Mothers doing doctorates part-time – why do we make it harder than it needs to be?

Doing a PhD is hard. It’s hard even when everything goes right with your research project and it’s hard even when everything is set up to support you through three-years of full-time study. Put simply, it’s hard because it involves an intensive period of what has been called the ‘highest learning’ and because it involves mastering the advanced knowledges and skills necessary to be welcomed into the relevant disciplinary community. It’s hard because learning and managing a long term project is hard.