Papa, PhD: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy

by Mary Ruth Marotte (Editor), Paige Reynolds (Editor), Ralph Savarese (Editor)

It is not easy raising a family and balancing work and personal commitments in academia, regardless of gender. Parents endure the stress of making tenure with the demands of life with children. While women's careers are derailed more often than men's as a result of such competing pressures, fathers, too, experience conflicting feelings about work and home, making parenting ever more challenging.

In Papa, PhD , Mary Ruth Marotte, Paige Martin Reynolds, and Ralph James Savarese bring together a group contributors from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. They are white, black, South Asian, Asian, and Arab. They are gay and straight, married and divorced. They are tenured and untenured, at research-one universities and at community colleges. Some write at the beginning of their careers, others at the end. But, perhaps most important they do not look back-they look forward to new parental and professional synergies as they reflect on what it means to be a father in the academy.

The fathers writing in Papa, PhD seek to expand their children's horizons, giving them the gifts of better topic sentences and a cosmopolitan sensibility. They seriously consider the implications of gender theory and queer theory-even Marxist theory-and make relevant theoretical connections between their work and the less abstract, more pragmatic, world of fathering. What resonates is the astonishing range of forms that fatherhood can take as these dads challenge traditional norms by actively questioning the status quo.

Genres: Essays

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Literary Mama]

Papa, Ph.D. follows on the heels of Mama, Ph.D.: Women Write about Motherhood and the Academic Life (edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans), a collection of essays published in 2008. However, as the editors of Papa, Ph.D. point out in the introduction, this essay collection differs "considerably, even provocatively" from its predecessor. Yes, the collection focuses on fathers attempting to balance an academic life with fatherhood, but for the most part without the anxiety, guilt, or intense frustration readers of Mama, Ph.D. may have expressed. If the male authors experience ambivalence over having to reconcile their role as a provider with their role as a nurturer, they have chosen -- or were perhaps encouraged, as the editors suggest in their introduction -- to keep it quiet. The decision is certainly not borne out of complacency; the authors are keenly aware of the inequalities faced by male and female academics (Jerald Walker notes ruefully that he is immune to the intrusive questions asked of his wife, also an academic, during her pregnancies, and that "male academics with babies, empirical evidence shows, are awesome"), but the book often celebrates fatherhood as a spur to accomplishment, creativity, and a greater insight into work. Even when fatherhood entails a white man raising adopted black children (Mark Montgomery's "How White Was My Prairie") or, in the case of both Ralph Savarese's "Vespers, Matins, Lauds: The Life of a Liberal Arts College Professor" and Mark Osteen's "Shared Attention: Hearing Cameron's Voice," severely autistic sons, the rigors of parenting are cast as an impetus to academic and intellectual achievement. Somehow, I find it difficult to imagine a woman intellectualizing such parenting challenges in quite the same way. For instance, Savarese notes in passing the diminished ambitions of his wife, who has had to put her own career and aspirations on hold to care for their son, and then in effect lets the subject go.

Read Literary Mama's full review here: http://www.literarymama.com/reviews/a...

[Rand]

Ten or so summers ago I had the privilege of spending four days with the (now recently deceased) son of one of the authors in this book.
You can read his contribution here.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am really so impressed by the diversity of experience and the stories in this collection. I found the essays very moving, and think the anthology will make a great contribution to the conversation about work/life in higher education. Read a full review by Irena Smith on Literary Mama: http://www.literarymama.com/reviews/a...