This is us now. Collectively making sense of our new identities as parents and early career academics

Authors Frederike Scholz, Sanne Nijs, Keri Anne Pekaar, Karen Pak, Jeske van Beurden, Robin Bauwens, Andromachi Spanouli, Christine Yin Man Fong, Sjanne Marie van den Groenendaal, Sasa Batistic
Published in Culture and Organization
Publication date 2025
Research groups Organisaties in Digitale Transitie
Type Article

Summary

In this paper, we draw on our subjective experiences as Early Career Academics (ECAs) at a Dutch University to demonstrate our complex relationship between academic life and parenthood. Building on the sensemaking literature, we employ a collective autoethnography to unveil six distinct new parent scripts that ECA parents, like us, adopt when navigating boundaries between work and non-work tasks in academia. Our scripts are dynamic, and full of emotions, showing our raw and unfiltered experiences of becoming mothers and fathers by reflecting on identity sensemaking processes that we undergo, as individuals and as a collective. We hope by writing differently and showing vulnerability our study can encourage more understanding of the complexity of new parenthood within academia, and at the same time stimulate further debates to challenge current structures that hinder ECAs from balancing their work and family lives by creating a more inclusive academic environment for all of us.

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On this publication contributed

  • Frederike Scholz
    • College senior lecturer
    • Research group: Organisaties in Digitale Transitie
Language Engels
Published in Culture and Organization
Key words parents, early career academics, collective authoethnography, sensemaking, boundaries
Digital Object Identifier 10.1080/14759551.2025.2492092
Page range 1-19

Frederike Scholz

Frederike Scholz

  • College senior lecturer
  • Research group: Organisaties in Digitale Transitie