Slice across the crust diagonally into 2-inch squares. Use a spatula to press the crust down into the fruit and tilt the pan to let the juices flow over the crust (don’t worry if there’s not much juice yet, and of course don’t worry about breaking or crushing the crust – that’s the point).
Return the dish to the oven and continue to bake until the crust is really golden and glazed and the fruit is tender when pierced, about 20-30 minutes more. If you remember, baste the crust with the fruit juices once or twice during this second baking. Serve warm , with vanilla ice cream.
May 14th, 2006
Caroline
I’ve been meaning to write about this new effort for some time, and was happy to see Libby and Becca blog about it first. Now I’ll do my bit to spread the word, too. Co-founded by one of MoveOn’s cofounders (so you know these women are going to make an impact), “MomsRising is working to build a massive grassroots online resource to move motherhood and family issues to the forefront of the country’s awareness, and to provide grassroots support for leaders, as well as organizations, addressing key motherhood issues.”
Or, if you like acronyms, this is their agenda:
M - Maternity and paternity leave
O - Open flexible leave
T - TV & after-school programs
H - Healthcare for all kids
E - Excellent childcare
R - Realistic and fair wages
Please, go to the website, sign the petition, and make Mother’s Day mean something this year!
May 13th, 2006
Caroline
When I was pregnant with my first child, I dreamt the baby was a girl. She was beautiful in my dreams, blonde and blue-eyed. But, nightmarishly, she was a teenager, one of the popular ones. I woke in a cold sweat at the thought of producing a “mean girl,” like one that had so intimidated me in high school.
I was surprised and therefore also relieved that my baby was a boy; when my second son was born three years later I was surprised again (no mother’s intuition here!) yet also the very tiniest bit crestfallen. I’d just always assumed that, like my mother and my sister before me, I’d have one – or some – of each, a son and a daughter. But here I am, the mother of sons, and quite happily so; what am I doing writing about It’s A Girl?
Honestly, I’d devoured It’s A Boy this winter, finding so many points of common experience with these amazing writers, so many stories that entertained and assured me about mothering sons. I wanted more. Some of these writers appear in both collections; some of them are new to me. All of them spoke to me about being a mother, regardless of the gender of your children; taught me about being a daughter (because of course I am still that); and reminded me to lend a more understanding ear to my friends who are mothers of daughters.
I was moved by “Links,” Jennifer Lauck’s 3 a.m. musings, as she holds her newborn baby girl, on the birth mother she never knew. Rachel Hall’s gorgeous “Breasts: A Collage” has me paying closer attention to nursing as these milky days with my baby wind down. And Catherine Newman’s sweet essay,”Baby Fat,” reminded me what we can and should learn about our bodies and ourselves from our children: “So my job now is to love myself, because…well, not to be immodest, but the baby wants to be just like me… Let her always love [her] tummy. And let me be more like her.”
I love the clear and direct feminism of Rebecca Steinitz’s “Tough Girls,” an essay I thought about a lot recently when, bike shopping with my son, he headed right for a “girly bike.” And while I can’t relate to the details in Miriam Peskowitz’s essay about her cheerleading daughter , I do relate to the message: we need to let our kids be themselves. I thought of my son’s recent experiments with “dress-up hair” when Peskowitz writes of her daughter, “She’s experimenting, of course, as we all are: figuring out who she will be today as she steps out to be in the world, figuring out how to be a girl.”
I was impressed by Jenny Block’s bravery, in “On Being Barbie,” writing about how her own plastic surgery might affect her daughter, and moved by Ann Douglas’ “The Food Rules.” Her essay and Jill Siler’s brilliant, aching “Twenty Minutes” also got me thinking, reluctantly, about mothering an older child. It seems hard some days, my life seems so busy with my four year-old and my almost-one-year old, but I know, truly, our struggles are so uncomplicated, our days so sweet. I hate to think of looking wistfully at Ben’s back as he heads into school, longing for a glance back from him, but I know that day is coming all too soon.
Barbara Atkinson’s essay, “Isolation,” speaks to that longing, too. “But—oh!—where is that sticky hand wrapped around my finger, those feet stumbling slightly as we inch our way around the block, stopping to look at every rock and flower and bug? Where is the weight of that buttery-scented, sleeping head on my shoulder? It’s funny that I ever worried she would not feel separate from me when I find myself so carefully, delicately trying to rewrap those tender threads that connected us.”
And it is Atkinson who writes the sentence I want posted on billboards as reminders to us all: “No man is an island, but every new mother is a sandbar, with regular tidal flooding and the occasional threat of submersion.”
Sunday is Mother’s Day. It’s A Girl (or it’s sibling, It’s A Boy) would make a fine, meaningful gift for any mother you know.
May 11th, 2006
Caroline
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