Motherhood Identity Series with Actress and Advocate Dr. Mayim Bialik
In honor of Maternal Mental Health month, we talked with this inspiring mom of two about her mothering journey—and why she feels it's paramount to prioritize mental health in parenthood.
Whether you know her from the 90s sitcom ‘Blossom,’ ‘The Big Bang Theory’ or ‘Jeopardy!’—you probably recognize award-winning actress Mayim Bialik. What you might not know is that she's a lifelong advocate for mental health and how her inspiring, widely-covered journey to motherhood came to be.
In 2020, Bialik and her partner, Jonathan Cohen, launched the mental health podcast "Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown." The podcast, which explores wellness topics, boasts nearly 21 million audio downloads and frequently ranks in the Top 20 in Health and Wellness. It was featured at a SXSW panel in 2024.
She’s also an accomplished author, with two New York Times #1 bestsellers, "Girling Up" and "Boying Up," as well as a parenting book and a vegan cookbook. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA, with research focusing on the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Bialik lives in Los Angeles with her two teenage sons, 15-year-old Frederick and 18-year-old Miles, and three cats.
In celebration of Maternal Mental Health Awareness month, Mayim spoke with The Mother Chapter about her career, her mothering experience, and more:
The Mother Chapter: Throughout your career, you've been open about your experience as a mother. How has motherhood influenced your sense of identity both personally and professionally?
Dr. Mayim Bialik: Gosh, you know, motherhood, for me, I consider the most important job I will ever have. It's also a job with no formal training or benefits. And you figure it out as you go, which is sort of crazy.
For me, becoming a parent was a real expression of power, strength and sensitivity, and being on this journey with the children I have been entrusted with—changed my life in every way. For women, when we are most able to have children is also when we're the most active in our careers—and often trying to develop and maintain an identity as a professional.
I had my first son in grad school, and my second son, I got pregnant right after I filed for my thesis. So I did it all at once. The way I did it was challenging—but it’s challenging no matter how you do it.
While men also have to make decisions about being a parent and having a career, for those of us who actively give birth or choose to breastfeed, it can have a real impact.
You've discussed the challenges of balancing a career with motherhood in interviews. Can you share any strategies or insights you've gained?
You know, everyone's going to do it differently. And everyone will tell you how they think you should do it. It's important to be educated about your choices and to get support, and hopefully not put yourself in a position where you have to choose between two things equally worthy of your time and energy.
My hope is that, with proper support, no women will have to make choices between being a mother or working the way they want to.
I chose to breastfeed, which involved pumping when I was working. While there’s a lot more structure for it now than there was when I was doing this at a workplace, it's important to simply and firmly state what your needs are. And yeah, it is your legal right to parent how you want.
Mental health is a topic you've addressed via your podcast. Regarding postpartum depression, how has your journey with mental health shaped your approach to parenting and self-care?
Well, children are a challenge to mental health for sure. Meaning, you know, life is really in session when you're taking care of kids. And one of the most important things has been having enough support so that I can have age-appropriate conversations with my children—not make them feel burdened by the challenges I'm feeling. But to let them know that sometimes I'm struggling, or sometimes I'm having a hard day and that it's okay for me not to get it right the first time, and sometimes the second.
So it's made me more compassionate, I guess, towards myself, and hopefully, my children have had an accurate portrait of you know, the human experience, which is that things can be hard, and it doesn't mean that you can't keep trying.
Parenthood brings about unexpected lessons and growth. What key insights have you gained about yourself in your experiences as a mother?
Having children will humble you in many ways.
It's also taught me a lot about being honest. Kids can tell when something's wrong. So, even if you act like, “I’m fine,’ they can tell when you're not. It has really encouraged me to be very honest with them. And it's helped me be honest with myself.
Your advocacy work includes raising awareness about neurodiversity and mental health. How do you incorporate these values to your parenting style? What advice would you offer to parents navigating similar challenges?
Every child is unique, no matter if they have a diagnosis or not. And every child needs something different. Again, even if you don't have a child who's on the spectrum, every child is going to need different things. Kids really love it when things are equal and fair, so if you have a situation where one child has different needs, there is an opportunity to talk about what differences are and what that means. It's not about favoring a child over another.
It's something we talk about a lot on our podcast: even in dealing with adults, everyone has challenges and uniqueness. How do we ensure everybody's needs get met to the best of our ability? That's true at home as well.
With your background in neuroscience, how do you approach discussions on mental health with your children? What strategies do you employ?
We name our feelings, and I make sure not to distinguish feelings as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ I also don't call food ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ There are different kinds of food and different kinds of feelings. I make sure not to make my children believe there's a quick fix. And with my older child, there’s a discussion of medication since there’s a lot of talk about ‘this pill’ and ‘that pill’— and people are getting prescriptions for this and that.
It's important to focus on some of the underlying causes of the feelings that we're having and that sometimes medication might be appropriate. But there are many, many other things that we can do beyond medication to help: reducing social media time, increasing sleep, making changes in diet, so we're eating less processed foods, which can impact children's moods and adults' moods.
There are so many things I want to teach my children and show them ways that your mental health can improve without necessarily needing to run to medication as a solution. And as I said, sometimes medication is appropriate. But teaching them how many things we do have control over in our body that can shift our mood is a really important exercise, too.
Many mothers struggle with guilt, whether it's related to work-life balance or personal expectations. How do you manage feelings of guilt? What advice would you give to others facing similar struggles?
I once heard someone say that there's appropriate and inappropriate guilt. Appropriate guilt is wishing that you had done something differently, and inappropriate guilt is the kind of feeling we think we're supposed to have if we feel torn between things.
So, if I'm feeling guilty, it's often an indication I need to make a change something. If I'm feeling regret that I can't physically be in two places at once, I want to name that instead of just sort of calling everything guilt, because that can make it really confusing.
I try to be gentle with myself. I have other like-minded moms whom I go to for mentorship and support, who help me work through those feelings.
And most importantly, I try not to tell my children they're wrong if they feel I'm not present enough. That's a feeling that deserves to be listened to—even if it makes me feel guilty. And I get to take that to a grown-up or to a therapist.
You've emphasized the importance of self-compassion and and acceptance. How did these principles influence your experience as a mother?
The media often portrays an idealized version of ‘Mother,’ but I always choose to be very public about many practical aspects of parenting. I wrote a book called ‘Beyond the Sling’ about our family's experience with attachment parenting. I don't believe in sugarcoating things, and I see much of that in people's social media accounts. You know, when things look really shiny, and even their hard days look much shinier than my hard days.
I stay off social media often because it can be really discouraging—so I try and do my own thing. Especially on our podcast, we talk a lot about what parenting actually looks like, especially with teenagers.
As a public figure, you face scrutiny and judgment regarding your parenting choices. How do you maintain resilience in the face of criticism?
I'm a homebirth person. I'm a lactation educator and counselor, and I do lactation consulting. I breastfed both of my kids for an extended period—well into their toddler years. And yeah, we safely slept, but we bed-shared with our children. We didn't use strollers; we used baby carriers and things like that. So we did a lot of things that people thought were really bananas.
We also practiced elimination communication, which is not potty training, it's learning your baby's cues when they use the restroom. And it's pretty time-consuming, and many thought it was totally nuts, but it really worked for our family, and it was a very compassionate way to care for our babies. People had a lot of issues with that.
It's hard to maintain resilience in the face of criticism, but I rely on women living a life similar to mine. I do it publicly—but thousands and thousands of women parent this way all over the world. I used to read Mothering magazine, which is now online and Leche League International magazine. And that gave me a lot of strength to read from other women who were doing it the way I was.
In terms of advice, yeah, be careful who you share your challenges with. This means for those of us who are prepared to wake up at night because our children will nurse when people ask if they're sleeping through the night unless you want to hear them tell you you shouldn't be breastfeeding all night; I would learn some clever answers like ‘Yes, they sleep through the night.’
Because even though they wake up six times, it's technically still, you know, through the night—ha! So yeah, having a sense of humor is good and knowing to really speak to people who can be supportive and keep you on track, if that's what you'd like to do.
Otherwise, you're going to hear from a lot of people, get your kids out of your bed, hire a sleep trainer, things like that. And that will come up with every aspect of parenting. So be careful who you share those things with. And if you believe in what you're doing, find people who also believe in it to support you.