The Parent Track provides an in-depth understanding of parenting in
academia, from diverse perspectives--gender, age, race/ethnicity,
marital status, sexual orientation--and at different phases of a
parent's academic career. This collection not only arrives at a
comprehensive understanding of parenthood and academia; it reveals the
shifting ideologies surrounding the challenges of negotiating work and
family balance in this context. Earlier research on parenting has
documented the ways in which women and men experience, and subsequently
negotiate, their roles as parents in the context of the workplace and
the home. Particular attention has been paid to the negotiation of
familial and childcare responsibilities, the division of labour, the
availability of family-friendly policies, social constructions of
motherhood and fatherhood, power relations, and gender roles and
inequality. Studies on the experience of parenthood within the context
of academia, however, have lacked diversity and failed to provide
qualitative accounts from scholars of all genders at varying points in
their academic careers who have, or are planning to have, children. This
book addresses that gap.