IndieRead­er review: ​“Mar­lene Belfort’s Mom­my, Can Boys Also Be Doc­tors?: A Mes­sage to Young Sci­en­tists and Oth­er Humans is a deeply per­son­al explo­ration of life’s con­tra­dic­tions — trau­ma along­side tri­umph, sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs along­side dev­as­tat­ing men­tal health crises, and the con­stant ten­sion between pro­fes­sion­al demands and fam­i­ly responsibilities. 

From her child­hood in Apartheid-era South Africa to her career as a pio­neer­ing female sci­en­tist and devot­ed moth­er of three, the dis­tin­guished mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist offers a refresh­ing­ly can­did take on the key to her sto­ried career: ​‘Resilience has been key for me through­out my life, as I’ve seen plen­ty of tragedy as well as tri­umph.’” Anoth­er key to Marlene’s abil­i­ty to com­bine moth­er­hood with high-lev­el sci­ence was her post-doc­tor­al expe­ri­ence in the fam­i­ly-friend­ly envi­ron­ment of Israel. The sup­port­ive gov­ern­ment poli­cies and fam­i­ly-first cul­ture allowed Mar­lene to have babies and believe she could indeed become a suc­cess­ful sci­en­tist, that inci­sive research and car­ing moth­er­hood were not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. The con­fi­dence Mar­lene gained there was the bedrock on which she lived her life going forward.