While the literature on the experiences of women in academe generaly, is
growing, the experiences of women student mothers in post-secondary education are
rarely explored. Given the increasing number of women students enroling in university
and the fact that the student population is aging, there is a greater likelihood of these
students being mothers. A study of these women is timely and crucial to understanding
their needs and chalenges within the university.
The purpose of the research was to examine the experiences of doctoral student
mothers living at the intersection of studenthood and motherhood as it was expected that
the demands from the family and university would create specific chalenges. The study
delineates the women's understanding of and the degree to which they accepted the
dominant North American ideology of intensive mothering and the ideology of the good
student. Further, the study sought to ascertain whether the student mothers experienced contradiction between the two ideologies similar to that experienced by the women in
Hay's (1996) study of employed and stay-at-home mothers. The study utilizes the
concept of the public/private dichotomy and the notions of greedy institutions and
competing urgencies in its framework. The design consisted of in-depth semi-structured
interviews with seventeen mothers at various stages in their doctoral programme. The
women range in age from thirty-three to forty-seven and have at least one child, under age of thirteen, living with them full-time.
Findings noted that the women were able to articulate the dominant definitions of
the good mother and the good student but, for the most part, they rejected them. They
preferred to be balanced both as mothers and as students, although almost all of them insisted their children were their first priority. The women experienced a contradiction
between the two ideologies and, using the concept of ideological work developed by
Berger (1981), their experiences were explored. The women engaged in ideological work
to support their alternative definitions of the good mother and the good student. When
they were not as able to sustain their ideological work they tended to revert to the
dominant definitions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/13834 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sears, Allison Laurel |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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