Women's Journeys in Academia: Plan B as Childless and Childfree Women in Higher Education

Introduction

Being a woman is often simultaneously equated with motherhood. Whether by choice or circumstance, not having children means you exist outside of cultural norms in a motherhood-centric society. Although extensive scholarship, journalism, and discussion within the popular culture have examined the challenges of being a working mother in higher education (e.g., Mason, 2013; Schnackenberg, 2019), meager in comparison are discourses focused on women without children. This silent sisterhood (Stenström, 2020) faces stigma and often unacknowledged challenges that can negatively impact these women's well-being and career advancement.

Our goal is to share an often-invisible perspective of childless and childfree women in academia within the child-focused field of teacher education. Children are the cornerstone of the teaching profession, and educators must have a natural affinity for mentoring youth as their students. The following will describe the impacts of being mid-career childless or childfree women in academia, both personally as well as professionally. Three case study descriptions are included as a model for personal and professional experiences as both childless as well as voluntarily childfree.

Background

The US Census Bureau estimates that in 2018 “more than 1 in 7 women were childless by the ages of 40 to 44, up from 1 in 10 in 1976” (Valerio et al., 2021, p. 1). Although more women in the US remain childless into middle age, their status remains stigmatized as others within our pronatalist society. Pronatalism is the cultural belief that expects all women “want to, can, and will be mothers” (Graham et al. 2019, p. 72). Evidence of the intertwined conception of womanhood with motherhood is the popular saying, “There's no more important job than motherhood!” (Notkin, 2011, para. 10). Other achievements by childless women are often perceived as less worthy of celebration, such as earning terminal degrees, tenure, and promotions (Graham et al. 2019). The gendered lower status also extends to career fields predominately populated by women, including education from early childhood education through teacher education in higher education.

Although the field of education did not begin as a female-dominated field, it became one after the Civil War when public education was established (Hoffman, 1994). Teaching was once believed to be the only suitable employment outside of the home for single, childless women besides caretaking and nursing. As late as the 1950s, married women were barred from the teaching profession. Men have more often assumed higher status, supervisory roles of principals and superintendents since the inception of public education. Toward the end of the 20th century, while still female denominated, teaching became a suitable career for mothers, particularly at the elementary level. The schedule permitted them to be with their children during summer and after-school hours. Current day teachers would readily attest that the myth of shorter work hours and summers free of teaching-related responsibilities does not match the realities of the job (Wong, 2019). The gendered role expectations of teaching are directly linked to educators' low compensation and the widening gender gap between females to males in the teaching profession (Wong, 2019).