Voices of Scholarly Moms: Amplifying Academic Motherhood
How can academia better support women navigating the challenges and decisions surrounding motherhood during graduate studies?
In this episode of The EDII Catalyst, Graziella Bedenik (PhD Candidate, Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen’s University) joins us to discuss the realities of navigating motherhood and graduate studies, including the challenges of balancing academic responsibilities, family life, and career goals.
Hosted by Mark Aloisio (PhD Candidate, C2MCI HQP), this episode explores the inspiration behind Graziella’s Scholarly Moms column on Queen’s Gradifying Blog, highlighting the importance of sharing lived experience and building supportive academic communities for parents in STEM.
Transcript begins below video.
Available on all streaming platforms:
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Mark Aloisio: Today, we are very excited to welcome Graziella Bedenik, a PhD candidate in the Mechanical Engineering department at Queen's University. When she’s not pushing the boundaries of autonomous robotics, she contributes to Queen’s Gradifying Blog, where she hosts a column called Scholarly Moms to share and advocate for graduate students navigating academics and motherhood.
To begin, could you share a little bit about yourself and your journey through STEM? Where did you grow up, how did you become interested in your area of expertise, and how did your career path lead to where you are now?
I'm Graziella Bedenik and I'm currently completing a PhD in Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen's. Before that, I completed my Bachelor's and Master's degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering in Brazil. I’m Brazilian and I came to Canada to complete my PhD. You could say I followed love and passion; my husband was already here doing his PhD at Queen's as well in electrical engineering.
What inspired me to go into STEM was actually the knowledge olympiads we have in Brazil. In middle school and high school, I was an assiduous participant in the informatics olympiad, which was mostly logic tests and programming tests once you enter high school. If you got a medal in those competitions, the prize wasn’t money; it was a course on programming! That was how I learned the basics as an introduction to programming.
The first language I learned in that course was Pascal. I don't even know if people are still programming in Pascal anymore! Then we learned C and C++. I had really, really good teachers in those courses, and they were the ones who introduced me to electronics and computing sciences. The class was really fun and I did that from when I was 11 years old until my second year of high school. It was a long time!
Funnily enough, before my senior year of high school, I actually wanted to go into law and become a judge! I only decided in my final year of high school that I wanted to go into electronics engineering, and everything changed. I'm so happy I didn't go to law school!
Your jump from engineering to blogging is interesting. What drove you to begin your blog here at Queen’s?
As I mentioned before, before I decided that I wanted to go into engineering, I was interested in law. That was mostly because I always loved writing. I grew up hearing that if you write well and you speak well, you can go to law school and become a lawyer. I always loved writing. When I had a teaching fellow position back in Brazil, my students would complain about the amount of reports they had to write: “I'm an engineer. I just want to do math! Why do I need to write?” I couldn’t understand their frustration because I love writing!
I don't remember how I found the advertisement, but I saw that the Gradifying Blog was looking for new writers, so I sent in my application and was accepted. In the beginning, I wanted to write about the experiences of women in STEM, and I think that naturally evolved to focus on the experiences of being a mom in academia.
In your first column, you wrote that your goal is to create a space where women who became parents during their graduate studies can share their experiences in their own words. Where did you find the inspiration to build this column?
I'm not a mom yet, but I really want to be one someday! I've always wanted to be a mom. When I was a kid, I had two favourite play scenarios: one was pretending to be a teacher, and now I'm doing my PhD to be a professor! And the second scenario was playing house; I would be the mom, my dolls would be the babies, and I’d cook for them and play with them. I was really looking forward to these two things!
Though I'm not a mom yet, there are people around me that want to be moms and are already moms. My friends who are also in grad school and want to be moms began having conversations about having children: “It’s so hard for women over 35. Do we need to start planning now? But we need to consider the economic chaos of the world and climate change and wars…” How do you make such a huge decision, especially while in graduate school?
Scientists make decisions based on information, so the goal of my blog is to collect and present information. You want to make an informed decision on whether you're going to be a mom or not, and when—you need information to do that, right? So I started collecting stories and talking to professors, wives of professors, students, friends, and people that are not in academia but are parents in order to gather information. I wanted to shine a new light on this major decision through my columns in the blog.
You have a powerful line in your post that reads, “These are questions many women carry quietly – and often alone.” Have you heard or witnessed stories of students braving the unknown, and were they willing to share the biggest challenges that they came across?
Definitely. I think this is something that's common, especially for international students who are coming from a different country. Even domestic students that come from different provinces or different cities may not have a support network established where they currently live. Families are far away, and sometimes you're an only child and don't have siblings. Child support is so expensive! I wasn't aware of the Canadian reality of child support: it can cost the annual salary of a PhD student for child support! How do you navigate that? It is very, very hard.
Graduate school is so hard on you mentally. Having to navigate academics at the same time you're helping another human being survive is very, very difficult. I've seen many of my friends, professors, and colleagues face that reality and try their best, because that's all you can do. What is best for you may not be best for a different person.
There are very heated debates on sending children to daycare in Canada: is it easier for you to stay at home? Do you take turns with your spouse? Some people are bringing family from overseas just to have a few months’ break, to write their thesis, to help with the newborn stage. Health care in Canada is completely different from what we do in Brazil; many people have to navigate these cultural differences at the same time that they’re trying to understand what’s going on with their technical work, their PhD, and their at-home work with a new baby or a toddler.
Every new stage of growth is a new challenge: you have a child that you both know and don't know. When they start speaking, it seems to become just a little bit easier, but then there are new challenges. There are so many biological transformations after having a kid as well! Not only cosmetic or aesthetic differences like hair loss, weight fluctuations, or shoes not fitting anymore, but hormonal fluctuations as well as neurological changes. That becomes extra difficult with multiple kids, and especially while completing a PhD!
These moms are definitely warriors—not only for being moms, but also for doing that while in graduate school. Learning all of this has given me a new admiration for my friends.
Among these challenges, you’ve written that there are also moments of joy. Have you heard about these joyous stories, moments of success, or moments where these parents were able to find a network of support?
Yes, even before starting collecting Scholarly Mom stories. My experiences completing a STEM degree in engineering have taught me that we become family in the lab. You need a support network in the lab because it's so hard. Undergraduate engineering is extremely hard, then you go into a Master's, and then a PhD! Such a roller coaster ride. Especially if you factor a child into that! I’ve heard that it's an extremely intense experience, but even though there are challenges, the joy definitely surpasses everything else, at least in their experience.
Every woman I have spoken to who has made the decision to have children has said, “this is the best decision I have ever made in my life. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner.” And this comes from women who are in academia as professors, as PIs, completing Master’s or PhD degrees, going into industry, or coming back to academia—every single one of them has said, “this is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” which makes me very hopeful.
When I'm having my biweekly meetings with my supervisors who both have young kids now, we have these venting moments at the start of our meetings where they share their experiences: “Oh, this week my daughter did that and I went crazy.” “Oh, I couldn't work because my baby needed me.” I listen to them vent for a few minutes, but they always make sure to finish the conversation with, “but this is just a phase. This is the best. Kids are amazing. Such a joy, such a blessing. It's amazing what they say, what they do, and when they learn something new, when they learn to walk, to talk, to crawl.”
It's really fun to hear these stories, and I can imagine it's pure bliss experiencing them. So that's what I wanted to bring to the blog: impartial information, because there are two sides to each story. I try to have both sides displayed for people to learn.
Audience Member: Is there anything that departments can do to make it easier for mothers or pregnant women to continue their grad studies with minimum disruption and discomfort?
To begin, Queen’s has policies regarding maternity leave for all departments. We also have the Ban Righ Centre at Queen’s: a centre for mature women students to access resources such as counseling, assistance navigating systems, events, awards and grants. Women in Canada are entitled to 12 to 18 months of maternity leave; full pay isn’t guaranteed during that period, so institutional support is vital to navigate that process and ensure you have 600 hours of work prior to taking maternity leave.
Having honest conversations with your Principal Investigator (PI) about your situation if you're planning to have a child is definitely important. Building your relationship with PIs is something I always recommend to people: you need to do it from the beginning, especially if you're a women in a difficult field. Maybe you have plans to get pregnant, maybe you don't know—but I think it's important to be open and be honest.
Some people are shocked when I give examples of the conversations I have with my PIs. I don't really care; I just say that's my Brazilian side showing! There are official ways and informal ways to provide and request support if you establish a good relationship from the beginning with your PIs and your department.
Audience Member: When I was a grad student, my wife and I had our first child. I took a few days off, but we didn't have paternity leave back then so I had to come back to work very quickly. When my supervisor saw me in the hallway, he was very angry and said, “you do not have children when you're in grad school!”
I have definitely heard horror stories like this! I have a friend whose mom had her when she was doing her PhD, so she often reminisces about that period in her life. Having a child was not well received on the departmental side, which is a shame. I think the workplace culture is changing a bit and depending on your field, it can be easier or tougher. That's why I think establishing a good relationship with your PIs is important, but there are definitely official routes now that weren't established in the past.
For men in engineering, it was common not to take official paternity leave. They took maybe a week or two off, and then they had to go back into work, which definitely fosters negativity around not having a support network. If it's only you and your partner and one of you is gone, how do you hold the fort? It’s definitely harder.
Audience Member: I think ignorance is still an issue; people aren’t upset about people having babies anymore, but they still don’t know what to do to support parents. It’s better than intolerance, but there's still work to do.
Baby steps, right? No pun intended. Conferences are learning to support parents. The last few conferences that I've attended since starting my PhD all had some form of childcare in place if you had to travel and had children with you, which was mesmerizing. I was not expecting that at all, but the parents who were using the service were very happy about it. Even at the gala dinner at the end of the conference, they had kids’ menus! That was really cool to see. So I think people are starting to learn and that's great.
Parents in general—moms especially, but parents in general—seem to feel very isolated in society. Your peers might not be having kids or you're away from family, and you want to join colleagues at a bar, but kids are not welcome. You go to a restaurant, and everyone starts looking at you the wrong way. In university, people ask, “what’s a baby doing here?” I've seen that: people giving strange looks when you walk into a room with a toddler. Everyone has been a baby once, right?
I saw a post recently that got me thinking about the ignorance behind this. There was a conversation on LinkedIn about having kids while in academia, saying that science should be something that you commit to 100%, and that you should not have time for relationships or kids because you can't be excellent at both. People were very offended, as you would expect.
At the same time, several people mentioned that you can have everything, but not at the same time because different phases of your life will demand different things of you. That might be trying to get tenure or trying to raise your kids well. It’s like raising kids when they're learning to eat: you need to dedicate time and effort to that. You can have everything, but perhaps not at the same time.
These two different points of view really caught my attention. I think both are right; neither of them is wrong, because it depends on the person and their priorities. That's the decision component, right? Maybe science is your absolute passion and you want to dedicate time to that. But if you want more out of life other than work satisfaction, then you’ll want to pursue that as well. It's definitely a complex situation, which makes hearing and sharing these stories so enjoyable.
For our final question: what is your favourite chemical or element and why?
It’s a controversial pick, but I would say CO2. Don't cancel me! I just really, really, really love fizzy water.
As a final note: if anyone has questions, wants to chat further, or would like to be featured in the column, please don’t hesitate to connect with me via LinkedIn or email—I'm available. Thank you!
Thank you very much to Graziella and our live audience for joining us today. We hope to see you all back again soon.
____
The EDII Catalyst is a podcast series hosted by the Carbon to Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI) at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
In this series, we explore topics of equity, diversity, inclusion and Indigeneity in STEM featuring guest speakers from diverse backgrounds and perspectives discussing their lived experiences. We provide helpful resources and tips on how to create more inclusive and equitable environments and hope to inspire you to become a “catalyst” for change in your own communities and workplaces!
The EDII Catalyst is made possible by the support of the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (#NFRFT-2020-00573).
Stay connected with C2MCI!
