206 pages
234 x 156mm
ISBN-13: 978 1 85856 417 3
July 2007

This account of academic mothers is both moving and rigorously researched. It presents a significant yet virtually untouched aspect of motherhood and intellectual work.
Academic mothers are likely to be middle class, have access to some form of child care, live in a democracy and have legal rights and protections. But the book reveals the freedoms such women are still unable to achieve.
Academic mothers are engaged in intellectual work that has traditionally been the domain of men. Thinking has been described by Western philosophers over the centuries as rational, unemotional and logical, while the woman who is a mother is nurturing, loving, emotional and sensitive. The book explores how these perceived oppositional identities live within the same person. It argues that the intellectual, emotional and personal liberation of women and society is about far more than revised structural arrangements in the workplace: it demands reconceptualising work, the self and family.
In telling the stories of three academic mothers in South Africa, the book breaks new methodological ground for qualitative researchers. It also contributes to feminist research methodologies by revealing the intimacy between methodological decisions and the ontology of the text. It will therefore interest social researchers as well as becoming required reading in gender studies.
Dr Venitha Pillay is a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and the mother of two young girls.