29: Mental Health Moms

Parents At Work

This month, we’re focusing on moms and dads in the mental health field. And today we‘re delighted to be joined by two working moms who are mental health professionals, Dr. Elizabeth Allen and Dr. Aimee Danielson, to talk about navigating life as a working parent.

Dr. Elizabeth Allen is an assistant professor of psychology and clinical psychiatry, and she’s also an assistant attending psychologist. She specializes in treating adolescents and young adults with anxiety disorders and OCD. Liz lives in New York, and she’s the mom of two girls, ages one and three.

Dr. Aimee Danielson is an associate professor of psychiatry and OB-Gyn, and she’s the director of a women’s mental health program that provides treatment and support for pregnant and postpartum women. Aimee has had the privilege of working with mothers every day for the last twenty years, supporting them through their transitions into motherhood. She lives with her very supportive partner and her three wonderful daughters, ages seven, ten, and thirteen, in Arlington, Virginia.

Be sure to listen in today, to benefit from Liz and Aimee‘s expertise, and to find out what they bring from their jobs to the way that they’re parenting their children.

Show highlights:

• Liz and Aimee share their working parent stories.
• Aimee talks about why she felt privileged, informed, and ready when she became a mother.
• Aimee discusses the choice that she and her husband had to make when their eldest daughter was born with a serious health condition.
• Aimee talks about the flexibility, creativity, and surrender that’s required from working parents.
• Looking at the different seasons of parenthood.
• Aimee explains why she feels that the mental health field is a good environment for working women.
• Some of the challenges of being a working mom in the mental health field.
• Liz talks about her experience of being a working mom in the mental health space.
• Being promoted and rising through the ranks can be difficult for working moms with small children.
• The kind of support that Liz and Aimee found helpful when they became working parents.
• The kind of support that Aimee and Liz would like to have had when they became parents.
• Transitioning from a work identity into a parent identity is important and can be difficult for men, when colleagues don’t know they became a parent.
• Women are feeling that they have to re-invent the wheel.
• Some things that would help working parents, going forward.

Links:

Contact Lori:

https://www.mindfulreturn.com

[e-mail]

The Working Parent Group Network

Contact Tom:

https://www.spigglelaw.com/podcasts/parents-at-work/

For a copy of “You’re pregnant, You’re fired”- [e-mail]

Resources:

Books mentioned:

Laughter and Tears: The Emotional Life of New Mothers, by Elisabeth Bing and Libby Colman

Cribsheet, by Emily Oster

Expecting Better, by Emily Oster

Back To work After Baby, by Lori Mihalich-Levin

The Awesomest 7 Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life, by Professor Radhika Nagpal on the Scientific American blog.

App:

Carpool Kids