ABSTRACT
We are a group of feminist academics, all mothers, researching and writing about women in relation to families, family structures and forms such as lone-mother families, and in relation to bringing up children and their education in schools. We are concerned to explore, from a feminist perspective, whether and how mothers choose to bring their children up and their relation to their schools. We are all white, relatively privileged women, at different stages of our academic careers and at different levels in the academic hierarchy. We all have children of different ages and with different needs. This impacts upon our mothering and academic lives in different ways. As feminists we have tried to break down hierarchical structures and the power relations between us, with varying degrees of success, to write collaboratively in an educational environment which fosters individualism and competition, and which makes few allowances for the demands of mothering, either for us, or for our students. As feminists we are concerned to explore women’s experiences, taking into account not only their material realities but their diversities and differences. As part of this we have looked at, on the one hand, the various structural constraints on mothers’ experiences and, on the other hand, the various moral dilemmas and constraints that mothers face, as we ourselves well understand.
