The heated national conversation about gender equality and women in the workforce is something that women in academia have been concerned with and writing about for at least a decade. Overall, the conversation has focused on identifying how women in general and mothers in particular fair in the academy as a whole, as well as offering tips on how to maximize success. Aside from a long-standing field-specific debate in anthropology, rare are the volumes focusing on the particulars of motherhood's impacts on how scientific research is conducted, particularly when it comes to field research.   Mothering from the Field offers both a mosaic of perspectives from current women scientists' experiences of conducting field research across a variety of sub-disciplines while raising children, and an analytical framework to understand how we can redefine methodological and theoretical contributions based on mothers' experiences in order not just to promote healthier, more inclusive, nurturing, and supportive environments in physical, life, and social sciences, but also to revolutionize how we conceptualize research.  

Table of Contents:
Contents Introduction1 MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY AND BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD Part I Women and Mothers Doing Field Research: What Do We Know? 9 MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY 1 Women Working in the Field: Perspectives from STEM and Beyond 11 KELLY WARD, LISA WOLF-WENDEL, AND LINDSEY MARCO 2 Fieldwork and Parenting in Archaeology 27 STACEY L. CAMP Part II The Truth Is, It Will Be Hard: The Difficulties of Doing Field Research for Mothers 43 BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD 3 Malaria and Spider-Man: Conducting Ethnographic Research in Niger with a Three-Year-Old 47 KELLEY SAMS 4 Birthing in the Field 62 LYDIA ZACHER DIXON 5 Looking at the Field from Afar and Bringing It Closer to Home 76 CECILIA VINDROLA-PADROS Part III Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: The Importance of Networks and Family Support 89 BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD 6 Parenting through the Field: Criminal Justice Ethnography, Cinematography, and Field Photography in Africa with Our Babies 91 BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD AND MUNTAQUIM MUHAMMAD 7 Privilege, (In)Competence, and Worth: Conflicting Emotions of the Student-Mom and Her Support Community 108 GRACE KARRAM STEPHENSON, JOHN STEPHENSON, AND JOANNE FLORENCE KARRAM 8 Fathering in Support of Fieldwork: Lactation and Bourgeois Feminism (and More Privileged White People's Problems) 124 BRIAN C. WOLF Part IV This Too Shall Pass: Field Research before, during, and after Motherhood 135 MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY 9 Lactating in the Autopsy Room: Mothering from the Field When the Field Is a Morgue and Your Child Is a Nursing Infant 139 MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY 10 Fieldwork Adventures on the Mommy Track 155 ANNE HARDGROVE 11 Mommy in the Field: Raising Children and Breeding Plants 171 KIMBERLY GARLAND CAMPBELL Part V What Is the Field, Anyway? Mothers Redefining Field Methodologies 181 MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY 12 Entangled Knowledge: On the Labor of Mothering and Anthropological Fieldwork 185 SARAH KELMAN 13 "Manman, Poukisa Y'ap Rele M Blan?" (Mama, Why Are They Calling Me a White?): Research and Mothering in Haiti 201 MARYLYNN STECKLEY 14 Birthing the Social Scientist as Mother 222 DEIRDRE GUTHRIE 15 Two Notes on Bringing Children Other Than Your Own in the Field 239 APRILLE ERICSSON, DAWN ERICSSON PROVINE, ARIELLE ERICSSON WHITE, MIKAE PROVINE, PIERRE ERICSSON, BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD, AND MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY Part VI Practical Solutions to Complex Problems: Because Mothers Can Do Anything! 251 BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD 16 "I Don't Know How You Do It!": Countering a Narrative That Presumes That Researching and Mothering Are Incompatible 253 RYANNE PILGERAM 17 Ethnographic Research in Africa: The Hidden Costs of Conducting Fieldwork for Mothers with Children 264 BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD Conclusion 272 BAHIYYAH MIALLAH MUHAMMAD AND MÉLANIE-ANGELA NEUILLY Acknowledgments 281 Notes on Contributors 283 Index 293