#Sciencemamas podcast: Bethany Kolbaba Kartchner

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MOTHER GUILT ISN’T PRODUCTIVE FOR ANYONE SAYS BETHANY KOLBABA KARTCHNER

In 2012, at the age of 37, Bethany Kolbaba Kartchner, a stay-at-home mother of six children ages 2-12, decided that she wanted to become a PhD-level biochemist. This career change required her to return to academia to take the necessary classes to apply to a doctorate program. To reduce any disruptions to her family’s schedule, she took one online class a semester at a community college. For 4 years, she studied from 4-6 AM before her children started their day. Eventually, to complete the required upper division classes, she enrolled at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. As her children matured, she got involved in protein design in the lab of Jeremy Mills where she fell in love with research. In 2018, she started the PhD program in Biochemistry at ASU. She will defend her thesis in 2023. 

Bethany believes that her strong support network is the key to successfully navigating her career change. She sees her support network as two parts. The first is a local network consisting of friends and family. Her husband, children, and parents are a tremendous source of emotional and physical support. The second part is less tangible and consists of the examples and stories of other female role models. One story that Bethany found especially inspirational was of a woman scientist with 6 children who received an award for excellence in research. “I thought, that’s me! And if she can do it, I can do it.”

As Bethany’s career change trajectory gathered speed, she made it a point to prepare both herself and her family for her increasing time away from home to work in the lab. Her husband was able to establish a more flexible work schedule so he could take over meal preparation and grocery shopping and she taught her children to be more self-sufficient. For herself, she got very serious about her time management skills.She also became very creative in her work schedule. She is fortunate that she has the support of her colleagues, PI, and other faculty members as she navigates a flexible schedule. “I feel like everyone is rooting for me and cheering me on,” she says.

Mom guilt was a challenge that Bethany wrestled with throughout her life until she met Jane Clarke, a renowned scientist-mother, and now president of Wolfson College in Cambridge, UK. When Bethany learned that Jane also returned to academia later in life to obtain her doctorate, she asked her what advice she would give her younger self starting on that path. Jane’s answer really struck a nerve. She said, “I would tell myself that the children are just fine. They’re doing fine.” This statement pushed Bethany to rethink the mom guilt that often manifested itself as worry. She realized that worrying about her children all the time “isn’t helping them in any way and it isn’t helping me in any way. If there is a problem that I need to address as a mother in raising my children, worrying about it isn’t going to address it. It is just wasted energy. I think that it is better if there is a problem, to face it head on as opposed to wasting that energy on that worry…So when I did start to worry, I would ask myself is there really a basis for this? Do I really need to be concerned about this? Or is this just me being silly? Whenever I decided it was me being silly, I would redirect my thoughts to something more productive because that mother guilt isn’t productive for anyone.” 

#Sciencemamas podcast: Salome Maswime

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THE BIG THING IS THAT IT’S NOT AN EITHER/OR, WE WANT TO DO BOTH AND WE SHOULD DO BOTH SAYS SALOME MASWIME

Salome Maswime is a mother of two boys, an obstetrician and gynecologist, the Head of Global Surgery at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the President of the South African Clinician Scientists Society. She is recognized as a global surgery expert for her research on cesarean sections and is an advocate for women’s health rights and equity in maternal care. Both of her boys were born during her early career while she was still in training. Although it wasn’t easy for her because there wasn’t a built-in maternity leave option at the university, she was supported by her supervisor and family. 

When the children were 3 and 6 years old, she moved to Boston, Massachusetts to be a Discovery MGH research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. For her career, it was the right move, but it was hard on her family because the United States does not have the childcare support she was used to in South Africa. She relied on a village of caregivers, including family members, who would travel to the United States to care for her children when she had conferences to attend. One of her children enjoyed the experience, but the second struggled. She quickly learned that you need to prepare your children for large transitions. “We learned how much time we need to prepare the kids…It’s not as simple as moving to America. You have to present every possible scenario. Find the schools before you go there so that the kids know where they’re going and what to expect…If we had taken the time to…prepare them, it would have been easier.” The second time she moved the family for her career, she and her husband prepared the way by traveling to the new city in advance. The transition was a lot easier on her boys.

Like many science mamas, Salome has succumbed to mother guilt, but she has learned that being both a mother and a scientist is worth it. “Sometimes you realize why it was worth it to do both. And sometimes the kids themselves cheer you on….Then you see your kids being proud of you as well. Those moments keep you going.” She goes on to say that one of the benefits of being a working mother is: “We get to inspire our kids. We can be an example to them and help them model how they want to do their lives and careers one day by doing what we’re doing. It’s always lovely when I hear one of my sons say, ‘I want to be a doctor one day.’ You know that you’re inspiring him in the right way. He’s not focused on…’you’re not always here for me’…If he wants to be [a doctor], he’s seeing the balance.” 

Her advice to other women who want to be working mothers is: “The big thing is that’s it’s not an either/or. We want to do both and we should do both. It’s about planning and navigating and creating those support systems. The question should be ‘how can I do it’ and ‘how can I manage it’ versus ‘should I or not’. The longer you delay having children, the more risks there are, speaking as an obstetrician…The answer is not let me get my PhD…and then later on I can start in on the family. I think it is possible to do both in a very supportive environment. But women should also acknowledge their place in science as well. We should, and can become leaders in science as well, and be at the front of discoveries and leading. More often than not I think women put themselves second and…focus on the family and let other people lead, but we need more women leaders in research and science.” 

#Sciencemamas podcast: Alexandra Olaya-Castro

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MULTITASKING IS A FALLACY SAYS ALEXANDRA OLAYA-CASTRO

Alexandra Olaya-Castro is a Colombian-born theoretical physicist, mother of two, and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London. She is also the Vice-Dean over Equality, Diversity and Inclusion of the Mathematical and Physical Science Faculty.

As a successful scientist-mother in the male-dominated field of physics, she is frequently asked how she is able to balance her work as a mother while making progress as a scientist. She responds with four pieces of advice. The first is to build a strong support network, whether that network is composed of a group of people or just one good person. “Having a strong support network gives you the tranquility to be able to tackle work issues without having to worry about many of those family issues.” 

The second piece of advice is to be aware that “sometimes you will need to accept that you will have to put a lot of your focus on your work and sometimes you will need to accept that you will need to put your whole focus on your family.  You will need to decide which frequency is the best for you.” Like most science mamas, Alexandra has struggled with mother guilt. However, she also realized early on that it was a horrible cycle that she needed to break. She did this by learning to trust herself. From experience, she knows that she won’t forget what is most important.

The third piece of advice is that multitasking is a fallacy. “You can try to do it, but it is unsustainable. You will feel overworked. You will feel overloaded. You will feel too tired. And in the end you will feel that you will feel like you are inadequate on all fronts.” Alexandra knows that science mamas have a limited amount of time so prioritizing one’s focus is the only way to make progress. Before she was a mother, she would work at all hours and attend as many seminars as she could even if they weren’t in her field. Once she became a mother, she got choosier about how she spends her time at work. If publishing a paper or attending a conference will further her progress more than another activity, she will make sure that is her priority. “The only way to make it is to optimize the time to do the things that are the most important and accept that you won’t be able to do it all.  You have to learn that some things have to give and you need to identify which things are the most important and put your energy on those.”

Her fourth piece of advice is to take the time to exercise even when it is difficult to fit in. She says, “without it my mind wouldn’t work.”

#ScienceMamas podcast: Cara Tannenbaum

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IF YOU THINK IT’S NOT POSSIBLE, IT IS, SAYS CARA TANNENBAUM

As a young researcher-in-training, Cara Tannenbaum was so in love with science that she was not sure she wanted to have children. However, life had other plans.  Now, in addition to being a mother of four, she is a professor in the Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy at the Université de Montréal, Canada, the scientific director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Departmental Science Advisor for Health Canada. 

Mid-career, she was a single mother of two, wrangling the challenges of childcare and work responsibilities with the often associated mother-guilt. Advice from other mothers flipped the way she viewed mother-guilt. She was advised to refrain from telling her children that she felt guilty about working, but instead to tell them how excited she was about her science and her job.

“I had to change my narrative to be more positive….The words that you use, what you communicate is important.” -Cara Tannenbaum

For example, instead of apologizing to her children for attending an international conference, she told them how much she looked forward to communicating her science and seeing her friends. She also made a date with them once she returned to discuss their experiences. Later on, one of her children mentioned how much her enthusiasm for her job meant to him.

When it comes to work-life balance, what she has learned is that a perfect balance is not possible and that quality time and finding fulfillment is a better metric. “I’ve given up the term balance. How you seek balance. That is just not a realistic aim in my opinion if you’re going into academia. But, what you can seek is fulfillment.” She goes on to state, “You can’t have it all. In the pizza pie of life, there’s going to be one slice that just is always going to be missing….There’s going to be different moments where you’re going to have to prioritize and for me that’s about quality and fulfillment not necessarily a perfect balance.” -Cara Tannenbaum


Don’t forget you can also listen (and subscribe!) to the ScienceMamas podcast on iTunes and on SoundCloud!

#ScienceMamas podcast: Rebecca Johnson

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There’s no perfect time to start a family, says Rebecca Johnson, but do make sure you think about it in terms of your biology and health, as well as your career plans.

“It’s not going to be easy, whatever road you go down. I’m exhausted all the time!”

Rebecca Johnson was in her forties when she had her daughter in 2017. She is the dean of academics at the Marine Corps War College, and had been in this position for about a year and a half before she had her daughter last year.

I wanted to know whether it was a conscious decision to wait until this stage of her career/life to start a family. She had always known she’d wanted to be married before starting a family, and it just happened that she didn’t meet her husband until later in life. But, there are many young women who can’t decide when is the right time to have a family. Rebecca’s advice falls into two clear categories: biology and what’s right for you and your career.

  1. Biology: Know yourself in terms of your medical history. “I was almost 42 when my daughter was born… If your mum went through early menopause, waiting until your early forties might not be a responsible option for you.”
  2. Career stage: “I’ve known friends of mine who had their children when they were completing a PhD programme. I don’t think women necessarily have to wait to have their children, to develop themselves professionally. But was I would say though, is that I absolutely feel like since I’m more senior in my field I’ve got more credibility, I’ve got a reputation already.”

As a dean, Rebecca has to attend conferences to represent her school and her discipline. It’s not often that you see a senior academic with a tiny one in tow. For some, this is a big deal. For Rebecca, it’s not.

“She’s a baby… you see babies all the time. Like, what’s the drama? She’s not screaming in the room. She’s not disrupting the panel… The fact that the baby’s sitting here, breathing oxygen and not being in anyway disruptive, who cares?”

Having children doesn’t make working easy, but it can have a positive impact on your working career.

“She certainly makes me more efficient time manager. So this bias that working mums are somehow less capable I find laughable. Because I feel like I get so much more done now. It’s survival.”

Guilty feelings are something that every working mother has to deal with, no exceptions. But the placement of guilt is different for every woman, depending on which parts of your life take the hit. For Rebecca, it’s the home (“our house is a disaster”), but she also needs to make sure her relationship with her husband doesn’t take a hit.

“There’s a lot of me-and-her time, and him-and-her time. And a lot of the me-and-him time, is household management. And keeping the marriage relationship, when you’re exhausted. And I’m not just talking about sex… but just the general relationship: having a connection, a friendship and a bond, and emotional bond with your partner. It’s easy to let that slide because you know it’s good and there are all these other fires you’ve got to put out…. you need to stay invested in it.”

Based on her experiences, Rebecca pulled together some lovely bits of advice:

  1. “If you want to start a family, and you feel like you’re ready enough… you don’t have to wait until you’re in your forties. Go for it.”
  2. Be prepared to make some adjustments.
  3. Don’t worry about what other people think. “You don’t have to make it your responsibility to change other peoples minds. You live your life.”
  4. Your career doesn’t have to suffer. “Don’t pull back from your professional responsibilities, stay involved in your career and continue to try for those promotions and professional opportunities, but be thinking about how you can incorporate family, in terms of a child, into your career. And certainly, as soon as you know you’re pregnant, be thinking about:
    1. Who can cover your responsibilities when you’re on maternity leave?
    2. What does maternity leave look like at your organisation?
    3. What do childcare options available to you?
    4. How are you going to accommodate work and this new family that you’re building?
    5. Plan, plan and plan some more (but be aware of bumps in the road) “The more you can plan for it, and find ways within that plan to really invest in your own professional development (not silly committee work that doesn’t have anything to do with your professional growth)… the better position you’re in to continue to develop through the pregnancy and through childhood.””

Don’t forget you can also listen (and subscribe!) to the ScienceMamas podcast on iTunes and on SoundCloud!

#ScienceMamasAtWork: Julie Gould

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This #Sciencemama are made to feel very welcome at the 2018 ORPHEUS meeting at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik.

Here I am, with Tiny Human, interviewing Bob Harris from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, whilst at ORPHEUS 2018 [Image credit Joeri Wielandts, KU Leuven]

Having a baby is awesome! But working with a tiny one can be difficult, especially if you need to travel.

But in this day-and-age, it shouldn’t be an issue. As Rebecca Johnson says in the May 2018 #ScienceMamas podcast:

“She’s a baby… you see babies all the time. Like, what’s the drama? She’s not screaming in the room. She’s not disrupting the panel… The fact that the baby’s sitting here, breathing oxygen and not being in anyway disruptive, who cares?”

So, it was to my great delight that the team at the 2018 ORPHEUS conference were very supportive. When I told them about my pregnancy, and that I could only come if the baby, and some help(!), could come too. They didn’t hesitate: they said they would be able to pay for another adult to come to the meeting to help take care of baby. They also arranged for us to stay in an apartment on campus at the University of Iceland, rather than in a hotel in the city, to make our lives easier when we were there.

So thank you ORPHEUS!

Another #ScienceMama that went to a conference is Rebecca Johnson, who shared her story on the #ScienceMamas podcast 

#ScienceMamas podcast: Eileen Parkes

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Keeping in touch with the research whilst on maternity leave can put you in a better position for negotiating project ownership, says Eileen Parkes.

Image credit: Eileen Parkes

Eileen Parkes decided that instead of being a doctor of medicine, she wanted to go into cancer research. So, she started a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast in August 2012. And to everyone’s  surprise she turned up to her PhD pregnant!

“I think when I spoke to my supervisor he was a bit taken aback… but he said I was right not to wait.”

It was her first pregnancy and keeping up with the workload proved a challenge, especially as it happened at the same time as a career shift.

“I tried to keep up and do everything as ell as I could. But I guess, you are pregnant, you are tired. You can’t keep on top of things. I was starting a PhD, so I was learning all these new techniques that I had never done before. It was very different to how I worked as a doctor in medicine. So I did find that a bit of a struggle.”

For Eileen one of the bigger struggles was when she came back from maternity leave, and felt slightly removed from others in her lab who didn’t have children.

“I felt they didn’t really understand what was involved… if the creche phoned and I said: I’m midway through this experiment, can you finish it for me? I have to go right now and pick up my child.”

When Eileen started her first postdoc in August 2016, she also turned up pregnant! With both pregnancies, she struggled with ownership of the project.

“And trying to take ownership of the project again I struggled with both times when I’ve come back from maternity leave. Trying to go: Right. I’ve working on this and I’ve built it up and I want to keep working on it. And yet someone else has maybe done some of it when I’ve been off, but I still want to have ownership of it overall…”

But the second time, she made sure to put some rules in place for when she returned.

“I have…tried to put clear “this is my project, this is what I expect to come back to after maternity leave” and kind of discuss with my supervisor better the second time round, how things will work, who will work on it while I’m off and what my role will be when I come back.”

The difficult thing, as Eileen says, is that as a postdoc you never really “own” your work.

“I suppose I am a postdoc as well, you never really have complete ownership of your work. It always belongs to the PI. But what I’ve always done is try to come back with fresh ideas and new ways of moving the projects forward. I’ve tried to stay in touch with the literature and kind of understand where the field is generally.”

Yet despite her contingency plans for returning to work, Eileen’s priority is her children.

“Your priorities should be your child, and no one should feel under pressure to keep on top of the literature and everyone should do what is right for them. For me, it felt right this time that I kept in touch with things. I was excited to see what was happening in the field and to see what shifts there were coming up.”

Don’t forget you can also listen (and subscribe!) to the ScienceMamas podcast on iTunes and on SoundCloud!

#ScienceMamas podcast: Dame Athene Donald

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If planning a career in academia, taking time to recover on maternity leave is no bad thing. “If you put things at work on a back-burner for a little while, you can step-up again later. That is totally fine.”

Dame Athene Donald
[Image credit: Gavin Bateman]

Happy International Women’s Day 2018! To celebrate, Dame Athene Donald, professor of physics, fellow of the Royal Society and master of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge, shares her #ScienceMama story on our podcast.

Athene started her first full-time position at the Cavendish (the physics department at the university) in the 1980s. She was unknowingly pregnant at the time, and  was the ONLY female full-time professor in the department.

“When the lectureship came up at the Cavendish… I went and talked to the guy who I guess was then head of department, but he was also, if you like, head of the area in which I was working. And I said: Look, I want to have a family. And he said to me: “Intelligent women should have children” which was incredibly encouraging.”

Thankfully, when Athene announced her pregnancy, no-one batted an eye.

“No one said “Look what happens when you appoint a woman!” No one said that to my face, and I never got any sense that they felt like that behind my back.”

The reason for this, Athene says, is that the system was naive. There had never been a woman, let alone a pregnant one, on the permanent academic staff at the Cavendish, so no one really knew how to support them or what to do. This gave Athene a lot of freedom to structure her academic and family lives as she wished.

“No one talked about it at all. Looking back, one of the things I remember very clearly about my maternity leave, was writing a lecture course whilst I was on mat leave, an coming back probably lecturing it that first term I was back… and now, people wouldn’t do that.”

This wasn’t the only “first” Athene experienced. Now more than ever, fathers are taking on the role as the primary carer for children. But when Athene’s children were young, this was rarely the case. Because of the job situation that Athene and her husband found themselves in, the made the joint decision that her husband would stay at home and care for the children whilst Athene continued in her role at the Cavendish.

“I think, as many a woman has done, he thought he might drop out for a little while, but not permanently…I think he found it hard to cope with if you like. It’s not easy.”

Athene has been working in academic science for three decades, and has seen many things change, including the attitudes that universities and their staff have to female scientists working and having children. But Athene doesn’t believe all the changes have been for the better.

“Now, it’s much more cold-blooded, if you like, that you have formally to declare what you’re doing. If I go back to when my children were small, I actually worked, what you might call, incredibly flexibly…and no one questioned where I was if I wasn’t in the department. And I think it’s much harder, the requirement that you sort of officially declare I am going to work the following hours.”

Athene has had a very successful career as an academic scientist, and so I asked her to share some advice on how to be a #ScienceMama:

  • discuss plans in advance with your partner;
  • work out how you might do it;
  • if you are staying in academic science for your entire life, the period when you are on maternity leave is really quite a small part. You can put things on a back-burner for a little while and you can step-up again later;
  • use the flexibility that academic careers offer;
  • don’t be frightened to try to combine being an academic and a mama;
  • don’t beat yourself up that you are not doing everything perfectly;
  • recognise that the time will come when your children will be less demanding and you can get back into it.

Don’t forget you can also listen (and subscribe!) to the ScienceMamas podcast on iTunes and on SoundCloud!

What questions do #ScienceMamas & #SciencePapas have?

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Is there a good time to have children when you’re a research scientist?

  • Have you ever wondered how becoming a parent might affect your career trajectory and that of your spouse or partner?
  • What’s the best time to get pregnant?;
  • Is there a way to time my maternatiy leave perfectly with my teaching schedule?;
  • How do I negotiate maternity leave?;
  • How do I negotiate my working hours when coming back to work after maternity leave?;
  • How do I negotiate project ownership when I’m on maternity leave during my PhD/postdoc?
  • Child care?;
  • Where can I breastfeed/express on campus?;
  • Can I bring my child to the classroom/meeting/conference/dinner?;
  • How can I balance my fieldwork with my family commitments?;
  • Does having a family mean that people think I’m not serious about my career as a scientist?;
  • How much paternity leave do I get?

Have you got any other questions? If so, get in touch! I’d like to try and find some answers for you. OR, do you have the answer to any of the above questions. If so, get in touch too! I’d like to share your answers. You can contact me via the comments below, or send an email to thesciencemamas [at] gmail [dot] com

#ScienceMamas podcast: Becca Calisi

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Having a family and becoming a parent shouldn’t affect your career in science, says #ScienceMama Becca Calisi.

Image credit: Becca Calisi

Becca Calisi is an assistant professor at UC Davis, California, where she runs a lab studies how the environment affects the brain, behaviour and health.

She has one 6 year old daughter, who arrived whilst she was a postdoc at UC San Diego, and a 1 year old son who arrived whilst she had her permanent position at UC Davis. In between that she spent time doing research in New York.

We talk about how important it is to think about where you work when it comes to having children – to find places that are supportive of families and working parents; about the importance of taking the time you need to recover from childbirth without having the stresses of work hanging over you…

“Here I am, one and a half weeks… post-partum, in my lab, giving an interview in a lab coat, and showing the TV crew everything. So, I think all of that, and the pressure as a new faculty member to prove myself, really took a toll. And I didn’t take care of me; I took care of everyone around me. But not me.” – Becca Calisi

But also about the importance of relaxing, delegating and letting go, when it comes to spending time away from a lab…

“I didn’t want my career to suffer in terms of being in my field. I didn’t want to appear as though I was slowing down. I had a big grant at the time, it was my first big grant at as a faculty member and I wanted to do good by it! And make sure I was keeping on a certain time-table… And it’s hard to relax. It’s hard to not be ambitious. It’s hard to not give it our all. I also didn’t see how I could not take these opportunities…” – Becca Calisi

If you want to find out more about post-partum depression, the US National Institute of Mental Health has some information about it, as done the National Health Service in the UK.

Don’t forget you can also listen (and subscribe!) to the ScienceMamas podcast on iTunes and on SoundCloud!