When Mary Beth Staben describes her three children’s different personalities, she doesn’t list traits. Instead, she comes up with a hypothetical scenario where they all play a role.
Cal Staben, her middle child, is the political candidate. Mac Staben, the oldest, is the strategist behind the campaign. Rae Staben, the youngest and the only girl, is even further behind the scenes as the ruthless secret weapon behind the campaign’s success.
“I don’t understand that,” Rae said with a laugh. “I don’t see it.”
Mac said he sees where his mother is coming from, admitting that he and his siblings’ different personalities are somewhat expressed in Mary Beth’s scenario.
“Rae is by far the one of us who is an enforcer — she gets stuff done. You don’t ever want to stand in between her and a task. She finishes. She does things. That’s something that’s very cool,” Mac said. “Cal’s very outgoing and very friendly, and I step back most of the time. I like doing analysis on things … so I think there is truth in that.”
Despite their different personalities, they all have something in common with their mom — they’re all on their way to becoming doctors.
Mary Beth worked in chemistry and engineering for several years before entering medical school at the University of Kentucky in 1994. Rae was a year old.
What drew her to the medical field is what helped her thrive during her time at IBM — working in chaotic environments.
“I love the constant turmoil,” she said. “There’s this controlled mayhem that I found working in business, too.”
That same chaos is one of Mary Beth’s favorite parts of motherhood. She said her best analogy for raising children is a combination of “juggling and directing.” Mary Beth said raising children while simultaneously obtaining a medical degree may not have had obvious effects on her children, but small quirks came up every so often.
“They were more aware of bodily functions,” she said with a laugh, recounting a time Rae told her classmates to “empty their bladders” before leaving for a field trip.
The lasting effects of growing up with a doctor for a mother show in the children’s aspirations. Though Rae said her mother isn’t the exclusive reason she’s chosen to pursue a medical degree, she certainly played a part.
“I saw that she was very satisfied and got a lot of emotional satisfaction out of her work, so that was inspiring to see,” Rae said. “Being a doctor has worked out well for her — I think there’s a lot of things that I’ve seen in her job that I think I would like in my job.”
Mac shadowed his mother a few times as she worked, and as a result, chose the same career path.
“Over the years, I’ve been able to hear her talk about the stories of patients and what she does and her colleagues, and she really enjoys the work — she enjoys the challenge of it,” Mac said. “This became a possible thing because I knew her and I was able to see how she was able to help people, and I thought that was pretty cool.”
Mary Beth said her children were all free to make their own decisions regarding their education and careers — something Rae said she appreciated growing up.
“I feel like my mom, and my parents, were just really easy-going,” she said. “They were never asking ‘Did you do your homework?’ or ‘How did that spelling test go?’ There was more trust that we would do a good job and they would do a good job and we would just work together.”
When the children were young, Mary Beth said she and her husband, UI President Chuck Staben, made it a point to take birthday parties to the next level.
“The birthday parties were epic,” she said. “You’d want to go to these parties.”
There was a pirate party, complete with a treasure map, and a ballerina party, where attendees decorated tutus. Every time, they broke out the birthday banner — a multi-colored, shawl-like item of clothing that Mac said his mother created for the birthday boy or girl to wear on their respective birthdays.
“And this is including recently. There’s picture of me on my 27th birthday wearing the birthday banner,” Mac said, remembering a time when his parents came to see him swim competitively in college when a meet lined up with his birthday — and they brought the birthday banner. “So, it travels.”
Mary Beth said she always rented library books and interspersed them throughout the house when her children were young. They’d find a book in a random place, pick it up, begin reading and then come find her, excited to show Mom what they’d learned. She said making those books available to her children, along with a dress-up bin and a craft closet, was important to her.
“Parenting is all about offering up a lot of experiences,” she said.
Aside from their interests in the medical field, Mac said he sees a lot of his mother in himself, from the way he faces challenges to how he expresses care to those he loves.
“She’s been a huge part of who I am and how I think,” Mac said. “It’s cool what she’s done, (and) what she does. I love the crap out of her.”
Lyndsie Kiebert can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @lyndsie_kiebert