Allison Arteaga Soergel: "...mothers became more attuned to other ways of connecting, like shared experiences, physical proximity, rituals, and providing special care to meet their children’s needs.

Mothers' belief that their children have a desire to connect with them can even lead them to interpret their children’s behaviors in ways that support relationship building. While mothers in the study ascribed personal meaning to behaviors that had a positive impact on the relationship, they often reframed challenging behaviors as attributable to factors outside of the relationship, like difficulty with impulse control and self-regulation, anxiety, pain, or overstimulation.

“One important message from our research is that our ability to feel connected to someone depends on our interpretation of their behavior, rather than the behavior itself,” said the study’s lead author, Vikram Jaswal. [read the article]

Jane Goodall (1934- ) British primatologist. She is best known for setting the standard for animal behaviour research through her decades-long work with chimpanzees in Tanzania and her global conservation work to protect wildlife.

Donna Strickland (1959- ) Canadian optical physicist. In 2018, she and her PhD supervisor were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing chirped pulse amplification—ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulses, which have many applications, including in eye surgery.

Mae Jemison (1956- ) American doctor, engineer and NASA astronaut. In 1992, she became the first Black woman to travel in space, where she conducted medical research while orbiting the Earth 127 times over eight days aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Tu Youyou (1930- ) Phytochemist. She was the first Chinese woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize (Medicine), in 2015, for her novel bridging of Traditional Chinese Medicine and western science to develop artemisinin-based drugs to treat malaria.

Marie Maynard Daly (1921-2003) First Black American woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, in 1947. Her studies on the biochemistry of cholesterol, sugars and proteins led to new understanding of how food and diets affect the heart and circulatory system.

Bertha Parker (1907-1978) Self-taught Seneca Nation archaeologist. Her discovery in 1930 of stone tools alongside a skull of the extinct giant ground sloth was evidence that humans were in North America for at least 10,000 years. And 14 more women in STEM!