Education Commons^™

Challenges Experienced By One Academic Mother Transitioning From Maternity Leave Back To Academia, Christy M. Craft, Jo Maseberg-Tomlinson

Christy Moran Craft

While many scholars have written about the experience of academic motherhood in higher education, with their research revealing a number of challenges faced by academic mothers, none have presented an in-depth view of the transition of returning to work after maternity leave. For this reason, the authors used a narrative inquiry approach to analyze and interpret the first author’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences as she transitioned from maternity leave to full-time academic work as a tenured, associate professor of education at a research university. During that transition, she faced challenges related to the prioritization and fulfillment of her academic work …