spent a large part of my 30s suffering — largely in silence — because I couldn’t seem to get pregnant. And whenever I did, I had a miscarriage. Those were also my years on the tenure track, when I was working madly to publish, perfect my teaching, and do academic service in order to achieve a decent salary, job stability, and a successful career.

My body didn’t cooperate with the need to do well in my job, stay sane, and get pregnant. Mostly I didn’t talk about it, though. Because in academe, you don’t.

In recent years, we’ve had plenty of discussions about “Academia’s ‘Baby Penalty’” — i.e., that men with young children are 35 percent more likely to get tenure-track jobs and 20 percent more likely to earn tenure than women in the same boat. Even male professors have published op-eds about how “family-friendly” policies in higher education — such as paternal leave — could actually result in career advancement for men and career decline for women.

But in that public conversation, there is a glaring absence of discussion about the private reality of miscarriage. About 15 to 25 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. Yet in the United States, as anthropologist Linda L. Layne has shown, pregnancy loss is our “taboo.” The culture of silence surrounding miscarriage adds a further strain to the ability of female faculty members to succeed in academe.

Read the entire post here.