Babies Don’t Care That You Have a Paper Due: Understanding How Midwives Manage the Demands of Postgraduate Education in Ontario

Abstract

Midwives enrolled in postgraduate education juggle academic demands alongside professional and family demands. With only one midwifery-specific postgraduate education program in Canada, most midwives who pursue postgraduate education enroll in nonmidwifery programs. The aims of this study were (1) to understand midwives’ experiences of postgraduate education in Eastern Ontario, Canada and (2) to examine how gender and discourses influenced midwives’ experiences of postgraduate education. Using feminist poststructuralism, we conducted individual interviews with four participants, which we analyzed using feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis. In this paper, we share one of the main themes Juggling multiple priorities—Keeping all the balls in the air and the corresponding four subthemes from this study. A clear vision for midwifery postgraduate education and engagement with midwives are necessary for the development of more postgraduate opportunities that are responsive to midwives’ needs and interests in Ontario and in other Canadian provinces.