Truths

I'm reading this...

An article about an amazing woman Biogeochemist.

She says something about motherhood and I am thankful she said it. She was given an award and spoke about how she would spend part of it. She talks about child care. She talks about what it takes to be successful. No one talks about these things. I'm quoting the relevant paragraph here.

I will be sharing this with the young females I know entering an academic career, or any career. I am so glad to find this.

When she wasn’t in Mexico, Matson was in Berkeley, and the constant bridge-crossing was becoming a problem for the two-academic family. By this time, Matson and Vitousek were the parents of newborn daughter Liana and son Matt. Matt had been born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that takes its biggest toll on the lungs. Doctors warned that he might not live past his teens. Although Matt, now a college freshman at Willamette University, has been remarkably healthy (she calls him her “miracle kid”), Matson was finding it difficult to juggle motherhood, research and her burgeoning role as an environmental policy adviser. After winning the no-strings-attached $260,000 MacArthur grant, Matson took some flack for telling The Scientist magazine that she planned to spend some of it on child care and taking the kids along on fieldwork. She says hiring a “third parent” allowed her and her husband “to work with focus and then be with the kids with focus.” It’s a decision—along with marrying the right guy—that she often cites when advising female students about how to balance family with academic ambition. In retrospect, she says, “A lot of women appreciated the comment, because it exposed a reality that women deal with all the time and that is such a difficult aspect of dual-career couples’ lives.”