This volume offers both theoretical and research-based accounts from mothers in academia who must balance their own intricate knowledge of school systems, curriculum and pedagogy with their children's education and school lives. It explores the contextual advantages and disadvantages of "knowing too much" and how this impacts children's actions, scholastics and developing consciousness along various lines. Gathering narratives from academic women in traditional and nontraditional maternal roles, this volume presents both contemporary and retrospective experiences of what it's like to raise children amidst educational and sociocultural change.

Introduction Kimberly A. Scott & Allison Henward Section I: Insider/Outsider 1. An Autoethnography: Building Bridges Maysaa Barakat 2. Inside, Outside, Upside Down: Mother-Scholars Navigating the World of Education Jody Eberly and Louise Ammentorp 3. Paralyzed by "Choice": School Selection and the Things that Matter Littisha Bates 4. Reconfiguring Motherhoods: Transmogrifying the Maternal Entanglements of Feminist Academics Jane Osgood, Red Ruby Scarlet/Miriam Giugni, and Kalwant Bhopal Section II: Place and Finding Belonging 5. The Utmost for our Children: Reimagining Multicultural and Critical Education for the Twenty-first Century (A Mother's Tale) Lorri Johnson Santamaría 6. "Mommy, Will You Die Today When you Go to Work?": Intersectional Reflections on Negotiating Life as an Early Childhood Professor and Parenting A Child Healing from Early Relational Trauma Julie Nicholson and Linda Perez 7. A Vision for our Children's Education: Navigating Tensions between Mothers and Scholars Sandy Farquhar, Esther Fitzpatrick, and Deidre Le Fevre 8. Telling Tales out of School Sarah Beck 9. "Power Parents" and the Gentrification of the PTA Kirsten Cole Section III: Activism, Advocacy, and Space 10. Advocating in the Dark Fabienne Doucet 11. "I Can't Bring my Imagination to School. It Gets Me in Trouble": Learning How to Think and Fit inside the Box in Kindergarten I Fang Lee 12. Just another Black Mom of another Black Male Rachelle Warren 13. "Are we Going to Read Anything That's not Written by White Men about White Men?": A Mother and Daughter Working for School Change Kathy Nakagawa and Willa Eigo