Daring to Be a Mother: A Case Study on Being Black, Being Pregnant, and Being a STEM Doctoral Student.

This singular holistic case study examined the experience of a Black pregnant mother pursuing doctoral studies in a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) field at a predominantly white flagship institution in the southern United States. We employed the tenets of critical race feminism in this study to demonstrate the ways in which structural racism and pervasive gender stereotypes, specifically as they relate to Black women, present obstacles to successful completion of doctoral STEM studies. We narrate her story to highlight the insight inherent within her intersecting identities that challenges dominant narratives about a Black pregnant doctoral student. In bringing to the fore four themes surfaced: the triple consciousness of layered Blackness, the pregnant Black tax, Chemical imbalance: mapping a white man's reality onto a Black mother's body, and internal struggles and the complex intra-actions that birthed them – we present a counternarrative to the dominant white-male centred STEM discourse that permeates the field. We conclude by extrapolating, from this case, considerations for faculty and institutions to understand better and act to comprehensively support Black students, in general, and Black mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]