In his book, The Souls of Black Folk, renowned sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois (1903), relays the story âOf the Passing of the First Born.â There, he overlayed his racial analysis of the Veil upon the context of âa Negro and a negroâs sonâ (p. 115), claiming the following:
Holding in that little headâah, bitterly!âhe unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled handâah, wearily!âto a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as that began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of my life. (p. 115)
As Du Bois offers here, the pain of witnessing the innocence of your own child robbed by circumstances beyond your control creates a particular sense of despair that only a parent knows. That our parental instinct to protect our cubs are nothing but laughable embraces unable to provide the ironclad protection so needed is gut-wrenching. Simply put, it destroys us-parents because it seemingly strips us of our agency to parent. In fact, of recent, I too succumbed to that level of desperation, knowing that after the expiration of a permanent restraining order against my then domestically violent husband, children of abuse are often forced to spend time with that same abuser. Alas, there is not much a woman can do to protect their children when violence, according to the court system, is oftentimes strictly defined in current physical termsâas if the lasting trauma of past physical, emotional, psychological, and financial abuse are now unworthy of further protection. And this is precisely the sense of hopelessness, moreover, terror a parent, or, more apropos to this book, a mother feels. For she, like the biblical story of King Solomon, would be more
Yet, as disparaging as pain is in this sense, it still is not the real loss here. Instead, the real loss resides in the uncontrollable circumstances, be it Veil, toxic coparent, or even, in the case of this book, COVID-19. Because as these uncontrollable circumstances exert their hellish havoc, a mother transforms their chaos into a steadfast love. Meaning, amidst it all, her love grows exponentially. In the end, this pain to protect our babes only makes us more loving; a strength of surviving that no one can strip.
Academic Mothering: Fabulating Futures for Higher Education attempts to capture this pain of honoring both our roles as mothers and as academics. Though COVID-19 was initially a worldwide uncontrollable pandemic now better controlled, the havoc, distress, and trauma it left behind are still felt today, especially for the many women who were bound to their homes 24-7 both working and raising children. And, as these academic mothers were forced in isolation to host classes online, attend meetings online, and conduct research online, they did so while raising children who were also confined to the home with online schooling. Literally the already blurred boundaries between work and home faded to nonexistent.
Beyond commiserating on the past or present struggles of being what I call a motherscholarâone who both mothers and scholars simultaneously; whose identities equally informing the other much like Leonardoâs concept of raceclass (see Matias, 2011, 2022), this edited book is about âcultivating something hopeful for the futures of academia, and academic motheringâ (Introduction). This hopeful future is captured when each author painstakingly shares their traumatic experiences of mothering while in academia during COVID-19 to inform and support a better future for other academic moms. In fact, in one chapter the authors write, âIt is our hope that other mothers, queer people, and folks who feel like they are drowning in both expectations and lack of support will find our experience helpful and hopefulâ (Hermann-Wilmarth & Ryan, 2023). Another author poetically ends her chapter with the following:
â¦
Clearly, whether using graphic pictorials or poetry, these authors creatively capture how a motherscholar (see Matias, 2011, 2022) transforms her own lamentations of juggling motherhood, academia, and COVID-19 into praxes of hope, community, strength, and love. For it is, as Du Bois reminds us, the passing of our own tears where we realized how deeply we love. That is, Du Boisâs lamentations over the passing of his son are indicative of how much a father loves his child. My lamentations of bearing witness to children struggling with reunification of their abusive fathersâforever fighting to protect themâare indicative of how much mothers love their children. And, in the same likeness, the lamentations presented in this book are only indicative of the love we, as motherscholars, will also have for our children, careers, and life. As such, our lamentations are not so sad. Indeed, they are just testaments to our strength.
References
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The souls of Black folk. A.C. McClurg & Co.
Matias, C. E. (2011). âCheryl Matias, PhD and mother of twinsâ: Counter storytelling to critically analyze how I navigate the academic application, negotiation, and relocation process [Paper]. American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, LA.
Matias, C. E. (2022). Birthing the motherscholar and motherscholarship. Peabody Journal of Education, 97(2), 246â250. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2022.2055897