ABSTRACT
Mothers and motherhood are critical considerations in ongoing efforts to cultivate supportive spaces for pregnant and parenting students in an academic culture that has traditionally not embraced them. In the United States, women now make up the majority of college enrollments at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Unfortunately, academic culture has historically been an unwelcoming place for both students and faculty who mother. While legal supports such as Title IX, can provide the protections that might help us transform institutional policies, understanding the values, practices, and norms that produce an academic culture that is unfriendly to mothers is key to creating the meaningful and lasting cultural change that will ultimately support all parenting students—mothers, fathers, grandparents, and beyond—for years to come. This chapter discusses how cultural expectations of contemporary motherhood and academic conventions work in tandem to produce unique challenges for student mothers and argues that establishing a mother-friendly academic culture is key to cultivating a diverse and sustainable future for higher education.
