Jason Indarto - week 5 - ss1

This week’s reading “Mothering is Liberation: Giving Birth to Alagaan Pedagogy (Pedagogy of Care)” by Allyson Titiangco-Cubales gives an overview of how she deals with motherhood and her scholar life. In the reading, she elaborates on how she often find herself questioning “Am I spending enough time with my child?”, “Am I giving enough attention to my partner?” , “Am i publishing enough?”, and other common questions that mother scholars tend to ask themselves. Although maintaining her scholar life as well as her family life are notioned to be difficult, she argues that they are both the same side of the coin. However, she deals with things called microaggression which are the preconceived notion of what a mother and a scholar is supposed to be. Although her peers and her friends ask her questions concerning these two topics about the author’s life, the questions that are unintentionally doubtful and harmful are perceived raise questions regarding how the author deals with one another. As the reading goes on, she explains how these two important aspects of her life may seem to be on a scale that never seems to balance but on the contrary it is nothing like that she explains. In fact, towards the end, she mentions “In reference to my multiple roles as a community-engaged motherscholar of color, I have been asked over and over, “how do you do it all?” And I think there’s a simple answer: “I don’t do it alone.”” (Titiangco-Cubales, 2019). She thinks of these two aspects of her life, motherhood and being a scholar, as reinforcing elements that help one another succeed in the author’s life. One teaches another and by doing so it helps the authors do a good job in having enough time for both aspects of her life that are thought to be impossible by the notions of doubt by society. In my opinion, this is an amazing example of mothers balancing work and family. Since the percentage of women in the workforce is steadily increasing over the last century, the stereotype that women belong in the household are no longer persist but a new stereotype emerges that questions how working mothers balance work and motherhood. This begs the question, what if working mothers still struggle to balance work and family, what will happen to either one if one is overweighed more than the other?

Tintiangco-Cubales, A. (2019) Mothering is Liberation: Giving Birth to Alagaan Pedagogy (Pedagogy of Care)

Hansen, A. (2019) Why Being a Working Mom is Good for Your Children, Not to Mention Gender Equality. Accessed (July 22 2019) obtained from <https://theglasshammer.com/2016/08/18/why-being-a-working-mom-is-good-for-your-children-not-to-mention-gender-equality/>