AS IN THE FEW existing anthologies that focus on the work–life balance for mothers, we conclude our volume with solutions for creating more parent-friendly institutions of higher learning in order to change the ivory tower. This final part begins with a very concrete example of how contemporary libraries are developing policies that are more compatible with women’s service needs and research interests and by extension their families’ needs. One policy and ideological change that Gilda Baeza Ortego addresses in “Academic Library Policies: Advocating for Mothers’ Research and Service Needs” is the need to examine critically how academic libraries have historically supported intellectual pursuits of primarily male library users. Ortego’s suggestions are followed by a conversation between a graduate student, a tenured academic administrator, and a pretenure professor. Throughout their essay “Reimagining the Fairytale of Motherhood in the Academy,” Barbara A. W. Eversole, Darlene M. Hantzis, and Mandy A. Reid weave personal experience with a discussion of how university policies impact mothers in the academy and how mothers in the academy can affect policy.
Next, Sandra L. French and Lisa Baker-Webster’s essay “Tales from the Tenure Track: The Necessity of Social Support in Balancing the Challenges of Tenure and Motherhood” explores the social networks that tenure-track women create in order to succeed both at work and at home. Although female professors’ social support networks are useful to all tenure-track women, they are crucial to women balancing the challenges of tenure achievement and motherhood. In “How Higher Education Became Accessible to Single Mothers: An Unfinished Story,” Summer R. Cunningham highlights issues for graduate students with regard to a work–life balance, social support, financial obligation, and administrative policy in an academic culture that oftentimes does not seem conducive to single motherhood. She tells a story about overcoming obstacles, but also a story that exposes the root of those obstacles in the hope that we might work to remove them in order to create a smoother path for other mothers. Another example of working collaboratively to support each other’s work is Erynn Masi de Casanova and Tamara Mose Brown’s essay “Making It Work: Success Strategies for Graduate Student Mothers.” They outline six “do’s” and “don’ts” that graduate students can follow to negotiate mothering while in school and that aim to motivate graduate students to finish their coursework and dissertation as they take on one of life’s most challenging jobs: parenting. In “Academic Mothers on Leave (but on the Clock), on the Line (and off the Record): Toward Improving Parental-Leave Policies and Practices,” Colleen S. Conley and Devin C. Carey explore the issues academic mothers face in negotiating maternity leave. It reviews various policies and practices, relates personal accounts of successes and challenges, examines the outcomes of various leave policies and practices, and offers recommendations for supportive policies. This last part ends with “Supporting Academic Mothers: Creating a Work Environment with Choices” by Brenda K. Bushouse, in which she mixes her personal history with a review of family-leave policies. The mother of twins, Bushouse concludes with a discussion about the need for advocates to support successful implementation of family-leave policies and continued support throughout the tenure process.