International Day of Women and Girls in Science is February 11th and examining the factors and policies that impact women's careers in STEM sciences has been an on-going focus of HD faculty. Dr. Wendy Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science (CIWS), conducts research and disseminates information relevant to women's experiences in STEM careers. Her work was featured in an online article of the Yale Scientific Magazine. Williams has reported that women in math-intensive fields are particularly hindered by the impacts of parenting. Her studies revealed that relative to men, women face significantly more stress and career complications in their pursuit of academic tenure. Women typically apply for tenure-track positions between the ages of 27 and 33. Raising a family is often incompatible with a career path that demands a singular focus on academic productivity. Williams points out that the tenure system has not evolved with the needs of women. One of Williams' policy recommendations for encouraging women to enter STEM careers is to permit women with newborns to work remotely from home and reduce the workload of parenting. The development and use of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that it is possible to conduct research remotely and make it a viable option for tenure-tracked mothers. Read more about Dr. Williams' research and resources on the CIWS website.
Jane Mendle
In September 2020, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) published the first-ever gender parity review of psychological science: “The Future of Women in Psychological Science.” The consensus was that although gender gaps for women in psychological science are closing, there is more work to be done. Jane Mendle, professor of human development, was an author of the report. It was considered one of APS’s most highly cited publications from 2020. Click on the arrow below to listen to a discussion with Mendle and her co-authors for more context.
From surging hormones and acne to body hair and body odor, puberty can be a rocky transition for any kid. But girls and boys who start physically developing sooner than their peers face particular social and emotional challenges, researchers find.
Jane Mendle
"Puberty is a pivotal time in kids' lives, and early maturing boys and girls may be more likely to struggle psychologically," says Jane Mendle, a psychologist and associate professor at Cornell University.
A 2018 study conducted by Mendle and her team found that girls who entered puberty significantly earlier than their peers were at higher risk for mental health concerns. They're more likely to become depressed during adolescence, the study finds, and this distress can persist into adulthood.
"For some girls, puberty can throw them off course, and the emotional stress can linger," Mendle says, "even after the challenges of puberty wane."
While the age-range for puberty varies, says Jennifer Dietrich, a pediatric gynecologist at Texas Children's Hospital, the average age of menses is 12.3 years old. However, about 15% of females start puberty much sooner — by the age of 7.
Pediatricians haven't identified a lone cause for this shift, but Louise Greenspan, a pediatric endocrinologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, says childhood obesity, environmental chemical-contributors,and the effects of chronic stress — a hormonal response to neglect or abuse in the family, for example — may all play a role.
At a crucial time when kids long to fit in, puberty can make them stand out. And when breast buds and body hair sprout during elementary school, children often feel exposed. Unable to hide their sexual development from others, they may feel ashamed or embarrassed.
Cosette Taillac, a psychotherapist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., recalls a particular client, a 9-year-old girl, who was started to feel self-conscious playing soccer because her body was developing.
When the little girl no longer wanted to participate in sports — something she had always loved — her parents sought Taillac's help.
"She didn't want to dress in front of her teammates," says Taillac.
Studies show girls who physically mature early, may be more likely than boys to ruminate about these uneasy feelings. According to researchers, this can prolong the emotional distress, which may increase their risk of depression and anxiety.
Still, though girls are more likely to internalize the stress they feel, boys aren't unscathed, says Mendle.
In research by Mendle and her colleagues, early maturing boys were more likely than others to feel socially isolated and to face conflict with friends and classmates. "This may increase their risk of depression," she says,"but we're uncertain if these effects last into adulthood."
Because information about early development tends to focus on girls, parents are often perplexed when their sons start puberty early, says Fran Walfish, a child and adolescent psychotherapist in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Their first clue, she says, may come when a tween boy refuses to shower or wear deodorant.
Helping kids navigate thesenew social and emotional hurdles can be tricky, especially since puberty spans several years. But don't be afraid to reach out — or to start the conversation early.
Greenspan suggests talking to children about sexual development by the age of 6 or 7. "Starting the conversation when kids are young, and keeping lines of communication open can make the transition less scary," she says.
At times, parents may also need to advocate for their children. "My client's parents worked with the soccer coach to create more privacy for her when dressing for team events," says Taillac. The simple adjustment helped the girl feel safe and more confident.
Of course, not all kids are eager for a parent's help; some shy away from even talking about their newfound struggles. That's sometimes a sign they're confused or overwhelmed, child psychologists say.
"It's important for parents to realize that puberty triggers identity questions like 'Who am I?' and 'Where do I fit in?' for boys and girls," Walfish says.
Taillac says reading books together can help. "Books provide a common language to discuss what's going on, which can open up conversations between parents and children," she says.
Seeing your child mature early can also worry a parent. If you find yourself unsure of how to intervene, psychologists say, remember that distraught kids often want the same thing we all seek when we're upset — a generous dose of empathy.
Luckily, compassion doesn't require parents to have all the answers. Puberty calls for the samegood parenting skills as any other age: being emotionally available to kids through their developmental milestones, witnessing their growing pains, and providing comfort when life throws them curveballs.
That advice is simple; the effects powerful. Scientific evidence shows this kind of parental support helps foster emotional resilience, and that bolsters kids' health and relationships for years to come.
Listen to an interview with Jane Mendle to learn more about her research on early puberty in girls.
Qi Wang, an Association for Psychological Science (APS) Fellow esteemed for her scientific contributions on culture and autobiographical memory, reflects on her career path in an interview with Suparna Rajaram, the President of APS.
Gary Evans and colleagues are the first to show that parenting can have long-term effects on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in adulthood. This has important implications for education and public policy.
In his blog, The Methods Man, F. Perry Wilson MD, commends the quality of Jane Mendle's research on how early puberty may lead to depression in adulthood. Her results have important implications for depression screening recommendations of girls in early puberty.
In a recent paper, Valerie Reyna and Rebecca Helm reported that adolescents are more likely than adults to plea guilty to crimes they have not committed. They argue that the decision-making processes involved with plea-bargaining are developmentally immature in adolescents and they are vulnerable to pleading to a lesser charge even if innocent.
Daniel Casasanto and graduate student Geoffrey Brookshire propose an exciting new theory that, contrary to the prevailing view that different emotions are localized in specific areas of the brain, emotions are “smeared over both hemispheres” depending on an individual’s handedness.
Katherine Kinzler studies the development of social cognition, with particular emphasis on exploring infants’ and children’s attention to the language and accent with which others speak as a marker of group membership. A recent article by the BBC explores her research and its implications for empathy, cultural learning, and trust.
In his blog, The Methods Man, F. Perry Wilson MD, commends Jane Mendle's research on how early puberty may lead to depression in adulthood. Her results have important implications for screening girls in early puberty for depression.
Several animal studies and basically all of human experience have taught us that puberty is a particularly difficult stage of life psychologically. A new study appearing in the journal Pediatricsnow suggests that early puberty in girls can lead to depression and anti-social behavior well into adulthood, suggesting that the difficulties of those teenage years are far from fleeting.
Jane Mendle
Researchers led by Jane Mendle, at Cornell used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative survey study which ran from 1994 to 2008. More than 10,000 girls, average age 16 years, were interviewed at the start of the study and followed into their late 20's. Over that span, they were asked about depressive and antisocial symptoms. They also reported the date of their first period, which is a proxy for pubertal development.
The average girl reported the onset of menarche at around 12 years, but there was a wide distribution, with about 10% of girls reporting a first period at age 10 or younger.
The study showed that a younger age of menarche was associated with greater depressive symptoms in the later teen years.
Perhaps more interestingly, it showed that younger age at menarche was associated with more depressive symptoms even as the women approached 30 years of age.
In an elegant analysis, the authors went on to show that the driver of that elevated depression rate in later adulthood was the depression in the teenage years. In other words, girls who develop early are more likely to get depressed as teenagers, and that depression may set the tone for decades to come.
Now there are some factors here that were unaccounted for, body weight being a major one. Overweight and obese girls go through puberty earlier, and body weight is a risk factor for depression. I asked Mendle about this potential confounder.
"We know that people treat girls who look very physically mature different from girls who do not look physically mature and that is not purely attributable to weight. We know that parents do it and we know that teachers do it. There is also not any good evidence that weight would be influencing the antisocial and externalizing behaviors that were seen".
Clinically, whether early puberty is a sign of other stressors or a cause of distress in itself might not matter. If early puberty is associated with depression, the implication is that pediatricians should start screening for depression earlier in girls who develop earlier. The United States Preventative Services Task Force currently recommends screening for depression starting at age 12. For some girls, an even earlier intervention may have long-lasting effects.
Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Human Development, will receive the American Psychological Associations’ G. Stanley Hall award for distinguished contributions to developmental science at APA’s August 2018 meeting in San Francisco.
More than 50 Cornell Cooperative Extension educators and 4-H program leaders, youth service providers from community agencies and Cornell faculty members discussed productive social media use and youth development.
Lindsay Dower ‘17 spent her four years at Cornell working to improve the lives of both those within the College of Human Ecology and in the broader Ithaca community, truly embodying the mission of the college.
But what is often forgotten is that Diana was also a paradox: under the magnificently poised image she presented to the world, she struggled with bulimia, self-injury and lingering feelings of worthlessness.
Princess Diana
In the early 1990s, toward the end of her marriage, Diana gave a series of interviews to promising to share “her true story.” In 1992, Andrew Morton published Diana: Her True Story (based on secret recordings Diana had an intermediary make for the author),which revealed that the princess was living with the eating disorder.In an 1995 interview with BBC, she described bulimia as a “symptom of what was going on in my marriage.”
Diana’s candid self-disclosures in these interviews may be her most powerful and unrecognized legacy. Her honesty helped chip away at the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraged others to get help. It is not an exaggeration to say that thousands of people changed their lives because Diana talked about hers.
Even more unexpected was the clarity, honesty and depth with which Diana described her bulimia.“That’s like a secret disease,” she told the BBC in that 1995 interview. “You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don’t think you’re worthy or valuable. You fill your stomach up four or five times a day — some do it more — and it gives you a feeling of comfort.”
“It’s like having a pair of arms around you,” she added, “but it’s temporarily, temporary.”
She said that she often came home from her official engagements “feeling pretty empty” and that she felt immense pressure to keep her marriage together despite the couple’s well-documented problems. “I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals, and people were using my bulimia as a coat on a hanger: they decided that was the problem — Diana was unstable,” she said.
For people who don’t understand why someone would feel compelled to binge and purge, Diana’s shockingly vulnerable explanations provided a simple answer. Binging, she said, functioned as a release valve for pressures and problems that seemed otherwise insurmountable. The stigma surrounding mental health can often be exacerbated by a lack of knowledge, and Diana’s candid interview allowed others to empathize and understand what it’s like to live with bulimia.
Diana’s disclosure had even more value for people with first-hand experience with bulimia. During the second half of the 20th century, rates of bulimia in Western, industrialized nations rose dramatically. Yet many women viewed bulimia as a private and deeply humiliating experience that should be kept hidden.
Remarkably, in the years during which Diana spoke publicly about her bulimia, rates of womenseeking treatment for bulimia in Great Britain more than doubled. The press dubbed this phenomenon the “Diana effect.” Mental health practitioners credited this shift to greater public awareness and dialogue about bulimia, as well as women identifying with Diana. If a princess could be bulimic, so could they. If she could explain why she hurt herself, they could recognize that side of themselves too. If she could overcome her eating disorder, they could too.
Self-disclosures, particularly of people in positions of power or visibility, can change how other people approach their own psychological health. Researchers have found that knowing someone else with a mental illness can encourage others to get help. “It is notable that the Princess’s death in 1997 coincided with the beginning of the decline in bulimia incidence,” researchers wrote in a 2005 study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry on time trends in eating disorder incidences. “Identification with a public figure’s struggle with bulimia might have temporarily decreased the shame associated with the illness, and encouraged women to seek help for the first time.”
Unfortunately, after Diana’s death in 1997, those rates slowly returned to baseline. By 2000, the “Diana effect” had vanished. Currently, in the United States, we are in the throes of a new mental health crisis. A study published in Pediatrics last year found that between 2005 and 2014, there was a 37% increase in the number of individuals aged 12-20 reporting a major depressive episode. But there hasn’t been a corresponding rise in treatment rates.
Hopefully, the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death will reignite conversations about why it’s so important to speak openly about mental health and encourage others to seek help. Her sons have already taken up that task. Earlier this year, Prince Harry spoke frankly about seeking counseling to address his grief over his mother’s death. Meanwhile, Prince William appeared in a documentary about anorexia, where he discussed his mother’s experience with bulimia.
“We need to normalize the conversation about mental health,” Prince William said in the documentary. “We need to be matter-of-fact about it, and not hide it in the dark where it festers.”
Diana did not set out to be a mental health advocate. She simply told her truth and her narrative resonated. These days, we could use more truth-tellers like her.
Charles Brainerd was elected to the National Academy of Education (NAEd) for his scholarly contributions in the field of education research. Brainerd’s research has had a deep impact on educational, developmental and cognitive psychology.
Robert J. Sternberg, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, has been selected to receive the 2017 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science. The award honors members for their lifetime of outstanding intellectual contributions to psychology.
Jane Mendle was awarded the Stephen H. Weiss Junior Fellowship which has a term of five years. She was recommended by the selection committee for her passion for her subject and for teaching, her interactive lectures and creative assignments.
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A study by Wendy Williams of college and university administrators has found that female department chairs, deans, and provosts have different attitudes and beliefs than their male counterparts about hiring women professors in STEM fields - women administrators emphasize policies that attract and retain women.
Adam Anderson, in Human Development's Human Neuroscience Institute, has received a grant from the Irlen Syndrome Foundation for an fMRI project being conducted at the Cornell MRI Facility on the relationship between color processing and other cognitive processes in the brain.
Eve De Rosa, associate professor of human development and an expert in the neurochemistry of cognition explains how her research on the neurochemical acetylcholine led her to Cornell.
Amelia Hritz, the first student in Human Development's Dual PhD and JD Program in Developmental Psychology and Law, was honored at the Law School graduation celebration.
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Qi Wang articulates the role of cultural psychology in bridging cultural gaps in psychological research and in society.
Marianella Casasola shows how multisensory play in naturalistic settings is fundamental to the early development of visual-spatial abilities.
Wendy Williams and Jane Mendle contribute to our understanding of the career challenges women in academic sciences face and the way forward.
In his blog, 
Stephen Ceci
In a new paper, 
Lindsay Dower ‘17 spent her four years at Cornell working to improve the lives of both those within the College of Human Ecology and in the broader Ithaca community, truly embodying the mission of the college.
Valerie Reyna - member of the National Academy of Medicine
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