%0 Journal Article
%T Mothers and researchers in the making: Negotiating ¡®new¡¯ motherhood within the ¡®new¡¯ academia
%A Astrid S Huopalainen
%A Suvi T Satama
%J Human Relations
%@ 1741-282X
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0018726718764571
%X How do early-career academic mothers balance the demands of contemporary motherhood and academia? More generally, how do working mothers develop their embodied selves in today¡¯s highly competitive working life? This article responds to a recent call to voice maternal experiences in the field of organization studies. Inspired by matricentric feminism and building on our intimate autoethnographic diary notes, we provide a fine-grained understanding of the changing demands that constitute the ongoing negotiation of ¡®new¡¯ motherhood within the ¡®new¡¯ academia. By highlighting the complexity of embodied experience, we show how motherhood is not an entirely negative experience in the workplace. Despite academia¡¯s neoliberal tendencies, the social privilege of whiteness, heterosexuality and the middle class enables ¨C at times ¨C simultaneous satisfaction with both motherhood and an academic career
%K autoethnography
%K early-career academics
%K embodied experience
%K matricentric feminism
%K motherhood
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726718764571