Navigating Academia, Career and Motherhood

School bells rang again this week, marking the end of holidays and the return to routine. Lunchboxes are back. Drop-offs are back. The juggle is back.

Some days, I’m elbow-deep in meetings, grant applications and emails. Other days, I’m racing to get to school drop-off before the bell. Most days? I’m doing both.

Being a mother in academia, or in many professions, isn’t a clean divide. It’s a constant negotiation between ambition and exhaustion, purpose and presence, deadlines and dinner. It’s not about balance. It’s about the invisible logistics, the emotional labour, and the quiet recalibrations we make every day.

And what cuts deeper than the juggle is the external judgement.

Recently, after I mentioned working over the school holidays, someone said to me, “I love my job, but I’ll always prefer family adventures.”

On the surface, it sounds supportive - a casual reflection or someone sharing their values. But it lingered. Beneath the surface was a familiar assumption: that choosing meaningful work somehow competes with being a devoted parent. It’s a subtle judgement and one that working mothers recognise instantly.

It implied something I’ve heard all too often: that by continuing to show up in my career, I’m somehow choosing ambition over my child. That working mothers are less “present,” less committed, less deserving of the space they occupy.

This is the kind of quiet judgment that stings the most - because it’s disguised as kindness, but it holds a double standard that working mothers know all too well.

Another said:

“I could never do that - leave my child to travel overseas for work.”

And then there are the questions. Always the questions.

“Should you really do that work?”
“How will your family manage if you’re away?”

They sound like concern, but they’re really about permission. They’re rarely asked of fathers.

These comments linger because they hit where we’re already tender. They echo a deeper, cultural belief that mothers must constantly justify their choices and that ambition is suspect if you’re also holding a child’s hand.

But what those comments don’t see is this:

That I’ve stepped out of UN sessions to say goodnight to my son.
That I’ve written papers while breastfeeding.
That I’ve sat on panels, given lectures, and led projects with my heart in two places, but never divided.

I don’t do this alone. I am blessed with a partner who shows up. Not just in the highlight reels, but in the everyday: school drop-offs, meal prep, sick days, and those crucial words: “go, I’ve got this.”

And I have a son who knows that love doesn’t disappear with distance. That I can travel for work and still be his. That my presence at home is not measured by my hours, but by how I show up.

This life isn’t easy. It’s full, imperfect, and layered with complexity.
But I am not choosing work over my family.
I am choosing a life where both can grow - sometimes in separate places, but always toward each other.

I love my work.
I love my family.
And I refuse to shrink either one to make the other feel palatable.

I am a mother.
I am an academic.
I am part of a team.

Fully. Fiercely. Unapologetically. All of it.