New Research Mother-daughter duos find study resonates Archived article from Dec 6, 2004 By Carla Cantor

Credit: Nick Romanenko Sheila Dalton, right, and Ann Bagchi, who is with the Institute for Health in New Brunswick Terre Martin, right, associate director, department of community affairs, and her daughter, Christina, (DC 95). Sheila Dalton, right, who lives in West Branch, Iowa, within 10 miles of the town where she grew up, is proud of her daughter, Ann Bagchi, an assistant professor at the Institute for Health in New Brunswick. “I admire all her education and that she moved to a big metropolitan area and has a good job,” Dalton says. “But I worry about the pressure. At times, she seems frazzled.” Bagchi, 33, who, according to her mother, was “focused from a young age,” has a Ph.D. in sociology and has been working full time since the age of 21. Divorced a year ago, she is the mother of a five-year-old daughter. Her mother, by contrast, married her high school sweetheart and worked briefly as an elementary school teacher before taking off 10 years to raise her three children. After her youngest started kindergarten, she went back to the classroom. “We were poor as church mice, but I remember those years better than the last 25 and wouldn’t trade them for the world,” Dalton says. Bagchi agrees that achieving balance can be challenging at times, but she couldn’t imagine coming of age in an era of confined social roles. Despite dissimilar life paths, she and mother have similar values and enjoy a mutual admiration. “Our life experiences aren’t better or worse – the stresses are different,” Bagchi says. Terre Martin (DC ’69), right, associate director in the department of community affairs at Rutgers, with her eldest daughter, Cristina (DC '95). Martin took her first full-time position at age 51, having spent her years after college doing volunteer work, working part time, and raising three daughters with her husband Doug (Ag '67). “I was wife and Mom, first and second,” Martin recalls. Then, during the 1970s, “the women’s movement came along and made me feel guilty because I wasn’t using my degree and getting paid for my work.” Martin began reporting for a local weekly newspaper and doing public relations work part time for several local school districts. In 1999, a friend familiar with her volunteer recruiting efforts on behalf of Rutgers mentioned an opening in the admissions office and suggested she apply for the job. “I got the offer, held my nose and jumped right in,” she says. Martin feels lucky to have come upon a rewarding late-in-life career but believes decisions are harder for her daughters. “They have so many options as young women, which is good, but it's hard to know which one is best.” Nicole (RC '97) is an advertising executive in New York; Alison (RC ’01), a financial planner in Jacksonville, N.C., and a new mother; and Cristina, an entrepreneur who founded and sold a software marketing company before the age of 30. “I think my Mom has the best of both worlds,” Cristina says. “She had kids when she was young and had the energy for them and now she’s enjoying a career.”

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