Ex situ (balance) - Dr Beth Fulton: “Try to find a happy life-balance”

Dr Beth Fulton is ecosystem modeller and principal research fellow with the CSIRO. At work, she travels regularly, supervises three graduate students and oversees a team of 15 scientists; in 2007, she was Prime Minister’s Life Scientist of the Year. At home, she’s a mum of three, devoted party-goer, and occasional sweeper of floors.

Science Hub is delighted to talk to Dr Fulton about finding a work-life balance and thank her for the generosity with which she’s shared her experience.

“At some point, you’re going end up being accused of being away too much, even if you’re not away as much as you could be.

“With my family, being quite open has worked. You need to be as open about how many things you say ‘no’ to, as how many things you say ‘yes’ to, so they understand that you are making sacrifices for them.

“Then you have a set of almost unimpeachable rules – that regardless of what the opportunity is, you still say ‘no’ [in order to prioritise the family].

“In our household, the rule is that I’m always home for birthdays. And it’s unbreakable. Regardless of what meeting they want me to go to, or whom I’m to talk to, that rule never gets broken and it’s something my family can depend on then.

“The other side of it is to get them interested in what I’m doing, and to help them see the value of it, so that it doesn’t become a competition.

“Then they can get as excited and as interested about things as you are. You’ll find for different parts of your family that there will be different ways of doing that.

“My daughter and I email quite regularly, even when I’m in town. She and I will have an email conversation quite separate to the ones we have verbally, whereas my son actually gets interested in where I’m going.

“He wants me to find things for him, and find things out while I’m away. And with my youngest child, before I go, we actually draw out on the globe where I’m going and how long that’s going to be. And so you engage in different ways for each member of the family.

“It’s that combination of communicating, being flexible, being clear, but also having things that they can depend on.

“When I’m at home, I try to read them a story. We have a conversation about what they’ve done. You make it the quality of time that you’re spending together, rather than necessarily the length.

“I’ve been quite lucky in that my partner’s a stay-at-home Dad. I don’t think I could have done as much without him there to help me out, so that’s a tricky thing.

“And it’s not easy, you let some things slide. So, don’t worry about sweeping the hall every week.”