» Insights Into a Successful Dual Scientific Career and Partnership

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Ann Schreihofer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology and Derek Schreihofer is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Neuroscience at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. Both received their PhDs in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh before accepting positions as Associate Professors at the Medical College of Georgia in 2001. They moved to the University of North Texas in 2011. Ann studies how the brain regulates autonomic control of the cardiovascular system in health and disease states. Recently she has investigated how common conditions, such as obesity and exposure to chronic intermittent hypoxia (as a model for the intermittent hypoxemia of obstructive sleep apnea), alter sensory inputs to the brain, function of cardiovascular regulatory neurons of the brain stem, and sympathetic nerve activity to cardiovascular targets. Derek studies how soy compounds protect the brain from injury due to stroke in rodents by examining diet- and hormonally-induced changes in gene expression in relation to neuroprotection from cerebrovascular disease.

We were pleased to be asked to write about our experiences as a dual-career scientist couple, although analyzing how one manages such a feat is almost as daunting as living it. Everyone has a unique story, and our writings reflect our experiences. That said, we have come to appreciate some universal truths to successfully managing the complex lifestyle of a dual-career family. For those of you too busy to read this entire article, we leave you with these thoughts. Even the most successful, seemingly unstressed couples face challenges that make them wonder how or why they got themselves into their state of affairs, but it is the immense rewards of being a scientist and family member that make the occasional chaos worthwhile.

What Are Keys to Maintaining a Successful Partnership for a Dual-career Family?

Both partners must begin with a clear understanding that having two careers and a family requires a partnership. Whatever the plan, both partners have to be fully on board. Open and brutally honest communication is essential. Compromise does not result in winners and losers but what is in the best long-term interest of the partnership or family. The key is that both partners feel that they get equitable consideration in the long run. Life is complicated and circumstances change, but as long as you are talking about it you are most of the way there.

How Does This Partnership Work Practically?

Divide and conquer. There is no such thing as man’s work or women’s work when managing a family and two careers. Even without children, managing a household takes effort that must be shared. If tasks are clearly allocated, there is no second-guessing or passing the buck. Each partner should take on tasks they like and ones they like less. In addition, sanity requires periodic guilt-free “me time” that needs to be ensured for each partner. Maintain a master calendar with events, deadlines, and trips and highlight the hard deadlines. Keep surprises to a minimum, knowing that unexpected issues will arise. Another strategy is to buy as much help as you can afford. Time is our most precious resource, and dual-career couples have the benefit of more income. Hiring someone to mow the lawn or clean the house allows you to spend more time with your work, children, and partner.

How Do You Maintain Equality?

You don’t, at least not every day. The key is that each partner gives and takes fairly over time. When a work deadline or time-consuming task is approaching, the relative contributions of each partner may temporarily shift on the home front. It should not always be the same partner, unless this is a mutually agreeable plan. Being fair to your partner and his/her needs is critical. Each partner’s goals, wants, and concerns need to be expressed regularly, because these are not fixed commodities. Life’s unexpected paths may require a reconsideration of each partner’s issues. Consistent and open communications go a long way to minimize conflicts. If you don’t speak up, you cannot assume your partner will know if there is an issue to be resolved. Do not fear conflict. Things get missed, and tasks get forgotten or overlooked. It is reasonable to get upset and express your feelings. It is not constructive to retaliate or hold a grudge. Forgiveness and understanding can go a long way to strengthening a partnership.

How Do You Stay Connected as a Couple or a Family?

Dual-career couples with families face numerous commitments. However, a fulfilling life requires periodic levity. Reward yourselves for your hard work in managing busy schedules. Enrich your partnership by going out as a couple and by celebrating each others accomplishments. Also set aside special times for your family. We have ”family movie nights” complete with treats and late bed times and “family game nights” where the television is off and the board games come out. We group plan periodic outings to museums, zoos, or vacation spots. It gives the family something to look forward to and shows your kids they are part of your plans, not something that gets in the way of your plans.

Life is short and time goes much too fast. Taking a moment to remind someone that they are important or checking in with them about their day makes all the difference. Use all available forms of communication that work for you and yours: heart-to-heart talks, texting, emails, phone calls, Facebook messages, Skype, notes left in a sack lunch, etc. With the advent of electronic communications you can stay well connected even when you are not together.

What Are Good Strategies to Find Two Jobs?
First, you must be honest with yourself and each other with regard to goals and abilities. You may have different ambitions or want to move at a different pace. Having partners at different career stages also impacts strategy. However, it would be short sighted to choose a situation that was great for one but unsupportive for the other regardless of career stage. This scenario sets up problems for career progression that will haunt you later. Finding two jobs means a longer search, more applications, and more negotiations. Our approach is “don’t push your partner on a potential employer, but don’t hide them either. Dual scientific career couples are more and more common, and negotiations will go more positively if a potential employer knows your deal-breaking issues up front. However, you need to be realistic about the viability of each of your candidacies and figure out how to optimize your dual package in a way that will be most attractive for you and your potential employer and institution. If your strategy includes positions at different institutions, consider larger metropolitan areas. There is a better chance of finding good situations for both, and if one job doesn’t work out there are more options for new opportunities without having to move.

How Can You Be Seen as Two Individuals Instead of Two for the Price of One?

Even if you enjoy working together, make unique contributions, particularly at the start of your careers. Make sure your primary lines of work are diverse enough that you will not be competing with each other for positions, grants, or resources. Using different methodological approaches can help distinguish you and provide potential to help each other. Develop your own scientific networks and attend different meetings if possible. Avoid publishing together until you are established as independent investigators. You can unofficially help each other without putting a label on it. Finally, contribute to different aspects of your scientific community. Serve on different committees, teach different classes, and collaborate with different colleagues. If you attend the same faculty meetings, don’t vote as a block.

How Do You Decide When to Start a Family?

The easiest answer is, when both of you are ready. Starting a family is wonderfully rewarding, but it is an enormous commitment. If both partners are not fully invested, this is a recipe for failure. There is no magic period of career stage, and it may not always happen when you plan it. You need to acknowledge that there are only so many hours in the day and that adding a new little bundle of time commitment will impact your job productivity. This is the time to assess your day to improve efficiency and perhaps minimize time sinks that are not constructive. It is okay to be apprehensive about adding a person to your already busy dual-career life. If you aren’t, you haven’t thought about it enough! That said, apprehension comes with motivation to make needed changes. You cannot have it all, but you can have parts of it all, albeit at a slightly slower pace. If you are ready, don’t wait. We hear people saying things like, “I want to wait until I have tenure”. Maybe this was more feasible when the average age for first time grantees was 34 back in 1980, but today the average age of first R01 awardees is 42 years of age and institutions are delaying tenure decisions. Biology will not wait for your career to reach benchmarks. Too many career couples have waited only to find it was too late to have children. If a family is a priority for you, then make it a priority. The rest will sort itself out.

How Do You Identify a Family Friendly Workplace?

Ideally, this is an issue you investigate before taking a job, but it may not occur to people who are not thinking of starting a family when they take a position. There are tangible considerations like maternity leave (not required by law or even available in many places), on-site day care, and published policies on family leave, but these are not as important as the environment. Is the workplace culture driven by the clock or the bottom line? Being at important meetings, teaching classes, training lab personnel, getting grants, and publishing are the keys to academic success. Face time with your colleagues is very important, but you do not have to be in your office or lab for set hours every day to accomplish your career benchmarks. A fabulous benefit of this career is the flexibility that comes with a bottom-line priority and the ability to do many job-related tasks from a computer. Make sure you know what the expectations are from those who matter, specifically how key people define successful faculty members. Examine whether women with families are employed in a position comparable to yours and whether they have been promoted in a timely manner. This is a good barometer of a family friendly work place. Additionally, are there potential colleagues with significant childcare responsibilities? There is strength in numbers. Having more people around who understand what you are going through increases the probability of accommodation for your life choices.

How Do You Prioritize the Many Facets of Your Work and Home Life?

Identify the deal breakers for your life plan. These will shape the decisions you make for your home life and work life. For example, we made a decision early on that we would not live apart geographically for the sake of work. Identify key factors needed to maintain your job/professional life. Make critical face time and contribute substantially to workplace and your profession. Set annual goals for submissions of papers and grants, etc. Participate in a scientific society and attend meetings and establish a broad and supportive network. Many aspects of our jobs are made feasible by having networks. Identify key factors to maintain your home life. With no kids: maintaining the home, the finances, the meals, family ties/friends. With kids: keeping them fed, safe, loved, on-track, and stimulated. Add in the extras for each arena when time and energy permit. It is easy to get in the habit of treating everything as important. Separate out the critical tasks, and add in the extras when you can.

In closing, remember to keep your sense of humor—smiles are contagious and you cannot be afraid to laugh at yourself. Confess your sins and move on. Remember to breathe and pace yourself for the long haul. Keep in mind that those who make it look easy also experience the ups and downs of a dual scientific career family.

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Comments

This is a great article! Ann and Derek provide great insight into considerations for establishing priorities and how to maintain priorities in a dual career partnership.

I think that the advice provided in this mentoring forum is also very applicable to a dual career marriage that may not involve a dual scientist couple. The same key points apply to a relationship whereby the spouse or significant other is a teacher, lawyer, financial planner, landscape architect, etc. However, in this case, additional factors may contribute to the complexity of maintaining harmony. Both parties in a dual career partnership may consider their jobs of equal importance despite disparities in salary. A nonscientist may not understand the importance of key goals and events that are vital for the career progression of a scientist. Thus, as stressed by Ann and Derek, open communication with a strong sense of respect for each other is a must for harmony and success.
Barbara Alexander
University of Mississippi Medical Center

This is a fantastic article written by two successful researchers, educators and parents.  I think this article highlights some very important issues that are relevant regardless of career path and life situation: communication and compromise.  I have learned a great deal from reading this advice!

Having recently gone through a job search alongside of my spouse, who also works in academia, I would like to add my suggestions for searching for family-friendly workplace environments.  Although this is challenging, I think there are some questions that can be asked and observations that can be made, to give you a general idea of the culture of the department or unit.  For example, do some homework prior to going on a job interview regarding the members of the department.  Are there any married couples in the department already?  Have there been recent announcements on departmental websites regarding anyone who recently had a baby; parental leave policies; etc.?  During the interview, if you are scheduled to give a job talk, take note of the conversations that the current faculty and students are having amongst themselves as they walk into the room and are waiting for you to begin.  Are they discussing things such as what they did this past weekend or what their children have been up to lately; are they talking only about work issues; are they not engaging in conversation at all?  If you are scheduled to have lunch or dinner with faculty or students, this is a good time to observe how the current members of the department interact with each other.  It may also be a good time to ask some questions about what people like to do when they are not at work; their hobbies; their interests; etc.  How do they answer these questions (not only what do they say, but what is the tone of the answers)?  Without asking overt questions about parental leave policies and openness to family issues, these strategies might give you a glimpse of the culture in the department.This is a fantastic article written by two successful researchers, educators and parents.  I think this article highlights some very important issues that are relevant regardless of career path and life situation: communication and compromise.  I have learned a great deal from reading this advice!
Angela Grippo
Northern Illinois University



Questions
I read the article and found it excellent: it is well written, thorough and provides wise advice. I appreciate the authors' emphasis on honesty, communication,and humor.  I also liked their suggestions when approaching prospective employers, managing housekeeping chores, and maximizing the quality of the relationships.  
I have a few questions for them:
1. Have they ever felt they are competing with each other? If the answer is yes, how did competition affect their relationship?  If the answer is no, how did they manage to avoid it?
2. In many cases of dual-career couples, one partner has been able to achieve a greater degree of success than the other. And, if the woman is the most successful one, how can the relationship be affected?
3. Since parenting is a 24/7 job and considering that small children usually prefer to be taken care by Mom than by Dad, how can women scientists encourage their partners to take a more active parenting role?
Erika Gonzalez-Lima
Licensed Professional Counselor
Counseling & Behavioral Health

Comments from Derek:  We don’t compete with each other, in part because of our personalities, and in part because of our efforts to develop as independent scientists.  Remaining distinct in your research area, publishing, and networks go a long way toward minimizing competition.  Although it is likely each person will have ebbs and flows during a career, I believe the goal of a partnership is to celebrate each other's successes and commiserate with each other's setbacks.  There is plenty of competition in the world without competing with your partner.
    It is almost inevitable that career paths will not run in parallel. Partners start out at different places, compromises are made, and luck doesn’t always come in twos.  Many men find it difficult to “play second fiddle,” but lack of success in a career is difficult to deal with even without a partner.  At least you have someone to support you if you have a partner.  I see success as something that belongs to us both, and I am thankful to have the backup of a successful spouse.
    Children go through “mommy” and “daddy” phases as they grow.  While younger children often prefer mom, it’s me that my son calls when he wakes up at night.  There are some biological/psychological differences in how men and women deal with parenting.  I think the important thing is for each partner to keep in mind what the other is doing.  In our article we discuss the divide and conquer strategy and making lists of tasks that need to be done regularly.  These should include bath time, dressing for school, and helping with homework.  A lot of dads have no idea how much their wife is doing and how much time she spends thinking about it.  Reminding dads that looking after your own children is called parenting, not babysitting, may help get the right perspective.

Comments from Ann:  I don’t feel like we compete with each other, and I am not generally a competitive person by nature.  I am my biggest competitor and toughest critic, striving to do the best I can do in whatever I do.  We have developed separate networks in our careers and have not typically had to compete for the same resources.  That being said, when resources were more plentiful for one, the other has often benefited.  Careers are a big part of our lives, but the partnership comes first.  We help each other succeed, because both benefit from each other's accomplishments.  I would not have chosen a partner who was competitive in a negative way.  It has helped us that we feel fairly balanced in our skills, intellect, and work ethics.  There are so many aspects of our careers that are not totally in our control; it would be difficult to harbor resentment when things don’t go our way as long as both are making their best effort.  It is essential to have compassion when things are not going as planned and genuine excitement for achievements.  However, we are also each other’s toughest critics when needed; everyone needs a brutally honest opinion now and then to get things back on track.  Fear of conflict breeds contempt, and conflicts need resolution to move forward.  Our motto has been “Let it out, but get over it.”  However, these approaches demand authentic mutual respect to succeed.
    It is true that with dual-career couples it is impossible to maintain equivalent levels of success throughout life’s journey.  It is essential to openly communicate goals, expectations, and concerns on a regular basis for both.  Ambitions may not be equivalent and each partner can make unique and useful contributions.  The value of a contribution cannot be measured in dollars as so many vital tasks are uncompensated monetarily.  As well, the relative value of a career should not be measured solely in dollars but in the fulfillment it brings for each partner.  If it is a true partnership, both should feel ownership and reap the rewards of the hard work.  Even if expected life paths change, focus on what you have in common and enjoy together.  
    It is easy to fall into traditional gender roles that are ingrained in all of us.  I think it is important not to fight the gender traditional parts of your partnership that you want to take on just for fear of being a stereotype or to stray away from those that others might think are not gender appropriate.  That goes for both genders.  For gender equality to be a reality, women need to make a real effort stand up for what they need to live a fulfilling life.  One of my best friends says “You get what you put up with.”  Unspoken wants, desires, and needs will lead to regret and resentment.  In our article we talked about making lists and sorting through duties.  Although this may seem like a contrived exercise, it truly helps in several key ways:  1) It opens a dialog to explore whether one partner has taken on an inordinate share of the workload that may have gone unrealized, 2) It can make you aware of contributions your partner is making that you had not thought about when you are feeling stressed and overburdened, 3) It provides a means to talk about exchanging tasks if they are particularly stressful for you, and 4) It provides a means of talking about whether goals, wants, and wishes have changed over time.  Nevertheless, Derek and I would agree that I will spend 1000% more time agonizing over the planning, execution, and completion of tasks.  There are some aspects of one’s personality that are not going to change and acceptance on both sides is key!  That being said, if you are in a partnership that is not supportive, it doesn’t matter if you are a dual-career couple—troubled times are ahead.  Life is too short to live it unfulfilled and unexplored.  Carpe diem!