Briana Pobiner
BIO
Research scientist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC (USA). Mother of one.
Twitter: @BrianaPobiner
Instagram: @brianapobiner
“I’m very open about being a mom in science who does fieldwork and travels extensively for research.”
I work at a museum in a semi-academic position that involves the same responsibilities as academic and tenure-track faculty, including conducting research, writing publications and grants, and attending conferences to give presentations. I have a 12-year-old son.
After I got married and my husband and I decided to start a family, I recognized that trying to balance my career, including continuing to travel for extended periods to do fieldwork and collections based-research, would be challenging.
I leaned heavily on my professional academic networks of other researcher moms in my field. I asked everyone willing to give me advice about how they balance motherhood and research, especially traveling for fieldwork and museum collections research.
I am especially grateful to the Biological Anthropology Women’s Mentoring Network (BAWMN) which hosts ‘happy hour’ events at one of my main annual conferences. I asked questions to other women in my field who I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to approach otherwise, in a comfortable, supportive setting.
When I got pregnant, I was determined to do one more field season during my second and into my third trimester; my family and OB were supportive. I did fieldwork in a wildlife conservancy in Kenya, where I had been doing research since 2002.
The first surprise was when I went for my usual pre-travel medical appointment with my institution and asked about safe malaria prophylaxis for pregnancy; I think I may have been the first pregnant scientist to travel to a country with malaria risk!
When we arrived at the field site and presented our fieldwork plan to the conservancy management, they told me they could not allow us to do fieldwork in areas with thick bush for safety reasons - because I would not be able to run fast enough if we encountered dangerous animals like buffalo, elephant, rhino, and lion, and the armed guard could not adequately protect me. I was frustrated at first but appreciated that safety had to be the priority. It took several subsequent field seasons for us to do enough fieldwork in these more dangerous habitats to basically ‘make up’ for me being pregnant in the field.
I thought I would be the kind of mom who, as a mom-scientist colleague half-jokingly put it, would just ‘strap my baby to my back’ and bring him everywhere with me to do research. However, I ended up with postpartum depression a few months after my son was born, likely triggered by sleep deprivation.
It took me about a year to recover fully, with the support of my husband, my supervisor, a therapist, and a psychiatrist who both specialized in maternal mental health, medication, and a wonderful peer support group through Postpartum Support International.
My first trip back to Kenya, when my son was 13 months old, was tough; I cried a lot in the beginning, feeling guilty that I left him at home. But after a few days of working through those feelings, I realized that I was enjoying returning to my ‘old self’ again, and getting to focus on doing research.
I continued to travel for research and conferences on my own, with a limit of being away for no longer than three weeks at a time, until about five years later - the summer after my son finished kindergarten - when I decided that the time was right for me to bring him to Kenya with me.
He was no longer in diapers or taking daytime naps, and I was planning there for seven weeks, much longer than I was comfortable being away from him.
I found local caretakers for him, and all three of my research collaborators on that field project were parents who were very understanding and supportive of my struggle to balance single parenting and doing fieldwork in a foreign country.
Some parts of it were not easy - I often felt like I didn’t have enough time to spend with my son who wanted some mom time after a long day of fieldwork. But we still needed to download field photos, plan the next day’s work, shower, eat dinner, and so on. Still, I’m glad I did it, and six years later, he only remembers the enjoyable moments.
I am very open about being a mom in science who does fieldwork and travels extensively for research. I talk about it candidly, especially with my mentees, both female and male. I even have photos of myself doing fieldwork while pregnant and of my son displayed on my office door. Seeing pregnant and parenting scientist moms truly matters!