My children claim that somehow their Dad and I brainwashed them into thinking that there was no choice but to be highly educated. When Kristin was about 7, she asked me if I would be mad at her if she didn’t get a Ph.D. I asked her if she even knew what a Ph.D. was. On another occasion when the girls were still in elementary school, they were very distressed when one of their cousins said, “If I go to college,” as if that was a choice. I’m pretty sure they thought a bolt of lightning would strike her for saying “if” instead of “when.”
If I am guilty of brainwashing, it is probably a result of my own upbringing. At least one childhood friend reports that her foray into grad school was fueled by the incessant message at our family dinner table. When I related to my dad that he had influenced one of my friends to go to grad school, he responded that “at least somebody was listening.” To put that in perspective, my siblings and I are not exactly academic slackers. In addition to my PhD, one sister is a social worker, another a research analyst for the UN, and my late brother was an Emmy-winning executive producer for Nightline.
I did expect my children to “be all they could be” academically, but never ever imagined that we would end up collaborating on research. Kristin is in systems engineering and Karen is in public relations. But we’ve actually managed to find some middle ground, which has been a great deal of fun. At last May’s APS, we presented a poster together on a project we’ve done on public perceptions of CEOs as psychopaths. We even dressed up in Slytherin shirts for the occasion, which caught the attention of the APS Observer staff. They liked the shirts and the “family” of researchers, and added our photo to their convention montage.
The Snakes in Suits Team at APS
A number of people at APS commented on the novelty of a mom and daughters research team, but the funniest comment we heard was from one psychologist, who after reflecting carefully on the matter, told us that even with the number of collaborators she’d gone through, it had never occurred to her to “spawn” some. Although this wasn’t intentional on my part, it has been a lot of fun!
Oh, and the little yellow buttons on our shirts really do say “Geek.” We had just attended a very useful session on bootstrapping.
