**4.2 Theme 2: the triple shift in mothering academics**

During the first semester of 2020, confinement policies enacted by governments across the world to try to reduce the spread of COVID-19 led to isolation and disconnectedness. Many mothering academics entered in a cycle of endless tasks that took over their lives. For many, this led to exacerbating the triple shift that included: (i) *work life* with administrative responsibilities, teaching, and research all virtual; (ii) *family life* with childcare and motherhood, including overseeing child education; and (iii) *domestic life* with chores and actions to convert one's home into one's work place.

For these academic mothers, the pandemic led to an intensification of responsibilities: elimination of any free time, taking over all aspects of their lives. As presented in the following quote, this led some of the mothers to be "on" 24/7 as they always had some duty to fill, whether that be maternal, household, or academic. Furthermore, in the extracts below, we can visualize certain subjections—produced by gendered norms and neoliberal labor—which led to the inability to successfully fulfill all three demands:

*"Quickly, you realize that you have no free time. That is over. For practically one year, every minute from the time you wake until you go to bed, every day of the week, I was required to accompany my son with his school and homework, to care for him (my son also has a disability that requires additional care), to maintain my household, and to complete my work remotely, which involved administration, research, and teaching. That alone required me to distribute each task or activity at specific times from Monday through Friday. Quickly, I realized that the only free time I had was when I was asleep. Obviously, this led to more stress, less sleep, and anxiety. Constantly feeling like you are not capable or you are not giving one hundred percent in any of these areas: not in your own work, not in your research, not as a mother, not even in household chores" (Mothering academic of a 7-yearold son, Chile).*

*"It is not just a matter of child care, but rather of coordinating their education that has multiplied during this time. In my work, I also must justify resources, respond to the ongoing financial crisis, or meet external demands. And there is the triple crisis: the academic difficulties that are the base, the transformation of mothering, and reorganizing time that has led to my productivity being diminished after the first third of the pandemic (…) Long work hours that start very early and end at an unpredictable hour. Then it's night, because evening has set in, and without realizing it I'm in front of the computer screen again and promising that this is: 'the last email I'll check, the last evaluation I'll send, the last recommendation that I'll send my students before the new day breaks'" (Mothering academic of two teenagers, Chile).*

On the other hand, these narratives show how the State, by focusing exclusively on a hygienic approach to the pandemic, did not consider how these

#### *Tensions, Challenges, and Resistance among Academic Mothers during the COVID-19 Pandemic DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104532*

measures could affect the organization and division of work (both paid and unpaid), or how to promote more equity in the co-responsibility for children. Instead, the state-imposed measures reinforced gendered norms and stereotypes, shifting responsibility instead to mothers. As presented in the following quote, mothers reported feeling drained emotionally, mentally, and physically:

*"The State has a double presence: It limits our mobility and requires each person to function individually in the middle of a global pandemic, but it also fails to acknowledge the disparate distribution of childcare and household work. It's not that there is an explicit policy, but rather it is doing it implicitly, by reinforcing the idea that mothers are responsible for those areas…..and in parallel, the university demands rhythms of work that do not align with the diverse experiences of the workforce during the pandemic. Obviously, looking at it structurally, the system leaves the responsibility with each individual—in this case, with us as women workers. They say: you have to take care of yourself, engage in self-care, and you will be successfully and achieve excellence. The immediate effect this has on us is obvious: stress, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, anxiety, burnout, and anger (Mothering Academic of a 7-year-old son, Chile).*

*"We get the call from daycare. For the second time since we sent M back to school, they call us to let us know that one of her classmates tested positive for COVID-19. We just adapted to this new normal, and yet another disruption to the routine" (Mothering Academic of a 3-year-old, USA).*

The measures taken by government to curb the pandemic required mothering academics to reorganize their work and develop new strategies to get their work done. Some of these strategies are observed in the following fragments include a more equitable distribution of responsibilities with their partners (among those with partners), contracting external help when possible, or collaborating with other academics to maintain productivity and publications. Through the following narrative, we see how extended family or support is missed, and the disruption in community support and camaraderie:

*"Our society assumes that mothers should be the ones who are with their children more. I feel extremely alone. I asked my family for help to pay for someone to come and help out, but everyone is scared and no one wants to leave their house (…) I have realized that I am very social and I miss little get togethers and interactions with other people. Perhaps during another era when families were not so nuclear, rather extended, care would have been difference. But how we are currently, I believe that the individualism of this pandemic has been very apparent, more so than solidarity" (Mothering Academic of a 7-year-old son, Chile).*

*"For now, the semester has finished. My teaching and service responsibilities at the university have been reduced. With my partner we take turns watching M. Once she is asleep, we work late. In contrast to last summer, this time we know it is temporary. In a few more days, daycare will open back up. I will catch up on proposals, articles, and preparing for the upcoming semester. And then, we can go back to our normal schedule" (Mothering Academic of a 3-year-old, USA).*

Strategies to reorganize daily life and responsibilities are described in the following narratives. This takes on a new meaning when coupled with strategies these mothering academics followed to keep up with their academic career, which required them to perform everything at once:

*"Trying to turn my home into a double work space has been, without a doubt, challenging. I've had to learn to turn off the microphone and camera to respond to scenes in my house where the lines between public and private life have blurred. Three months into the pandemic, I can say that I have found a new way to organize my work, with breaks to prepare food, eat, chat/visit with my children, do some cleaning, and then try to disconnect after hours of online meetings and teaching" (Mothering Academic of two teenagers, Chile).*

Through these processes, mothering academics learned by trial and error, developing strategies over time to accommodate and reconcile the triple shift generated during the pandemic.

#### **4.3 Theme 3: tactics for resistance and change**

Despite the tensions and challenges faced by the academic mothers, we also were able to see individual and collective tactics for resistance and change. Throughout the pandemic, there has been a focus on individual or family strategies to better cope with stress. For example, several agencies have called for self-care strategies, and families have been tasked with childcare and education.

One tactic that emerged from our auto-interviews was publicly acknowledging discomfort, needs, and problems with the pandemic. The idea of putting the triple shift in the public eye helps raise awareness of the negative impact on careers, creating at the same time coalitions and alliances among peers. Through these tactics, academic mothers retook their space, calling for more inclusion of the family, to generate collective contexts of support. The following narrative focuses on the role of new technology to be able to gather with other academic mothers and organize. Not only for solidarity as they navigate the triple shift, but also to raise a collective critique of governmental practices [66] that have been generated during the pandemic. Furthermore, they can organize and collaborate to demand changes to academia, without risking their own individual careers.

*"We have created a certain camaraderie among various people who have been aware of this intentional invisibility of the tiple shift imposed on by the governmental policies. Taking advantage of technology, we have opened up spaces to seek solace from the issues of the pandemic, but also to share with one another ways to challenge the pressure and connect with other academics. All of this helps us not stay behind in our own academic careers. This is one small example of how we don't just assume that the invisibility of the triple shift is something that cannot change. These meetings give us an opportunity to consider possible alliances among academic mothers, since we have scarce time to get together in our professional and personal lives" (Mothering Academic of a 7-year-old son, Chile).*

Similarly, resistance can occur in the private sphere. During the pandemic, it has been important (for those who have one) to negotiate daily tasks and responsibilities with a partner. In the following quotes, the academic mothers emphasized strategies they used to change how they performed roles within their families:

*"With my partner, we begin the negotiations. We open our calendars to compare our scheduled meeting times. We decide which ones we can postpone or miss, and which we could do while watching our three-year-old daughter. Given the confidentiality regulations at institutions of higher education in the USA (FERPA)* 

*Tensions, Challenges, and Resistance among Academic Mothers during the COVID-19 Pandemic DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104532*

*and other privacy protections for my students, I try to avoid taking M while I am teaching or attending confidential committee meetings. On his end, my partner avoids attending shorter meetings when he is with M, since the last time he tried she started yelling that he was being "too loud" during his meeting. We try to arrange it so that one of us can pay attention to her, but inevitably we have some overlapping meetings" (Mothering Academic of a 3-year-old, USA).*

*"Just as there is resistance, there is also adaptation and more subtle tactics like turning off the cameras, mentioning connectivity issues, or equipment problems, to try to adjust paid work and family work. There is a sort of resignification, which leads to new accommodations and in some sense risks in adapting and organizing academic work during the pandemic, which has normalized time and time again inequities in academic work, in child care and domestic chores. I take advantage of the week "of break" that the university gives us, so that I can catch up on all of the work I need to do, with publications, revising articles, and other documents" (Mothering Academic of two teenagers, Chile).*

#### **5. Conclusion**

This chapter provided a critical reflection of the tension and resistance that have emerged from remote work and conditions during the pandemic for three mothering academics. Their career trajectories have been affected and impacted by the measures the government has taken to contain the pandemic, coupled with gendered norms of household work and childcare, and the demands of productivity imposed by the university. The triple crisis alluded to in this text highlights the tensions and adaptations that these mothers have experienced in the care of their children, household and academic responsibilities, while also confronting gendered notions of motherhood during the pandemic.

As we conclude this chapter, we advocate for additional research to explore how other academic mothers have experienced structural changes in care—both within family systems and beyond. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen evidence of the importance of paid and unpaid work, highlighting the need to value unpaid work in the interior of the family. The COVID-19 crisis has drawn awareness to the need to redistribute responsibilities within the private sphere and convert them into a public problem, with a need for collective responsibility. In summary, more than a "care crisis," there is a need for "policies around care" [67].

The government and universities have not directly observed the care crisis that has intensified during the pandemic. As highlighted by the three narratives in this chapter, research is needed to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the academic gender gap. Therefore, it is of upmost importance that we critically review how we view care and its relationship with paid academic work, which often fails to acknowledge other roles or responsibilities individuals may have. Through tactics for resistance, even more subtle ones, we can begin to raise awareness of these inequities and call for collective action for change.

#### **Acknowledgements**

We would like to acknowledge ANID/CONICYT/Fondecyt 1190257, "Estudio longitudinal de trayectorias y transiciones investigativas de trabajadores sociales chilenos", within the Research Group "Diversidad y Genero: abordajes feministas interseccionales" at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Chile.
