A juggling act for mental health

This post is a bit off-topic for the purposes of this blog, but it’s a very sensitive topic to me and I’m sure someone might relate. Last Thursday, October 10^th, was World Mental Health Day, which made me think about my own mental health – something I do rarely. I’ve been feeling like a juggler lately, trying to do the trick with too many balls spinning around. Well, the trick here is my mental health, and the balls are my job as post-doc, my role as mother, as wife, as housekeeper, as pet owner. Thus, today I’m going to let it all go and write about difficulties experienced by a female scientist, an expat, a mother and so on and so forth.

Being a scientist is not easy, and it’s not surprising that mental illness is so widespread in the sciences. Rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students are extremely high, with more than one-third of graduate students reporting being depressed, and I can relate. There have been tough times in the past 4 years, during my PhD, and there are some even now that I’m a post-doc. How comes that? Well, it’s an exquisite cocktail of high demand and harsh competition. The feeling of not being talented enough, of not knowing enough, the urge to dive more into the literature, to expand my skillset but still finding my own niche of expertise, the pressure to publish, the sense of instability, the need to win funding, the chase of tenure position, and above all, the necessity to have an impact, to make a difference, are my dark companions. Sometimes I can keep them quite, and that’s what I define good times. However, they are always there, and the tiniest little thing can trigger them, make them overcome all of my barriers and drive me back to a state of anxiety and dissatisfaction. It’s hard to rationalize, and hard to put bad thoughts aside, especially when you know they are hiding behind the corner and sooner or later will be back. Although awareness is increasing, actions need to be undertaken to improve such diffuse condition in academia. What should be done? I feel like the whole system is failing and should be changed, but this is not the place to discuss such matters. Waiting for the revolution to occur, I find it useful to focus on the beauty of my job: the fascination of understanding brain development, the possibility to explore new ideas, to investigate the unknown. But what I recently learned as being extremely helpful to me is finding the time to truly hear myself, accept and share all, even the bad thoughts. Once told aloud, they become concrete and easier to temper.

Being what they call a woman in “STEM” is even more difficult. Luckily enough, women now account for 53% of BSc and MSc graduates in science, technology, engineering and math worldwide; however, just 30% of researchers in STEM are women. My background is in physics, so I’m very familiar with this gender issue. In the first year of college, we were about 20% girls in our class, but selection was brutal over the years and there were just a few of us left in the last year of the master’s. Then I moved to developmental neuroscience, where the effect is reversed – I was quite shocked to meet so many other women in the faculty. However, most of them are psychologists, while the majority of geeks still keeps being males – which leaves me again a bit alone in the mass. Why do more women than men choose to leave academia? Gender disparity. Despite all recent efforts, women keep facing barriers. It’s the last thing affecting my mental health, but it’s part of the cocktail and sometimes I become sensitive to gender disparity, which comes in various shades. We must acknowledge that it is a real issue, both in terms of career possibilities and societal perception, and might add to the delicate state of mental health of female researchers. Many, in fact, still tend to perceive authority, capacity, and knowledgeability differently between a male and a female professional. If you are a good-looking woman, who takes care of her aspect, then you must be stupid – you can’t be both pretty and intelligent after all. Did anyone ever doubt the credibility of a good-looking man, all tied up in his suit and smelling cologne from miles away? Of course not, that is the perfect portrait of a business man. Academia is not different. Okay, got it! I should barely brush my hair and go to work in t-shirt – that’s what actually most girls used to do at my department, maybe for adaptability purposes? – but then everyone would think I’m just a miserable woman, and would not even listen to me talking as they are probably too busy wondering how many cats I must have at home. However, that’s not the case for men, as a man in a “Star Wars” t-shirt at work is just a super expert statistician, no doubts!

In terms of career, men are still the vast majority in top-level positions. Is it because of some sort of assignment bias? I’m not sure about it, as there are many initiatives to promote gender equality in academia – although the fact that it has to be promoted instead of being a natural process is still very sad to me. What I think is the main issue is what career costs to a woman and the sacrifices she has to make to move on. I already mentioned the perception bias, which make women struggle to emerge, get recognition in work and get a promotion. Another sensitive issue is that of maternity. Nobody ever wonders whether it’s best for a man to pursue his own career goals or become a stay-at-home daddy, taking care of households and children. But willing or not, that’s a question a woman will be asked at least once in her life, and it is something a woman has to think about carefully and plan through. The choice she makes will be then a constant reason for judgement. Do you want to have kids? If no, why? Do you want the human species to end? If yes, do you want to leave your job and stay with the kids? Oh yes, because you are too lazy to work and just want your husband to bring home the money – you, greatest disgrace to all the feminists in the world. Or do you want to be a working mom? Well, then you must not love your kids that much if you expect others to raise them for you – you just do the fun part, eh! Personally, I’m a working mom but many women have to choose between motherhood and career. There’s no judgement here on women who choose not to have kids in favour of their career. It is sad they have to make a choice, though. Many women here in the Netherlands leave their job after having a child, or reduce their working hours considerably. I was asked myself so many times whether I’d stop working after giving birth, while nobody asked that to my male colleagues when they were going to become fathers. And you can’t imagine how surprised people were when I told them I’d go back to my full-time job right after the end of my maternity leave. It’s not because I don’t love my daughter – I’d spend every second I have with her – but because I have to work. Am I unhappy about it? Not at all! First because, luckily enough, I love my job! Second, being an expat in this country, I’m happy to foster my daughter’s communication and social skills through day care with native Dutch speakers – I’m a neuroscientist in developmental neuroscience, thus I must pay close attention to my daughter’s development after all. Although I’m lucky enough to have a flexible job that leaves me time to spend with my daughter, pursuing an academic career – full-time and fast-track – requires sacrifices that not every mother wants to make. Some of them I’m not sure I want to make either, like moving from country to country to fulfil the “mobility” requirement. That will help speed up my career with no doubts, but what are the costs? My family would be forced to pounce like a ball from place to place and start over every time, and that’s something I would feel guilty for. It’s not surprising then that many women in academia choose to delay or even skip the motherhood step to the benefit of their career. Because yes, it’s true, you can be a loving mother, caring wife, and successfully working woman at the same time, but it comes to certain costs, and certainly not as easy as it is for men to be working dads. The major thing at stake here is your mental health.

As I said, I’m a working mom, and that plays a huge role on my mental health. Motherhood comes with wonder, extreme joy and satisfaction, but it’s also difficult – always – as made of quickly changes in hormone levels,  changes in brain structure and function, altered sleep cycles, altered environment, altered relationships, higher anxiety, lack of self-confidence, high expectations, societal pressure, and often competition, even within the family. I am no different. Like all parents – or almost all at least, my main concern is my child’s happiness. I want to provide her with the best I can to ensure a positive development, and this creates anxiety. Am I doing all well? Is there anything else I can do? Will she be okay? Think about this great mixture of doubts and anxiety, and add it to the stress of a full-time job. In my case, a job in academia. Well, I’m not surprised to struggle sometimes. Then I focus on the positive side of this mixture. As a scientist in developmental neuroscience, I know more on brain and child’s development than typical parents do. This makes me a lucky mother, as I can understand my child’s development, observe the signs better, and respond to these signs more properly. Our findings in the field of developmental neuroscience can, in fact, be extremely useful to parents to set a correct level of expectations (without comparing your child to that of the friend of the neighbour of the grandmother); to understand that every child is different and has his/her own pace; to lower anxiety and to foster positive development both in the child and the parents themselves. Sometimes I give knowledge for granted, but what I know is extremely useful to my husband and me. It doesn’t mean I’m the perfect parent, sometimes I find it very difficult to cope with anxiety and keep it together. Nevertheless, I think science can empower parenting and can help us be more fulfilled in the relationship with our children. Just about this, you can find a link in the references below to a very nice app I’m using myself (Babybrains), communicating to parents findings in developmental neuroscience in an accurate, accessible and fun way. Hope you like it!

Overall, I can say I’m happy with this motherhood thing but it doesn’t mean it’s easy. It is difficult, especially when you are raising your child in a foreign country, away from the rest of the family. I don’t even know how I survived going back to a full-time job only 3 months after giving birth, leaving a crying baby at day care, and scheduling pumping sessions in between meetings to ensure my daughter would get breastfeeding. There are always things to stress on. To be honest, I think the competition with other mothers plays a major role in it. I hate unwanted suggestions from mothers who believe they know all as they’ve been through it before, with more than one child, and they all survived, so they think they know better than me. It doesn’t matter if what they say comes from ancient traditions with non-scientific basis, to the point that I wonder how their children survived. It is true children survive in very bad conditions and with very little care sometimes, but if you know better, would you let it all go just to be cool? Your child would probably survive anyway, right? Should I just pretend I don’t know things can go very wrong? Should I take the risk so that others can see I am a modern mum? You don’t want your child to simply survive, you want the best! As I said knowledge is helpful, but in these cases, it’s also a tricky thing. It can be scary to know all the different ways in which things can go wrong and once you know, you can’t pretend you don’t. One thing I want to make clear: science can help parents BUT forget about the myth of the perfect mother. No mother should feel less or inadequate when she cares about her family. Every mother has her own struggles and successes. Age is not an indicator of adequateness to motherhood, so if you are younger you are not less able, or a less caring mother. A working mom cares about her child just as much as a stay-at-home mom, and a stay-at-home mom is tired and stressed out as much as a working mom. Moreover, if every child is different, every mother is different as well and probably evolutionarily tuned to take care of her child. Think about it, mom! It might help with your mental health at dark times.

References

Time to talk about why so many postgrads have poor mental health. Nature, editorial, 29 March 2018. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04023-5

Evans, T., et al. (2018). Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology. https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089

2015 UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030  https://en.unesco.org/unesco_science_report

Sandberg, S. (2013). Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead (First edition.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf

Gender and Success in Academia: More from the Historians' Career Paths Survey | Perspectives on History | AHA https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2013/gender-and-success-in-academia#.Xahm06NHhGw.twitter

Paula Duarte-Guterman, Benedetta Leuner, Liisa A.M. Galea, The long and short term effects of motherhood on the brain, Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, Volume 53, 2019, 100740, ISSN 0091-3022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yfrne.2019.02.004.

Nguyen, AJ, Hoyer, E, Rajhans, P, Strathearn, L, Kim, S. A tumultuous transition to motherhood: Altered brain and hormonal responses in mothers with postpartum depression. J Neuroendocrinol. 2019; 31:e12794. https://doi.org/10.1111/jne.12794