ERIC Number: EJ1255949
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1086-4822
EISSN: N/A
The Dual Invisibility of Mother-Scholars of Color
Hemans, Patricia Benitez; Lewis, Persephone; Osoria, Ruby
About Campus, v25 n2 p24-27 May-Jun 2020
Deciding to pursue a doctorate degree is a life-changing decision for all applicants. However, for mother-scholars of color (MSOC), entering these programs includes a host of additional fears, many of which are centered on feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. The push to be a good mother and a good student leaves some MSOC feeling that they have to keep their motherhood invisible to be seen as competent scholars. As Reyna Anaya notes in her "Gender & Social Justice" article, the pressure to appear committed is heightened when these students feel that maternal bias will add to the biases they already experience because of intersectional identities (Anaya, 2012). In Karen Danna Lynch's study on graduate student mothers, she found that invisibility also occurs in the home when MSOC attempt to draw strict boundaries between their role as scholars and their role as mothers and partners (Lynch, 2008). In this article, the authors refer to this phenomenon as "dual invisibility." They were informed by "Mothering the Academy" by Monica Hernandez-Johnson et al. (2019) and the use of personal stories of MSOC to construct meaning around their experiences as scholars and mothers. Thus, they found it appropriate to utilize a narrative framework to highlight the dual invisibility that three MSOC attending a doctorate program at an R1 postsecondary institution experience.
Descriptors: Mothers, Minority Group Students, Doctoral Students, Disproportionate Representation, Personal Narratives, Barriers
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A