When is the right time? How can I meet the demands of a professorship whilst caring for a young
family? Choosing to become a mother has a profound effect on the career path of women holding
academic positions especially in the physical sciences. Yet many women successfully manage to
do both. In this second edition which is a project of the Women Chemists Committee (WCC) of
the American Chemical Society (ACS) 40 inspirational personal accounts describe the challenges
and rewards of combining motherhood with an academic career in chemistry. The authors are all
women at different stages of their career and from a range of institution types in both tenure
and non-tenure track positions. The authors include women from different racial and ethnic
backgrounds who became mothers at different stages of their career and who have a variety of
family structures. Aimed at undergraduate and graduate students of chemistry as well as
postdoctoral fellows and early career faculty these contributions serve as examples for women
considering a career in academia but worry about how this can be balanced with other important
aspects of life. The authors describe how they overcame particular challenges but also
highlight aspects of the system which could be improved to accommodate women academics and
particularly encourage more women to take on academic positions in the sciences.
