How This 90-Year-Old Woman Found Her Dream Job at 50
Ninety years ago, in a small North Dakota town, this was the norm: Men were the breadwinners, and women were the homemakers. If women wanted to work, they’d become teachers, leaving more prominent positions open to the men. Less than 600 women received doctoral degrees, as opposed to nearly 6,000 men.
Rosalind Kingsley, who everyone calls Roz, was living this exact reality. And she hated it.
To Teach or Not to Teach?
“I’m an only child and my father was a sort of chauvinist,” Roz says. “And he said, ‘Well, women teach. Why don’t you learn how to teach?’ I thought, ‘Yes, Daddy. I can do that,” says Roz, who was born in 1929. A lifelong piano player and music lover, she decided to become a music teacher.
After graduation, she interned for Wayne County General Hospital’s music therapy program associated with its psychiatric hospital. But music therapy felt like a pendulum that swung from too intense to not intense enough. Roz disliked the experience for its big groups of people, loud noises, and disorder.
Curiosity led her to the hospital’s library to read the patient case studies. She found herself spellbound by the “whys” and “hows” that jumped from the studies’ pages: How did the psychiatric hospital function? How could its patients be helped?
“That’s when I first got interested in doing psychology,” Roz says. “I thought, ‘Gee, that’s something I really think I’d like to do. Maybe I can help these people.’” Instead, she did what was expected of her and other young women at the time: She got married.
A Mother's Instinct
By the 1960s, Roz had given birth to two sons, Jeff and Paul, two years apart. Roz soon noticed Jeff was hyperactive, couldn’t control his emotions, flapped his hands, rocked constantly, was sensitive to smell, and lacked focus. She took him to doctor after doctor to no avail.
One medical professional went as far to tell her Jeff’s development problems were her fault, and that she wasn’t doing right by him. But a mother’s instinct led her to insist there was something wrong. “I had to get to the bottom of the problem,” Roz says. “I had to.” Eventually, Jeff was misdiagnosed with cerebral palsy and a learning disability.
Meanwhile, her marriage was quickly turning abusive. After developing a brain tumor, Roz’s first husband could no longer support the family and began acting out. The pressure was on Roz to make ends meet; she found herself working as a public elementary school teacher in Long Island, a job she grew to resent for the structure and planning it demanded of her.
As things at home escalated, a doctor recommended she see a psychiatrist. Their advice? “You’re either going to go down the tubes with this man or you’re going to make it on your own, and you better start planning for that.” That’s when the wheels started to turn.
Back to School
Roz decided she was going to go back to school, this time to become a psychologist. She enrolled at Hofstra University to take undergraduate courses in psychology. “My goal was to get a Ph.D. by the time I was 50,” she says.
Not everyone rallied behind her, though. “My parents thought I was crazy,” Roz says. “They didn’t want to help because I already had a bachelor’s degree. And it was difficult because we didn’t have any money.” Roz was furious, her father’s reasoning being that she was just a girl—she didn’t need money. “Because men had penises, they were better than woman?” Roz says. “I didn’t understand that then and I still don’t.”
Fueled by the desire to care for her sons and prove her parents wrong, Roz pressed on. Classes started at 4 P.M. each weeknight and ended at 10 P.M., a schedule she kept for four years straight. “Oh boy, did I do a lot of running from the parking lot to the classes,” Roz remembers. Fortunately, Hofstra helped her get a job as a part-time school psychologist, which helped the family get off food stamps.
While in school, Roz read a lot about autism, a disorder the world hardly knew about at the time of her son Jeff’s original diagnosis. Following that same instinct, she had it confirmed by a neurologist: Jeff was autistic.
Despite the relief of finally knowing what was happening with her son, Roz still had some days when she didn’t think she could finish schooling.
“Getting an education in your 40s is frightening,” Roz admits. “In the middle of the night, you have big what ifs—what if I made the wrong decision, what if I fail, what if I’m not accepted to the Ph.D program—come up.”
But she trained her mind to focus on the now. “You put one foot ahead of the other and live in the present. You can’t think ahead,” she says. “You learn to say ‘I cannot think of what was, I can’t think of what might be, I have to think about what is.’ If I can only think for an hour ahead, that’s what I’ll think on.”
Ultimately, she was accepted into a nighttime doctoral program at Hofstra University which she began in 1974. At that time, only 13,000 women got doctoral degrees, as opposed to the 71,000 men, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
By the time she graduated with her PhD in Psychology in 1978, when Roz was 49 years old, the number of women earning doctoral degrees nearly doubled (24,5200), while the number of men stayed roughly the same (70,000).
Her parents and her sons watched her walk across the stage and relief fell over the family. It was over. She had more time for her boys and more opportunity.
“I look back now and think, Oh my Lord, how did I ever do that?” she says. Her advice to others plotting their own reinvention stories? “Be brave. You have to be willing to take that first step to let go of what you have to find out if what you could be going to is better. You don’t know what’s on the other side of that door.”
One Final Role
On the other side of 50 years old was a rich and meaningful career for Roz. She went on to become a psychologist for the Delaware State Police, a role she held for 16 years.
At one point, she earned $100 per hour. Helicopters sometimes picked her up in the lot across the street from her home so she could be an expert witness in family court cases around the country, followed by criminal court. She evaluated people in prisons, in courts, and at home. She also often testified on behalf of children in custody cases.
Helping people through court work became her passion. She reveled in the sense of responsibility, opportunity to grapple with complexity, and the chance to help juries and judges make the best decision for children.
Throughout her career, she also worked one-on-one with people to help them build confidence. If her patients weren’t living a life they were happy with, she would go back to the “whys” that fascinated her all those years ago at the psychiatric hospital.
“The first thing I ever did with a patient was to ask them ‘What do you want to accomplish here?’” she says. “I turned it over to them immediately—what needs to change in your life that I can help with?’” Roz still gets calls from her former patients asking for help and guidance.
Now 90, Roz is still the caretaker for her son Jeff, who is 62. They reside in Canandaigua, New York, a half hour from her son Paul and her two college-aged grandchildren.
She spends her days cheering on the Mets, quilting, doing jigsaw puzzles, and spoiling her dogs, Abby and Willow. Most importantly, she’s still living in the moment.
“You wonder if you’re going to be alive the next day,” she says. “Every day is an adventure. It was then, too, and it was very scary. But I learned how to structure my thinking to say I must think of right now.”
