Making the invisible visible: Recrafting the discourse surrounding women caregivers in academia

Abstract

“But unspoken as it may be, the expectation for many women is that at a time when you’re just trying to hold it all together, you must somehow figure out how to pick up where you left off. Some of the pressure is societal: for women fortunate enough to have time off, once you go back to work, you’re right back in it. The fact that your baby is cluster feeding or staging a sleep strike is not really an excuse for missing a deadline. But the haze of new motherhood has a way of warping your own perception of what you should be able to handle. When getting through the day requires a certain amount of autopilot (and coffee), there’s not a ton of time to reflect on what caring for a new life while meeting the demands of your own is doing to you.”