Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Green, Fiona Joy

English

What’s Love Got To Do With It? A Personal Reflection on the Role of Maternal Love in Feminist Teaching

Atkinson, Anna

Anna Atkinson 
Under the 
Circumstances 
Single Motherhood in an 
Academic Culture of Doubt 
In order to understand what another person is saying, you must 
assume it is true and try to imagine what it might be true of. (qtd. in 
Elbow, 1986: 254). 
In a moment of profound self-doubt, I recently asked a senior colleague for 
some reassurance that the progress I was malung with my academic career was 
adequate. The response I received, though given in the spirit of support and 
encouragement, had the opposite of its intended effect. "Under the circum- 
stances," she said, "you're doing really well." But the qualification "under the 
circumstances," particularly in an academic culture that esteems critique and 
doubt, devalues this "compliment" (if indeed it is one) to the point that it 
indicates condescension rather than praise. The need for that qualifier turns 
something that begins by sounding like a recognition of special conditions into 
the only nice thing one could say, under the circumstances. 
And the circumstances? I married into the academy. I had just undergone 
a hysterectomy while in the midst of my M A  year, and I suppose I thought, 
since I couldn't reproduce, that I should consider myself lucky that any man 
would consider marrying me, let alone another graduate student nearing the 
completion of his PhD. In hindsight it seems an odd thing to believe, or think, 
or feel, for a person who has been described ("and I mean this in the nicest 
possible way, Anna") as a "knee-jerk feminist." Nevertheless, married I was. 
And upon hearing that the Children's Aid Society "never" had infants available 
for adoption, I suggested to my then-spouse that we take the course for 
prospective adoptive parents, since there was no chance a child would be placed 
with us. The theory was that this would stand us in good stead later on when 
we went through the private adoption system. 
Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 29 
Anna Atkinson 
Less than 48 hours afterwe completed the final homevisit, our case worker 
called: ' W e  have an infant in care now-when would you like to meet her?" 
My husband left three days before the adoption was finalized. 
I was only just getting used to being a parent when my marriage ended. I 
struggled with the idea of being a single mom and an academic. I doubted, at 
first, that I could manage. I considered giving up without completing my 
degree, since at the time I was only one chapter into my dissertation. I doubted 
I could finish. But I wanted my daughter to believe that anything is possible- 
and so I also had to believe. It  was only a shadow of a belief, but it was better 
than the shadow of doubt. In the three years since, I have grown into my role 
as the sole custodial parent of a high-needs preschool child with Sensory 
Integration Dysfunction. I have begun the seemingly endless cycle of sessional 
teaching. But I have also finished and defended my dissertation (tripling my 
student loan debt-loadin the process). When I crossed the stage at convocation, 
my daughter walked with me. It  was her victory too. - 
Sessional teaching is exhilarating. The opportunity to engage students in 
afreeplay of ideas, to draw out their strengths and open their minds to newways 
of looking at the world, is a challenge that inspires me daily. But sessional 
teaching is also debilitating. The need to create courses, write lectures, mark - - 
assignments and set examinations while being paid-on average-less than 
$8,000 (Cdn) per course, is such time-intensive work that it can (and often 
does) stop research in its tracks. Since research leads to publications, and 
publications lead to permanent employment, there is a constant tension 
between the need to work as a sessional in order to survive, and the need to stop 
working in order to research and publish so that you can land a tenure-track 
position which actually pays you to do the research that, as a sessional, you have 
to steal time away from teaching to do. This situation is further complicated by 
the fact that ifyou do not perform adequately in the classroom, the institution 
that hired youis under no obligation to do so again the following year. 
But nearly everyone goes through this process. Thus, although the work 
is hard and not necessarily financially rewarding, the playing field on which we 
all compete for permanent positions is pretty much level. Or at least it is for 
most of us. Those of us who have obligations outside of work, particularly 
obligations that are as draining as parenting, appear to be at a disadvantage. The 
perception is that we lack both time and energy when it comes to the kind of 
CV-building that would position us favorably in an increasingly closed job 
market; and to a certain extent this is true. Add to this, as in my own case, the 
challenge ofhandling all parental responsibilities alone, while juggling straight- 
ened financial circumstances and the demands ofa high-needs child, and under 
the circumstances, remembering to look both ways before crossing the street 
suddenly seems like a major achievement. 
Which leads me back to where I started this essay, back to the topic of 
doubt. I doubted I could compete with other new Ph.D.s hungry forjobs, since 
the competitive playing field seemed to me to be so uneven. I lack(ed) the time, 
30 1 Volume 5, Number 2 
Under the Circumstances 
the energy, the freedom of movement and of schedule that other academics 
(even sessionals) have. The fact that my daughter is now in Junior lndergarten 
but cannot, because of her sensory challenges, cope with an after-school 
program, means that on Monday, Wednesday, and alternate Fridays, my day 
ends when her school dismisses at 2:30pm. And the fact that my housing and 
food costs are higher-not to mention the cost ofdaycare for the days when she 
is not in school-means that even bookmoney is scarce, and travel is out of the 
question. All of which leads to less time and fewer resources for research 
purposes. 
And yet, to suggest that I am "under" the circumstances is to suggest that 
I am somehow both pressed down by them and expending energy trying to fend 
them off. In fact, though, it would probably be far more accurate to talk about 
the circumstances being under me. My daughter, my work, my complicated 
schedule rushing between two universities and assorted other jobs, these 
circumstances are what "hold me up" in many senses of the phrase. They slow 
me down, certainly. But they also support me while providing an anchor; they 
are my inspiration and my motivation. In the end, as my own mother keeps 
reminding me, our circumstances do not affect us nearly as powerfully as our 
responses to these circumstances do. 
And in fact these challenges are minor when compared to the effect of the 
academic culture of doubt. This is a culture that simultaneously insists on and 
ignores all these "circumstances," and in so doing creates a veritable minefield 
that makes lifting a ton of feathers look almost like a reasonable task. Because 
while those who know your circumstances dispense the kind of qualified praise 
that turns itselfinside out, those who do not know the circumstances judge your 
performance with the same yardstick they use on your peers who are childless 
or who have a partner to shoulder some of the load. And to introduce the 
circumstances to these judges would be unprofessional, for the very valuable 
reason that you are being hired as a professional, and external circumstances 
have nothing (theoretically) to do with your performance on the job. 
But in part the tendency to be close-mouthed about "the circumstances" 
is also due to the doubt in people's minds concerning howwell you can function 
as a professional ifyou are a single parent with a high-needs child; that is, ifyou 
are "under the circumstances." Doubt is such a salient feature in the way our 
minds operate as critical thinkers that we tend to be unable to express things in 
terms of belief. To  introduce the circumstances under which my life operates 
would be to introduce more reason to doubt whether my performance will be 
adequate in the future-or at least so it would seem. And the counterpoint to 
this is that people seem to find it impossible to believe that accomplishments 
achieved "under the circumstances" have the same validity as those that are 
achieved without such circumstances, as though concessions or the need for 
special pleading were involved in the awarding of the achievement. But the fact 
is that ifyou take away the circumstances, the accomplishments are still there. 
Believe me. And yet, belief is hard to come by. And it is the culture of doubt- 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 31 
Anna Atkinson 
my own self-doubt included-that I continually find myself fighting my way 
out from under. 
I t  was in reading Peter Elbow's Embracing Contraries that I began to 
understand the impact of doubt as the predominant methodological construct 
upon which the academy is based. Elbow traces the dominance of this mode of 
thought in large part to- Descartes, who "sought what cannot be doubted and 
therefore remains certain" (Elbow, 1986: 256). This has led to a culture, 
particularly in the academy, which believes "certainty is possible if we are 
willing systematically to doubt everything" (257). This is certainly a trend that 
is traceable through Hume and Arnold, and skepticism is hardly new to the 
modern era. But what it has led to, in Elbow's words, is our inheritance of the 
assumption thatd'the ability to criticize a claim we disagree with counts as more 
serious intellectual work than to enter into it and temporarily assent" (258). 
Indeed, so deeply inscribed is our culture with this methodology of doubt 
that there is an equally deeply rooted fear of belief. T o  commit to a belief is to 
risk being wrong, to open to the possibility of being labeled weak, a possibility 
Elbow relates to gendered perceptions of belief and doubt: 
W ~ t h  respect to gender, doubting invites behaviours which our culture 
associates with masculinity: refusing, saying No, pushing away, com- 
peting, being aggressive. Believing invites behaviors associated with 
femininity: accepting, saying Yes, being compliant, listening, absorb- 
ing, and swallowing.. . . A man tends to be seen as less masculine if his 
style is that of the believing game-if, that is, he operates by pliancy, 
absorbency, noninitiation, and nonaggression. A woman tends to be 
seen as less feminine if she shines in the doubting game and loves to 
win arguments and find errors in the other person's thinlung. Trying 
to believe someone we disagree with tends to make us feel vulnerable, 
and our culture has seen it as the woman's role to be vulnerable (or at 
least to acknowledge vulnerability) (Elbow, 1986: 266). 
I wonder if it is possible that motherhood, and particularly single moth- 
erhood, encourages one to be perceived as hyperfeminine (or even simply 
undeniably feminine) and thus incapable of participating effectively in the 
masculine "doubting game." The perception I know it creates from comments 
people make to me is that I cannot possibly have time to be an effective 
academic and scholar. This perception is not simply, I think, a result of my 
needing to juggle so many responsibilities at once. Elbow touches on a deeper 
and more fundamental issue related to the relative values accorded to belief and 
doubt in the academy: 
Doubt implies disengagement from action or holding back, while 
belief implies action. When we doubt, we tend to pause; and by 
pausing . .. we doubt better. When we believe fully, we tend to 
32 Volume 5, Number 2 
Under the Circumstances 
act.. ..Thus, the intellectual or academic person is traditionally seen as 
a critic disengaged from action. The engaged "do-er" is usually seen 
as less thoughtful-as though doing and thinhng must be opposite. 
(1986: 265) 
I cannot think of anything less conducive to pausing than trying to keep 
up with a four-year-old. But this does not automatically lead to a lack of 
thought. In fact, parenting-particularly, I would argue, parenting singly-is 
one situation wherein it is absolutely essential to combine thought and action- 
and maintain a balance between belief and doubt. 
I t  was also in reading Peter Elbow's Embracing Contraries that I rediscov- 
ered Augustine's astonishing statement: "Credo ut intelligam, "I believe in order 
that I may understand (qtd. in Elbow, 1986: 262). If for a moment you can 
believe with me that a child-and single parenthood-constitute assets rather 
than liabilities for an academic in the throes ofbeginning a career, then perhaps 
you will understand how this may be so. 
If I may make a rather outrageous parallel, single parenting is much like a 
closed head injury. My mother suffered one during a motor vehicle collision 
recently. In the ensuing months she found her thought processes had changed 
so that, for example, whereas she had always "just known" what day it was, she . - 
now had to visualize a calendar in order to work it out. She was somewhat 
concerned about this and mentioned it to her doctor, whose response was very 
interesting. He  indicated that when high-functioning adults suffered the kind 
of injury she had, often the healing process was more correctly termed a 
compensation process. That is, the processes the brain had been using no longer 
functioned adequately and, while in children such injuries might heal, in adults 
theywere less likely to-or at least tookmuch longer. The result is that the brain 
finds other ways to perform these functions, and while they might seem 
unconventional, they certainly get the job done. 
The same is true of life as an academic and a single parent. There are 
certainly very material and practical ways in which parenting has changed the 
way1 function as an academic. The fact that I have no backup for my parenting 
means that if my daughter is ill, I have to stay home with her. I have learned to 
become web-literate and maintain a web-page for my students so that in the 
event of an emergency and a missed class, I can post lecture notes for them and 
assign discussion topics upon which they can report the next time we meet. I 
am also consistently at least two weeks ahead when writing lectures, because 
parenting emergencies happen, and time can quite suddenly become very scarce 
indeed. In fact, on the whole parenting has gifted me with an efficiency that I 
lacked in my salad days when I would work until midnight (and accomplish, in 
retrospect, very little except a feeling of self-righteousness). 
Other changes in my modus operandi as an academic are less easily 
quantified but, for me, no less valuable. Although I remain a doubter, and 
although systematic and conscious critique remains part ofboth mywriting and 
Journal oftbe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 33 
Anna Atkinson 
my teaching, I have found the value of "the equally systematic, disciplined, and 
conscious attempt to believe everything no matter how unlikely or repellent it 
might seem-to find virtues and strengths [I] might otherwise miss" (Elbow, 
1986: 258). As well as the construction and defense of arguments-which 
connects metaphorically to an almost militaristic attitude toward both teaching 
and research-there is strength and merit in the ability to "transmit an 
experience, enlarge a vision" (Elbow, 1986: 261), an ability Elbow associates 
with belief rather than doubt. 
Most importantly, perhaps, the valuing of belief that has come with my 
experiences as a single parent has illustrated to me the importance of commu- 
nity. Again I will turn to Peter Elbow, as his thoughtful commentary on belief 
and doubt mirrors my thoughts so elegantly: "Doubting is the act of separating 
or differentiating and thus correlates with individualism.. . . Belief involves 
merging and participating in a community; indeed a community is created by- 
and creates-shared beliefs" (264). My ability to participate in and help to 
shape that community, through my research and writing, through my work in 
the classroom, and through parenting, fuels my passion for all the career paths 
I have chosen. 
I realize that this essay must appear to border on some sort of nightmarish 
Pollyanna "glad game." I don't mean it to-or perhaps I do. I certainly do not 
advocate the purposeful creation of single parent families in the academy. But 
on the other hand, ifin the academy we are embracing, striving to promote, and 
aspiring to represent diversity, then I would advocate strongly for belief in 
ability, and in the gift of adversity-any adversity-as a tool toward strength 
rather than an obstacle preventing advancement. I would suggest that having 
a child, and even raising a child alone, has in fact made me a better academic 
and a stronger critic-in part because it requires me to believe in ways that I 
never have before, and in part because it necessitates time management and a 
well-rounded life. I t  does not stop me from producing critical material; indeed, 
it spurs me on. 
Ferdinand Magellan once said: "the church says the earth is flat, but I know 
that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith 
in a shadow than in the church." On the strength of his belief in a shadow, he 
became the first to circumnavigate the globe. In the end, like Magellan, it is 
belief that allows me to do what I do. My daughter is the shadow on my moon, 
and equipped with that shadow of belief, I will continue, like Magellan, to do 
the (im)possible and sail around the world. And I'll stop in every park, slide 
down every slide, and jump in every puddle I can find along the way. 
References 
Elbow, Peter. 1986. Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Teaching andlearn- 
ing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
34 Volume 5, Number 2 


Under the Circumstances: Single Motherhood in an Academic Culture of Doubt

Kostka, Kerima

Famlies As We Are: Conversations From Around the World

Detore-Nakamura, Joanne

Joanne Detore-Nakamura 
Dissertation Distress 
A Room of One3 Own 
With a Crib and a Computer 
I sit at my computer, typing away, trying desperately to come up with good, 
solid lines and unique metaphors for an article that I'm working on, while my 
toddler sleeps soundly in the bed in the same room, which is also the office. I 
am afraid that with every click of my keyboard I might awaken her. My eyelids 
are heavy in need of sleep too, but I can't afford to nap. Once Emilywakes up, 
I will not have any time to myself. We are tired from a restless night with 
nightmares filled with a loss of Mommy to business trips, not of the traditional 
monsters under the bed. Now with me, home from my teaching job at a 
community college, I watch her as she sucks away earnestly on her Binky, 
content that Mommy is where she should be. I have about one hour and fifteen 
minutes, give or take, to eek away at my latest short story. 
When my two-year old daughter, Emily, is awake, even checking e-mail 
is d~fficult. She climbs up on my lap orwedges herselfinto the backof my office 
chair, claiming to give me a neck massage in between "peek-a-boo," her real 
game. When that doesn't work, she bounces on her bed and makes another play 
for my attention. 
"Mommy, let's be dinosaurs on the floor! Come on, Duckie (a dinosaur in 
Land Before Time, a series of children's videos)! I'm Little Foot," she pleads. 
"In a minute, Em," I tell her. "Give Mommy ten minutes and we'll play." 
That seems to placate her temporarily, knowing that Mommy makes good 
on her promises. Even so, I feel guilt for my self-indulgence and for my neglect 
of my daughter, even if it is for ten minutes. 
Virginia Woolf never had to contend with children who vied for her 
attention. Having a child was certainly my choice, but Woolfwas only partially 
right when she determined that women writers needed a room oftheir own and 
500 British pounds to write. Writing mothers also need time and freedom from 
Journal of  the Association for Research on Mothering / 57 
Joanne Detore-Nakamura 
guilt for that time away from our children. Woolf was never a mother; she 
probably couldn't have guessed about the amount of guilt, even with her great 
insight into the human mind. I say that from experience. 
Even a writer like Kate Chopin, with her six children, created a character 
like Edna Pontellier, an artist-mother who had no guilt over mothering. Edna 
was the feminist ideal, perhaps, a woman-artist who would never sacrifice her 
artistic vision or herself. Rather than risk becoming less than she could be, she 
commits suicide. But Chopin had lots of help with her children. I suspect that 
she was able to write because of this and wrote almost only short stories because 
she could do it in short spurts. She rarelyrevised. I doubt she had time. So while 
she "watched" her children being tended to by nursery maids, she wrote and 
satisfied her artistic urges unlike her character Edna. However, there are plenty 
of real-life, artist-mothers like Edna who exited life by their own hands. The 
literary world seems peppered with such real tragic heroines-Charlotte 
Perkins Gilman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton-who were all mothers and who 
gave up on life and motherhood. Still, there are those of us who write without 
such personal drama. Mother-writers like Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, 
and Louise Erdrich give me hope that I can have a sane life that includes writing 
and children. However, despite my best efforts, I do have guilt, lots of it. 
Feminism isn't easy. 
For years, though, I had convinced myself that feminism was easy where 
motherhood was concerned. Feminism was supposed to be about choices. 
Some women chose to stay at home with their children and some chose to 
continue working. Secretly, I suspected that the women who stayed home did 
so because they weren't really feminists. They stayed at home out of a duty to 
an outmoded, patriarchal system in which women belonged in the kitchen and 
in the nursery. I also thought that those women were less intellectually driven 
than I was. Surely after a maternity leave, I would be dying to head back to work 
for adult conversation and intellectual challenge. I decided all this before I had 
the baby. I would go back to work after about a five-month maternity leave. 
And I did. But it was the most difficult day of my life when that day came, even 
though I was handing my daughter over to myparents, who had recently retired 
and moved down the street to help me with childcare. I was incredibly 
fortunate, yet 1 still felt torn. 
When Emily was born, my entire view of feminism and motherhood 
changed. I fell in love with my baby and felt an enormous responsibility toward 
her like none other I'd ever felt. Prior to my maternity leave, I had been the 
department chair of four disciplines with budgeting, scheduling, and staffing 
concerns, but the responsibility of this eight-pound baby weighed more heavily 
upon me. I had no real desire to return to work. However, I would like to have 
said that I spent a blissful five months with my babywithout any thought ofthe 
outside world, but I did not. I had the pressing task of trying to finish writing 
my dissertation or risk starting from scratch. After finishing my doctorate 
course work and successfully passing my preliminary examinations, I had five 
58 Volume 5, Number 2 
Dissertation Distress 
years in which to finish writing and defending my dissertation to a committee 
of five other professors. I had passed my preliminary exams in December of 
1993. I had Emily in March of 1998. That meant that I had until November 
of 1998 to submit my dissertation and successfully defend it to make the 
December graduation deadline, or I would have to start my Ph.D. all over again 
from the course work level. 
Not wanting to begin again after eight years of doctoral study, I decided 
to work at home writing the last of my dissertation during my maternity leave. 
I was exhausted. Up most of the night with feeding, I craved sleep like a drug 
addict craved a fuc. During the time that most mothers retreated to their beds 
for rejuvenating sleep, I hit my computer and notes, slogging through an 
enormous, theory-ridden dissertation on women's friendship in contemporary 
women's novels. To help out, a friend of mine volunteered to come each day for 
about an hour for fou; weeks to watch Emily while I finished writing-and 
editing my manuscript. I t  took more time than that, though. I found myself 
having to sneak in time to write when my husband, Eric, arrived home from 
work I was so tired. My head felt empty, as if all my brain cells had been pushed 
out of the birth canal with the baby. I called my friend Lisa who'd had a 
promising career as a public relations director before the birth of her first son. 
She was now a full-time mother of three young boys and somehow managed 
to freelance in the public relations field from time to time. 
"You feel brain-dead, right?" she said, matter-of-factly, as if1 should have 
known about this syndrome from one of those "everything you ever wanted to 
know about the first year" books. 
'Yes." I answered, stunned speechless but that was just the half of it. My 
one-word answer to Lisa was symptomatic of a recent problem. Complicated 
sentence constructions gave me undue trouble. My speech was a series of 
monosyllabic responses peppered with subhuman grunts and whines, a sort of 
pre-toddler verbal facility level. I started to enjoy watching the Teletubbies and 
understood Barney for the first time. Coos, smiles, and cries became languages 
that I understood while the complexities of psychoanalytic theory started to 
escape me. 
Why hadn't anyone told me about this brain-sapping effect ofwhich my 
one-word responses was part, which apparently everyone knew about? It must 
have been part of that feminist conspiracy that Christine Hoff Sommers tried 
to articulate in Who Stole Feminism, the conspiracy that withholds unpleasant 
information that might be antithetical to the cause. It was so volatile that even 
she couldn't mention it. Even the Girpiend's Guide to Pregnancy steered clear 
of this syndrome. For me, losing my facility with language, with complex 
thinking was devastating. I was a woman for whom words were a livelihood; 
surely one of our literary grandmothers would have passed along this informa- 
tion. 
Despite my verbal challenges, I finished my dissertation. In fact, my 
dissertation director told me it was much clearer than previous versions. Ah, if 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 59 
Joanne Detore-Nakamura 
he only knew. Thankfully, he accepted the dissertation and moved it onto the 
next stage, the defense. 
Prior to my dissertation defense, I was incredibly worried that I wouldn't 
be able to remember anything that I had written. 
The morning of my defense was dreadful. W e  had traveled from Florida 
to Carbondale, Illinois for the defense. My husband, my seven-month old 
teething infant, and I had spent a restless night crammed into my mother-in- 
law's tiny, one-bedroom house. Even after a cup of coffee, I couldn't remember 
the plot of the novels that I'd written about or the major underpinnings of my 
dissertation, yet here I was set to defend them to a five-person committee. Two 
hours before my defense, I tried to discuss my fears with my dissertation 
director, but he thought it was just nerves. I could remember feeding schedules, 
diaper changes, all the Teletubbies' names, and all the words to "The Wheels 
on the Bus." What I couldn't remember so clearlywere the names of the major 
characters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club or The Kitchen Go& Wife. They 
seemed to be moving between texts. Was June in The Kitchen God's Wfle or was 
she the narrator of The Joy Luck Club? It  was too late now. I was finished. 
With my husband, daughter, and mother-in-law seated in the back of the 
room while my committee sat around a conference table, my defense began and 
just as surely, my daughter started blowing raspberries. The quiet was broken 
by loud, fart-like mouth sounds. Drool dangled like string from her chin. She 
stopped when my husband shushed her. The seriousness of the task at hand 
resumed. My committee members readjusted themselves in their chairs, 
reshuffled papers, folded their hands on the table and focused their attention 
on me. Formalityencircled the room once more. My dissertation director asked 
me to explain the process by which I chose my dissertation topic. My mind 
began to clear. 
Like a flashlight in the dark, his voice seemed to clear some of the fog. My 
words came in polysyllables, connected and coherent. I was articulate and 
thoughts flowed freely over the most complicated of my theoretical underpin- 
nings. I looked around at my committee members, nodding and smiling at me. 
I must have been making sense. I looked at my husband, who sat beaming with 
Emily, my golden-haired cherub, on his lap. I looked at Emily who pursed her 
lips and blew the most raucous series of raspberries I'd ever heard, louder than 
anything one would hear in AnimalHouse (the cult-classic film about a group 
of unruly and uncouth fraternity brothers). The flatulence-like stream contin- 
ued, louder and wetter, until one by one my committee members, who'd up 
until this point, tried to ignore my little imp, starting throwing paternal and 
maternal glances her way in an effort to stifle the onslaught of steady mouth- 
farts. I don't know how I resisted laughter or even a verbal censure. I kept 
tallung, as if unaffected. It must have been my training in vocal performance 
that pushed me to declare mentally, "The show must go on." My husband 
removed Emily from the room when it was clear that she was a scene-stealer 
like her mother. 
60 / Volume 5, Number 2 
Dissertation Distress 
When the two hours had elapsed after difficult, probing questions, I was 
asked to leave the conference room and wait in the reception area ofthe English 
department office while my committee deliberated on the success of my 
dissertation and defense. M; mother-in-law, who had been the only family 
present during the entire process, said that I'd done fabulously. Emily was still 
blowing raspberries, thrilled by all the attention that she received from college 
students passing by. After about 15 minutes, my dissertation director invited 
me back into the room to congratulate me as Dr. Detore-Nakamura. I could 
hardly believe it. One of my committee members, one of the toughest, 
commented that my dissertation was brilliant and that my defense was 
exemplary. All and each committee member said it was an excellent study. If 
- .  
they had only known that my dissertation was written between breast feedings 
and diaper changes. 
With my new title, I returned to Florida, back to myjob andmy role as wife, 
mother, professor, and writer. It's been almost two years since my dissertation 
defense. Since that time, I have penned a series of poems, several short stories, 
a few essays, and an article, and continued worhng on my novel. My brain 
seems to be functioning normally too. In fact, my facilitywith language is even 
better, and I've gained a new kind of respect for myself. I know that I can do 
anything now. I've recently gathered the courage to send some of my work off 
for publication consideration, something I had stopped doing even before I 
began pregnant. I also have a new topic now- motherhood. Some of my newest 
poems are about motherhood and writing, about the challenges and frustra- 
tions of it all. I try to articulate the aspects of motherhood, the good ones and 
the unexpected &es, that our litera4 foremothers didn't tell us. 
As I sit here, at my computer desk, my daughter's voice rings throughout 
the house, echoed in baby monitors. Her father watches her now, while I write 
this essay. I'm not sure that he considers this "mandatory," this writing, not like 
the grading of papers or the finishing of a project for a grant. However, he 
doesn't complain much and many times serves as my first editor. I know that 
I couldn't do it alone, not without him or my parents who watch Emily while 
I work. For single mothers who write, like Toni Morrison, it must be a difficult 
task, writing. Writing is like breathing though, the unconscious need to write, 
drawing lives rather than breaths. I t  is like givingbirth, a cliched metaphor now, 
but still apt. Yet, I have found that giving birth is the least difficult task. The 
constant tending, watching, and nurturing that one must give to writing, as to 
toddlers, is the most taxing. It  is the one process that makes the most demands 
and the one that yields the highest rewards. My draft, though, will remain in 
this state until I pick it up again and choose to revise it; my toddler will not. 
Excuse me, won't you? I need to check on my daughter. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 61 


Dissertation Distress: A Room of One's Own with a Crib and a Computer

Gullette, Margaret Morganroth

Can America Catch Up to the Wonderful Midlife Mother? Postmaternal Characters in Contemporary Culture

Kahn, Robbie Pfeufer

Rediscovering Birth and Birth Your Own Way: Choosing Birth at Home or in a Birth Centre

Musial, Jennifer

"Pregnancy Chic": The Marketing of Maternity Wear

Panofsky, Ruth

Professor/Mother: The Uneasy Partnership

Toepell, Andrea Riesch

Academic Mothers and Their Experiences Navigating the Academy

McCartney, Andra

Andra McCartney 
coiled chalk circles 
the mathematics of separation 
we started with simple 
arithmetic 
one family divided 
by violence 
equals two 
remainder one, remainder two, remainder three 
mathematics to pacify 
- how many? just three 
sleeps untii you see me 
can you count 
to three? 
one two three 
yes, that's it, three, just 
we segment life 
turn on our heads and repeat 
indefinitely. Fractured 
patterns form frost on a 
windowpane behind plastic and tape, 
the wind still whistling through. 
This is a hole mathematics 
cannot even estimate. 
172 1 Volume 5, Number 1 
The true mother 
Each of the parents claimed them 
So the law said 
- Divide the living 
in two, let 
them be pulled to pieces by 
the desires of their parents, for 
they each have the right 
of appeal 
the next year, and 
the next year, and 
the next. 
My children 
still lived, their pale faces 
haunted by court assessments, 
counsellors' questions. Lies. 
Accusations. Half-truths. 
I could not see them 
torn apart 
- No, give them to him, 
then the torture will stop 
and the judge in his wisdom said 
- Let it be so 
Real mothers, 
seeing me alone 
said I did not care 
I. Sunday afternoon, Peterborough 
The body of my family 
separates today 
we're reading a poem 
about custody arrangements and my son 
says he has four families 
not two 
- Yours, gran's, dad's 
and my friends. 
- No, his sister adds. Six. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 173 
Andra McCartney 
One! fills my silence. I am tired 
of living at the margin 
gathering scraps of their lives 
too small to hold together, 
patterns lost in tears, loose 
ends unravelling out of reach 
But they are the weavers 
only they can darn this cloth 
It is a fancy stitch 
my mother taught me, to make a web 
as good as new, seamless 
so no-one could tell. I was never 
that careful, never neat enough. With my fingers 
I follow their ragged stitches, 
help fill the holes 
The phone rings. 
I hold them, they change 
into their Whitby clothes and 
open the door. 
11. Sunday evening 
Abandoned, a 
Lego ambushes my stockinged feet as 
I head for my desk, prompting 
aimless curses 
This tranquil island of light 
contains a growing world 
beneath my searching fingers 
dinner will be late tonight 
the dishes will not fight with the laundry 
for kitchen space 
I will not be asked to be 
judge or saviour, cook 
or nursemaid 
I am free again, 
free to imagine 
the soft weight of 
their blond heads against my breasts 
174 1 Volume 5, Number l 
coiled chalk circles 
Lake Ontario 
An apology for a beach. This 
is where we went, confined 
by the hours we had 
left. The brown wind 
carried the smell of fish 
to the strangled weekend margin. 
I was skipping 
stones, trying too hard 
to be as real as the daily routine 
of life with your dad. 
- He brings us here all the time, you say. 
Frayed Connections 
Ten dollars in 
quarters by my side 
A pay phone and 
trembling hands. 
I dial, wait 
through interminable clicks 
Then - 
Her voice. 
Small, excited, sad 
Mummy? 
Sweetheart, I love you, I miss you, Remember - 
remember when we look into the sky at night we 
see the same stars. 
Mummy, Daniel can say 
Tuktoyaktuk. Listen ... 
Yes, love, you clever..Whatls that? 
Yes, I... 
Hissing, stuttering, clickbuzz click! 
Silence. 
Journaj ofthe Association for Research on Mothering / 175 
End of summer 
Everything has found 
its place. G1 Joe 
glares at me from the 
shampoo label as I take 
my bath. My daughter has 
found her scissors, now 
I can find mine. 
The soccer ball hides in 
a giant terra cotta plantpot 
on the front porch. Our 
bicycles lean on each other 
in the back shed. 
They fit now, exactly, in 
the crook of my shoulder. When 
we cross the street, we automatically reach 
for each other. We know 
who is next in line for the bath, whose 
turn it is to tackle 
the dishes. They see when 
I need to write, I know 
when they are hungry. 
We have triumphed 
again, learned how to live 
smoothly with each other. 
I fix this place with 
sunny photographs, 
avoid stores with back-to-school 
sales, shadows 
of their father's house 
alone in my bath 
in the cool morning, I whisper to 
a paper soldier 
- Hell no, they 
won't go. 
176 1 Volume 5, Number l 
coiled chalk circles 
Twelfth Night. 
Led by the nose 
to the take-off point, the plane 
waits, steaming from the tail. 
I saw the flight attendant smile 
down at them, take them gently 
by the hand. 
The tractor rolls away, I gather 
my breath, searching faces 
at the window, already too distant. 
The plane turns slowly, gathers speed and two weeks blink past the 
terminal 
with a roar, rise and 
merge with grey clouds 
framed in the grid of the glass, a dot 
despite my fixed stare stii 
disapp 
ea 
r 
S 
cooperative agreement 
I still could not see 
him, the antagonist 
even after he raked me 
naked across the carpet 
even after he broke my rib, 
even then. 
I was happy 
the day we signed together 
one lawyer, one strategy 
we had been a team 
together, barn-building, 
bridge. He stood by me 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 177 
as I strained at their 
birth. He hugged me 
in the bright summer sun on 
the main street - I will never 
fuck you around about this 
agreement. I will never 
keep the children 
from you. Holding me still 
tighter, his voice shaking 
too 
We memorize security codes, 
alarm systems. We ask when 
to push the panic button, 
how to guard the door. 
Dierdre brings us tea and 
cookies, hot chocolate and 
crackers. She shows us 
her tattoos, except the little 
devil, her old man's pride. 
- She is sweet, a counsellor 
says, it roots her 
victimization. 
Carol went home today, to the loving 
arms and heartfelt promises of the man 
who holds a gun to her head. 
Louise leaves too, 
tomorrow. She has paid 
for power, and rent. 
A secret place, alone. 
Tonight she chose the movie. 
Inside this fortress 
We are rewinding the love scene. 
178 / Volume 5, Number l 


coiled chalk circles