Beschreibung

Motherhood and academia are both 24/7 roles. When they collide, focus fractures, guilt grows and exhaustion follows. Writing While Caring explores the structural and emotional challenges faced by mothers in academia and offers a care-sensitive approach to reclaiming focus, rebuilding academic identity and practicing deep work under conditions of care responsibility.

Motherhood does not simply add a new role to an academic life — it transforms the very conditions under which thinking, writing and researching become possible. Writing While Caring addresses a largely overlooked structural inequality: the unequal access to uninterrupted concentration for mothers in academia.Drawing on feminist care theory, research on matrescence and productivity studies, Wiebke Vogelaar analyzes five core challenges that shape academic motherhood: exhaustion, lack of autonomy, fragmentation, guilt and insecurity. She introduces key concepts such as Academic Mom Guilt, Recovery Procrastination and Focus Kegels — a metaphor for reclaiming concentration as a form of cognitive postpartum rehabilitation.Rather than offering superficial productivity hacks, the book develops a holistic and care-sensitive deep work philosophy. It integrates writing didactics, mindfulness-based approaches and structural reflection to help mothers rebuild their relationship with their text, their research and their academic identity.Writing While Caring is both analytical and practical: it names what has long remained individualized and invisible, while offering concrete strategies for reclaiming focus within fragmented and care-intensive everyday lives.This book speaks to doctoral candidates, postdocs and professors alike — and to anyone interested in the intersection of care, gender and academic labor.

The author:
Dr. Wiebke Vogelaar is a political scientist, author and coach with a PhD in International Relations who has worked as a researcher in Germany and internationally and is the founder of Alma Mater, a company supporting mothers in academia

The subject:
Key skills

Zusätzliche Informationen

Autor*innen

Wiebke Vogelaar

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Keywords

Academic Writing, care work, Deep Work, Feminist Productivity | Key competencies, Focus, Gender and Academia, Matrescence, Mental Load, Motherhood, Work-Life Conflict