Beth Mattingly had thought she wanted to be a neurosurgeon so that she could investigate how and why people ended up being different before and after some unexpected event. But when she turned to the social sciences, she found other ways to look at the before and after in one's life. Find out how using longitudinal inquiry can tell us a lot about how things change and need to change for the better.
Guest Beth (Jordan) Mattingly, Dartmouth ’96, had thought she wanted to be a neurosurgeon so that she could investigate how and why people ended up being different before and after some unexpected event. But when she stumbled upon the field of human geography and how one’s location can have outsized impacts on opportunities, motivations and behaviors she was hooked. Ever more interested in the more expansive questions and implications of sociology, she pursued graduate work in that field and found new ways to investigate the before and after questions that had always piqued her interest. She focused her research and policy-informing work on poverty alleviation and improving family outcomes and continues this work today in her current role with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Of course, this all happened after she met classmate David Mattingly ’96 and they married, both intent on centering their lives on their partnership and parenthood. With five children, there has been a lot of compromise and flexibility.
In this episode, find out from Beth how using longitudinal inquiry can tell us a lot about how things change and need to change for the better...on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Beth Mattinglyhas had a research career that has focused on families, poverty, inequality and how to make things better. She currently serves as Assistant Vice President for Research & Communications, Regional and Community Outreach at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. NB: The views expressed in this episode are those of Beth and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Federal Reserve system, or its board of governors.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Beth Mattingly: I do a lot of work and have looked longitudinally at people's lives, and I'm very interested in the before and after of what changes trajectories.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Beth Mattingly thought she wanted to be a neurosurgeon so she you can investigate how and why people ended up being different before and after some unexpected event. But when she turned to the social sciences, she found other ways to look at the before and after in one's life. Find out how using longitudinal inquiry can tell us a lot about how things change and how they need to change on the next Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
So I'm here today with Beth Mattingly, previously Jordan, Beth Jordan. And we're going to talk about how concentrating on families and what they need is the foundation of everything. So welcome to the show.
BM: Thanks, Leslie. Thanks for having me.
LJR: So we start this the same way every time when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
BM: Wow OK, entering college, I was a 17-year-old who just desperately had to get out of the house and was excited to come to Dartmouth and was pretty convinced that I was going to be a neurosurgeon. And yeah.
LJR: Where did that come from?
BM: You know, I didn't link it at the time, but I had an uncle who had a brain tumor when I was in middle school, high school, and it really changed his life. He survived it, but he was an entirely different person before and after. So I think that definitely influenced what I was really interested in in high school. The social sciences and humanities were really dull and boring. And I loved math and science. And so I think that influenced it.
LJR: Yeah so that was the vision coming in. But who, given the things that you were involved in, I know you were a geography major, as was I. What was the path?
BM: I think a couple of things happened. I knew that being a mom was going to be and was the most important thing to me, like anything else was going to be secondary to that. That was always my priority. And my perception from the pre-med people I talked to, from mentors, was that neurosurgery was going to be a long, intense, not very flexible path. Simultaneously, I started freshman year. I took my freshman seminar “Place and Placelessness” with a professor, Adrian Bally, and it was in geography. And I was sort of dreading it. I was like, I, I do the seminar. I got to write a lot, but it'll be right. And Oh my gosh, it was life changing, because we were talking about real things. We were reading complex studies. We were thinking about mechanisms. You know, it was so interesting. And that class alone really altered my career path. I mean, for those who don't realize geography has sort of the human geography, social science side and physical geography, and that human geography reeled me in hook, line, and sinker.
LJR: Yeah and well, I mean, it had like if you were drawn to neurosurgery because of that, like who is someone before and after geography tells you like who is someone before based on where they are. And then where they go.
BM: And what's happened in their community and their lives. And, you know, I'm jumping ahead, Leslie, but that is…I've never put that together myself with that piece. But I do a lot of work and have looked longitudinally at people's lives. And I'm very interested in the before and after of what changes trajectories. And so forth. So you've definitely picked up on something there.
LJR: Wow, well, we definitely have to get back there. But you said you hadn't even put that together. So what at this point, were you putting together when we were getting ready to leave?
BM: OK, so this is going to throw you for a loop. I was ready to go to culinary school after graduation.
LJR: I love it.
BM: I thought I'd be a pastry chef. Another important piece of my Dartmouth experience. Freshman fall October24th I met Dave Mattingly, my now husband of 20-too-many years, “too many” just because of age; I adore him. And we dated, as many of you know, all through Dartmouth. We got engaged right before graduation, moved to California. He started grad school. I started working as a baker in a restaurant and, you know, pretty quickly realized that I loved baking, didn't love having to do it to make money, having to get, you know, having to do what other people wanted, to do the same thing over and over again. Yeah, there was some creativity. And there wasn't a lot of career advancement. And I've always had to strive to make a difference, to improve things on the ground. So that didn't I mean, yeah, people might enjoy it, but it didn't fulfill me in that way. I think, though, college was so intense for me. And a lot happened in my family, a lot happened at school. And I just needed like break to recharge, and I wound up having, like at least four or five jobs before I went to grad school.
LJR: So you needed that time to restore your energy. Figure out what it was you wanted to do. And the lure of academia kind of came calling again, right?
BM: Yeah so from baking, I did a number of different direct service jobs, again, wanting to really make a difference and help people improve their lives. And just saw a number of flaws organizationally in the different organizations I worked in where I wasn't sure that all of the policies and practices were positive and beneficial for the people being served. A lot of hierarchy, a lot of judgment of the individuals and a huge emotional toll. It was going to burn me out very quickly. And that sort of led me to think about more of a research path. And what could I do at a different level to influence lives on the ground. And that's when I started exploring graduate school.
LJR: And that you did, drawn clearly toward sociology, social sciences. And so what was that process and where were you in the development of your family? Because I know that your family is giant, compared to some. So tell us.
BM: Yes so I got married a couple of years out of college in January of’ 99 in Rollins Chapel on a beautiful freezing rain day. And I started grad school in January of 99, a few weeks later. Yeah and my journey from geography definitely planted the seeds. But senior year of college, I remember thinking about doing a senior thesis. And I came up with all these really cool ideas, I thought, and professors used to say, yeah, that's really interesting, but it's not really geography. My interests that were like planted by geography, were kind of pushing the edge of what the discipline seemed comfortable with. So I thought about where might I go to grad school and did my research and landed on sociology, which is a lot broader, a lot of the same theoretical underpinnings. I see geographers at some of my conferences. So I went to graduate school. And I went to Maryland. And there you had to do a master's before you could..I knew I wanted to do. I was convinced I was going to be a professor. That was my path. And I had to do a masters, and I was kind of bummed because I just wanted the PhD but is actually a really good experience. Just learning like the purpose was a lot of schools don't make you go just to own a project, see it start to finish sort of something a little smaller before diving deeper. And I did that. And the advice I got was do something you're interested in, but that helps a faculty member move their research along and just get it done. So you can move on to the dissertation. And I really enjoyed the work. I did. I did it on time use and families. It was very middle class focused, didn't have a lot of focus on diversity and didn't get at some of the issues that I really wanted to understand. So I crafted my own dissertation on intimate partner violence. And this won't surprise you, given the themes you had laid out up front, looking at how being victimized by an intimate partner changed a woman's family, career, and future violence experiences. So that was the topic of my dissertation using some data that followed women over several years.
LJR: Wow well, Yeah. And there's the longitudinal coming to bear.
BM: Yeah and right before I finished classes, I got pregnant with my first child.
LJR: So they were born while you were just and a small child. And did you have more at that point?
BM: I did. I had my second child. I was pregnant. Right when I defended my proposal for my dissertation, I remember speaking to my advisor. And we were laying out a timeline and they said, well, there's one hiccup in that timeline.
LJR: And at that point, did you still think the professor route was the direction for you?
BM: Mm-huh, I saw women around me. I knew that, like, the safest thing was to, like, get into a professorship, get tenure. And then have a kid. But there was no way I was waiting that long. So it's like there's grad school. I can delay my dissertation. I can do different things. Dave was in grad school. Financially It was tighter, but we both had a ton of flexibility. And so that's what we did.
LJR: But I know that your CV does not show being a professor full time forever. So tell me about the twists and turns that came next.
BM: Well, so as I'm a new mom with two kids, I'm sort of thinking, I don't really want to go. I don't really want a job. I want to be a stay-at-home mom. This is so fulfilling. This has always been my priority. This is what I want to do. And so Dave was finishing a postdoc in California. We were thinking about our next steps. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do. And we were decided to move back to New England somewhere and do something. And we didn't really know what. And I mentioned this to my dissertation advisor and she's like, oh, OK. I wound up going to this conference and we had a long conversation, and she’s like “I want what's good for you, but it'd be great if that were also good for me,” like, wanting me to…she’d put all this time in me. And I was… on a lark, there was one postdoc at UNH that I knew about from years past on family violence research. And I was like, well, I'll see if they’ve filled it; it was past the deadline. And I emailed and that afternoon, I had an interview and they offered it to me. I was like, well, what do I do here? And I negotiated to do it on a reduced schedule. And it was in New England: checked that box. I didn't have to go full time: checked that box. Incredibly flexible: checked that box. So I did that. And then I finished my postdoc a couple of years later. And at that point, Dave was working full time and the recession was looming. Oh, and I started my postdoc a little late because my daughter was due in August. I'm sorry, I started it on time. And then I started it in June and had a baby in August and took a couple months off. And then went back and I finished my postdoc pregnant with number four, Kieren. So I took time off. And in about November, I mean, I was finishing a few projects that I was interested in, but I wasn't working. I wasn't employed. Dave was working full time. I was taking care of four: six, four, two and zero because I was busy. And a friend of mine from grad school forwarded me something from the Carsey Institute, which later became the Carsey School. They were looking for someone part time to do some analyses, and it was related to tax credits and low income. And it was not something I had expertise in, but a recession was looming. I wasn't completely sure I was ready to step out completely from my career. And it was part time. And it was like, wow, this could work. And Dave had a lot of flexibility with his job. And so I applied and really liked the people, liked the work. It was focused on rural and place-based differences, getting back to some of those geography roots. And I would have autonomy to let me, I would be learning new stuff. But it spoke to, as I was doing a lot of the family violence research, understanding how the consequences were so much different by income and some of the prevalence or some of the things were just different. And so this was becoming more and more salient in my mind as an intellectual. So I got the position and they said, but we'd like to wait. We're not really ready for someone. Could you start in mid-January? I was like, oh, this is perfect because I've got this 6-month-old baby, or he'd be six months at that time. I have a few more months at home, but I know what I'm going to I don't have to worry about our savings going down every month as the recession is unfolding. So I started at Carsey part time and took off. I really saw some, a lot of things that I'd been interested in started coming together in my research. I had a lot of ideas. I really loved being on a space where I was thinking about policy very explicitly. And the following fall, I was promoted and joined full time and stayed for a long time, directed and built the Vulnerable Families Research Program there, and did a lot of work on income stability, the role of safety net programs, low wage work tax credits, a whole host of things. And then four years later, I got connected with the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and started a long term intense consulting relationship with them. And here, one of the things they asked me to do was develop, be part of the team to develop a poverty measure for the state of California. That's really it sounds kind of boring. I don't know about that. But like, it was new. It was interesting. I was ready for a challenge, like, sure, I'll give it a go. It wasn't going to be like everything I did. And that was so transformative for me because it made me understand what policy, who policies were capturing, who they were missing, what we thought we knew and how it wasn't like again, going back to geography, one of the big things is the way that we traditionally measure poverty doesn't account for geographic differences. Some of the new ways, including this California measure, was built on a newer measure from the Census Bureau. Supplemental poverty measure accounts for geographic differences in the cost of living. There's so many improvements, but it's sort of like, OK, and we and it's a really great tool for modeling how potential policies may impact different people in different places from different walks of life, different races, different ethnicities, genders, family structures, et cetera, might be impacted. So again, that before and after those worlds intertwined nicely because what I was doing at Carsey related to and helped me grow what I was doing at Stanford and what I was doing at Stanford improved my skills and helped me elevate what I was doing at Carsey. So it was a nice bi-coastal appointment kind of situation.
LJR: So at this point, you're doing this research, you have the policy element in it. And it seems like the only thing missing now is the implementation piece. Is that the bridge to the next step?
BM: Not really. I was research faculty, so I taught some classes, but I was not on a tenure line. And so that meant writing a lot of grants and bringing in a lot of money. And at Stanford, I was consulting, but it wasn't like it was probably not a permanent position forever. And it was part time. So I started to get tired of writing grants for really cool research and not having, and then hiring people to do it. And the funding environment had changed what funders were focusing on. And some big grants ended. And it wasn’t…and I wasn't there wasn't a lot of opportunity to grow my career at that time at uncage. So I started thinking about what my next steps be? And there was a position. I saw listed at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. I literally read it and said I could have written this. I showed it to a colleague. I showed it to my husband. And they're like, you're joking, right? No, it's actually a job that exists. So I applied and a little over two years ago joined the Boston Fed. As I told you, I need to make a caveat as I'm talking about my work at the Fed: The views represent my own and are not necessarily representative of those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Federal Reserve System or its board of Governors.
LJR: Perfect. So tell me about this job description that you could have written.
BM: I'm an assistant vice president for research and communications and regional community outreach at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. And this job was a great fit because it's a role where I work very closely, and my team work very closely, with our engagement teams who are working with people on the ground. So that our research can both inform their activities. We can bring to bear the evidence and the insights from research to help develop interventions and programs. But also what they're learning on the ground and the questions that are percolating up is the need for information gets filtered back to us. So that it can be pretty symbiotic in how engagement and research work, which is quite exciting. We also focus on some long-term structural change. So being outside of a grant environment, you're free to think about what are the things that you would work on if you could? What do you think will make the biggest difference? And I've got a great team of researchers and communications professionals. It's a lot of fun.
LJR: Excellent and with all of this, you still have these kids. Tell me remind me their ages at this point now.
BM: Right so I have a Aiden who is 18. But is a junior in college; Finn is 16, looking at colleges now, a senior in high school; Maeve is 14, Kieran’s 12; And we didn't talk about Ayla. But in the mix of all this around a little bit after I started consulting for Stanford and working at Carsey, Ayla was one. We had a long gap because we thought we were done, but then decided, no, our family wasn't complete. we had Ayla.
LJR: Wow. That span of ages. I mean, there's so many developmental milestones and challenges and all of that on top of your full time job. So how I know motherhood had been such a thing that you knew would take front and center, but how are you juggling that when in this time, it seems like kind of exploding?
BM: Explodding. Yeah. Dave and I, very early on decided that one thing that was important to us was that we not live apart many academic couples apart for grad school, but that wanting a family, having parenthood be so central, we did not want to live apart. Dave is an incredibly engaged father and we've each made sacrifices career wise and each take cover each other when we need to. So that's a huge part of it. I think I've always had at least probably now less so, but always had a ton of flexibility and when, where and how I work. That's been really important. You know, there were times when the kids had more intensive needs. And I was able to dial back my work hours, work part time. There were times when we needed more income. And I able to use my time at Carsey was not always full time. Often it was 60 or 80% time. And that's sort of part and parcel of soft money, but also allowed for some family flexibility. And I think people ask, How do we do it? And it's like, I don't know that I could give you the five steps. We just do it like, you know, there's more takeout meals than I would necessarily want or quick things. There's juggling. There's some kids are in the car more than they might like going to the other kids’ activity. It's we can't always both be at the soccer games. It's one or the other, but a lot of coordination, a lot of flexibility and doing the best we can.
LJR: Yeah Yeah. And it's interesting because your research has really been on how families make it work. And probably what you would say better than anybody is there's no playbook. Like it's different for everybody, right?
BM: Yes but since I'm looking at policy, I'm looking at aggregate patterns, right? And when I think about policy, people will say, well, so, for example, in your family? And I'm like, no one can make policy based on my family. I mean, two PHDS, five kids. Like, it's just so atypical. So it's kind of funny. I mean, being a mom and juggling. But I'm fortunate not to have the income struggles that so many of the families that are in my research do or the family struggles or the job struggles. So Yeah.
LJR: Yeah and you're right. I mean, so much is context. And so in this context, though, for you and your family, what have we maybe missed in this conversation?
BM: I mean, I guess it's easy to talk to you and be like, oh, yeah, we do this like the heart rate. This isn't an easy. I remember in my first semester grad school, taking a class in sociology and gender, work and family, and it was like, can women have it all? Can they have a career and can they have a family? And I mean, yes, there's policies that make it hard. We don't have national paid family leave, universal childcare, et cetera. It's juggling. And I'm really glad I made the choices I made and took the path that I took. But I think in a conversation like this where things are going well in the aggregate, the day to day and the hard. So I just say this because sometimes I think you can hear people and be like, oh, wow, you know, what am I? It's like now it's hard. It is. This stuff is real. It's hard and it's such.
LJR: Yeah Yeah. But we do it for a reason. And we [absolutely] want that. And so we're willing to take the hard because it's worth it. So well, it sounds like your path has put your family on a great trajectory and we're just really thankful that you sat down with us to share your story. Thanks so much.
BM: Yeah.
LJR: That was Beth Mattingly, whose research career has focused on families, poverty, inequality and how to make things better. She currently serves as assistant vice president for research and communications, regional and community outreach at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Her views are her own. To get a weekly dose of someone else's personal viewpoint, please consider following us through RoadsTakenShow.com or wherever you find your podcasts so you won't miss our guests’ conversations with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on future episodes of Roads Taken.