Professor Marci Lobel has spent more than thirty-five years studying what happens in the mind and body of a pregnant woman. She grew up in a working-class family, studied at Harvard, earned her doctorate at UCLA, and rose to become a Distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University in New York – devoting her entire career to a topic that was long discussed only at the margins: how stress affects the course of pregnancy and women’s health. She has come to Masaryk University on a prestigious Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to teach and conduct research.
The Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award is the most prestigious appointment the Fulbright program offers. What did receiving it mean to you, and why did you choose Masaryk University specifically?
It is a great honor – and in a sense, a responsibility. I came here as an ambassador for what is possible when people collaborate across borders. I did not come only to teach, but also to learn. As for choosing this university – Masaryk University has a unique Department of Medical Psychology and Ethics. That is not a standard part of every European university. So I was fortunate that such a department exists here.
You arrived in Brno in January. What were your first impressions of the city?
I fell in love with it. I love the architecture – the combination of old and new, where a modern building stands right next to one from the Renaissance period, and yet the historic building is beautifully equipped inside. The lecture hall where I teach is top-notch. I visited the castle, the cathedral, the ossuary, the Moravian Gallery – but what surprised me most is how international Brno is. I meet people from Mexico, Georgia, Iran, Germany, France. I have made friends from all over the world. And then it occurred to me – perhaps it is fate that I ended up here. In my first year at Harvard, I took a course on Kafka and Freud. Now I am here, in the country where they were born. It feels as though I am coming full circle.
Is there something you experienced in Brno that you would like to bring back to the United States?
The parental leave system. Seeing, in this culture, young mothers pushing strollers with their babies as I walk down the street – sometimes with fathers alongside, and that matters too – that is such a formative time in the life of a family. In the Czech Republic it is three years. In the United States we have no such entitlement – at my university it was six weeks. It is very hard. Childcare in the US is very expensive, and when a woman returns to work, often her entire salary goes toward paying someone to care for her child. That is a very serious problem in our country right now, and one I want to advocate for more actively when I return home.
You originally wanted to become a pediatrician. What led you to psychology?
At Harvard, I worked at Boston Children’s Hospital, and I was deeply struck by the fact that many of the physicians I worked with didn’t even know the names of their young patients – they referred to them by hospital room number. I realized that kind of doctor-patient relationship was not enough for me. At the same time, I discovered for the first time that psychology is a science – that you can measure people’s emotions, attitudes, and behaviors, ask questions, find answers. That excited me enormously, because I love science.
And how did you come specifically to research on pregnancy?
My parents didn’t have the opportunity to go to college – so my professors at Harvard had an enormous influence on the direction I took. They encouraged me to continue. I did my doctorate at UCLA, where my advisor had just received a grant to study pregnant women. I thought: why not? I had always cared deeply about feminism and women’s lives. I knew almost nothing about pregnancy at the time – and honestly, I couldn’t have imagined going through it myself. I am very glad that I later changed my mind about that. I now have a thirty-one-year-old son and a twenty-four-year-old daughter, and I will soon be a grandmother.
Rich research and award for mentoring
Early in your career, you were involved in one of the first methodologically rigorous studies on the effects of stress on pregnancy. What did you learn from it?
The research literature at the time was very weak – there were few studies, and those that existed were not scientifically rigorous. We decided to conduct one of the first truly methodologically strong studies examining whether chronic stress during pregnancy increases the risk of preterm birth or low birth weight. We followed several hundred women in Los Angeles – many of them undocumented, from Central and South America, with few resources or education, many raising a child on their own. The results were unambiguous: women with high levels of stress delivered earlier and their newborns had lower birth weight.
What was the most significant finding?
What is interesting is that most of us focus on medical risk factors – such as hypertension or diabetes. The impact of stress was just as great as the impact of those factors. The study attracted a great deal of attention and became the foundation of my entire career.
One of your largest recent projects was an international study of pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. What was the situation like for pregnant women at that time?
I think most people today can barely imagine it. You don’t know if you will get sick, or if your baby will. Prenatal care moved to computer and phone screens. And when you arrived at the hospital to give birth, everyone around you was covered in protective gowns and masks – you couldn’t even see their faces. A husband, a mother, a sister – no one was allowed to be with you during delivery. We collected data from nearly four thousand American women and found that women were experiencing very high stress, which was a serious risk factor.
How did you then expand the research to other countries?
It occurred to me that this phenomenon was not limited to the United States. I sent emails to psychological scientists I had communicated with over the years – even those I had never met personally – and invited them to collaborate. I told them: I will give you all of our research instruments; we will help you with translations, data analysis, and publishing results. In the end, scientists from Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Switzerland joined – and we studied a total of approximately eight thousand women.
Did the results differ between countries?
The specific triggers of stress differed, and the amount of stress that women experienced differed at various times, because each country had different policies, different lockdowns, different timing of the waves. But the factors that led to depression and anxiety were surprisingly consistent across the world. Pregnancy during the pandemic was very stressful wherever you lived. Throughout my career I have become increasingly convinced that people from different parts of the world have far more in common than what separates us.
Women’s health and its myths
Alongside your research, you are committed to dispelling myths about women’s health. What are the most widespread ones?
One of the biggest myths concerns postpartum depression. Many people assume that women are significantly more vulnerable to depression after giving birth than at other times in their lives – but the data do not support this. Clinically significant depression affects approximately ten percent of women, regardless of whether they have recently given birth or not. The strongest predictor of postpartum depression is depression during pregnancy, and the strongest predictor of that is depression before pregnancy. Most women have relatively stable levels of depressive symptoms. Still, postpartum depression receives enormous attention – and I think this serves a social function: it gives women legitimacy for what they are feeling. Also, depressed women need and deserve help and support, whether in the postpartum period or at any other time in life. Another commonly misunderstood condition is premenstrual syndrome.
In what way is premenstrual syndrome misunderstood?
PMS is a classic example of how culture shapes what we feel. Research shows there is no demonstrable direct link between hormones and mood in women to a degree that would justify calling it a syndrome. Physical symptoms may certainly exist – some women have cramps, headaches – but the idea that hormones cause cyclical mood swings is simply not supported by the evidence. For example, twenty-five years ago, PMS was virtually unknown in China. Once it began to be discussed through Western culture, Chinese women started reporting it. Why? Because our beliefs genuinely influence what we experience. Women in many cultures are taught that anger and irritability are not acceptable – but if you have a diagnosis, these emotions become justified.
In the lecture hall at Masaryk University
At MU you are teaching the course Psychology of Women’s Health, which has become a model for courses at many other universities. What makes it distinctive?
These topics are usually not taught. In this course I focus on diseases that affect women and men differently: heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders – many of their symptoms, treatment, and prognosis differ between the sexes. I also devote significant attention to health behaviors: women are biologically more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Two people of the same height and weight – a man and a woman – smoking the same amount: the tobacco will damage her lungs more than his. Women also have a harder time quitting than men. Almost no one knows this. Alcohol is also more harmful for women than men.
In preparing the course for Czech students, you had to learn the specifics of the Czech context. What surprised you?
Smoking and other forms of nicotine use such as vaping are far more prevalent among Czech women than among American women. And that has a direct impact: lung cancer – not breast cancer – is the deadliest oncological disease. Breast cancer is generally treatable. Lung cancer is aggressive, and early detection is critical. On the positive side, the Czech healthcare system is far more accessible than the American one, so cardiovascular morbidity here is lower.
What would you say is the single most important thing every woman should know about her health?
When I ask people what is the leading killer of women, almost everyone says breast cancer. But it is heart disease. Women are more likely to die after a heart attack than men – partly because they often come to the doctor late, since they are busy taking care of others: children, parents, partners. But there is a second reason: the symptoms of a heart attack in women are often different. That classic feeling of an elephant sitting on your chest is more typical of men. Women may instead experience fatigue, nausea, numbness – and if you don’t know that, you won’t recognize it. That is why I believe a course like this can literally save lives.
Finally – what would you say to the students here in the Czech Republic?
In my classes I try to make sure that the knowledge you take from class does not stop with you. I always give my students an assignment on the first day of class: find one woman in your life and teach her what you learn here. Because knowledge must be shared.