How has motherhood changed your life as a female dermatologist?
The first child is a tsunami that challenges the couple's socio-professional and emotional balance. The overflowing love for the new arrival must not make us forget the love between the two parents, but also between family and friends. Work is also a source of balance and personal fulfillment. It's also important to talk a lot, to listen to the other person so they can take their place and find a balance as a threesome.
I realized then, that parenthood brought up from our deep brain what had happened recorded In our early childhood, each parent having a different experience, we must find a compromise for the education of the baby while respecting his personality.
For me it was important to work because I loved my job, but also I didn't want my children to be my "work tool".
Now, in my consultations, I realize the fatigue that all this causes. Mothers give without counting and often reach moral exhaustion: mental load, lack of sleep, but also physical. We no longer do sport, we do not sufficiently repair the deficiencies of the postpartum period, the iron losses each month... we must know how to recognize it in order to remedy it.
Did becoming a mother in the 90s give you more strength to move towards cleaner cosmetics?
I grew up admiring nature and understanding life, with a geologist father and a biology teacher mother, but at that time there was no ecology. I only became an "ecologist" in the 2000s.
I saw nature deteriorating but I felt helpless. I still remember taking my daughters to the river where we had fun fishing in the middle of the cornfields and the river was devastated by eutrophication*
*Eutrophication is a natural phenomenon of pollution of aquatic ecosystems due to the proliferation of certain plants, most often algae, receiving excessive quantities of nutrients, such as phosphorus or nitrogen, necessary for their development.
At the same time, my colleagues and I were seeing an increase in the incidence of cancers affecting an increasingly younger population. When I understood this link between environmental degradation and the deterioration of our health, I thought that by explaining to people that after the disappearance of bees and birds, it was the turn of our children. Alas, I was asked to stop scaring people.
Being a mother, yes it pushes me to act tirelessly, like parents of the little bird that throws itself on the eagle to defend its nest: we are denatured to the point of losing this basic instinct.
I find the ecofeminist movement, theorized by the philosopher Émilie Hache, who publishes, interesting in 2016 a collection of texts that show the close link between the destruction of nature and forms of oppression of women.
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Organic cosmetology, respectful of health and the environment, became an obvious choice in the lifestyle I wanted for my family. |
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Being a mother of three daughters and passionate about her work, how do you find the right balance?
Indeed, I am from an intermediate generation between my mother's and your generation with fathers who change diapers!
On the one hand it was easy, our mothers had studied they could help us with homework but due to lack of structure (nursery, daycare, part-time work) they had to give up their profession to take care of the children: so no pressure for girls, no worries about equaling our mothers except in the kitchen! While for boys there was the weight of equaling the father. There was another category of women who chose to practice their profession like men, missed out on the joy of raising their children. In those years there was not yet the 35-hour week and for my colleagues, working so little was like not working, it was not serious! But I am one of these women who paved the way showing that we were capable of it.
On the fathers' side it was also complicated, they had been raised by a mother who stayed at home and a father who did not participate in household chores or those concerning their offspring.
In the professional world, it was unthinkable to take time for these tasks. As couples, we had to redefine roles and their distribution to combine the role of mother and wife with our professions.
My job as a dermatologist allowed me to have some time to enjoy my 3 daughters but, I "ran around" a lot, I wasn't always on time when I got home from school and I was afraid they would blame me for it; but in the end I think it shaped their characters.
I would like to thank the mothers of my sons-in-law who prepared them for this new balance.
What does mother-daughter transmission mean to you?
It's wonderful! I'm delighted with these questions because they allow me to immerse myself in the values I wanted to pass on to my daughters. In particular, what is my vision of feminism. I learned a lot by listening to my patients, some activists in the MLF (Women's Liberation Movement) and my fellow gynecologists working in family planning for free access to contraception. It seems to me that in the 70s, sexual liberation was mainly for an emancipated elite; in families, it came a little later. We must not forget the struggles for the right to contraception and the right to abortion.
It was a political but also physical era, these women were commandos against anti-abortion surgeons, organizing to support exhausted women who, at the 7th or 8th child, wanted to commit suicide because they couldn't take it anymore. I want my daughters to know these stories. Knowing what was there before helps us find the right family balance that is a function of the times and that pushes us to be vigilant so as not to lose the important values that others have acquired with difficulty.
On a softer note, I also wanted to pass on to them the joy of living. Giving life is the essence of life, an irresistible instinct but also a great responsibility. We must therefore deliver the values that go with it, like a user manual: the joy of living. Rediscovering the world through the eyes of our children, marveling at a daisy, the joy of learning how to make a fire, a chocolate cake, the pleasure of jumping, running, playing in the waves, the snow, painting, singing… a wonderful transmission. Each one has their own femininity and choices! It's up to each one to build and rebuild it at each stage of life.
A huge thank you to Dr. Sylvie Peres for answering these questions so candidly.
Article written by Margaux