Promises
June 3, 2018 3:24 AM Subscribe
An obstetrician on the conflict between promises to her children and duty to her work (Warning: contains descriptions of surgery, obstetric emergency, and pregnancy loss. SL: The Rumpus).
Oh.
posted by notsnot at 6:07 AM on June 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by notsnot at 6:07 AM on June 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
This story made me sad, but not because she has a painful conflict with no easy resolution, but because she feels she has a painful conflict with no easy resolution. Does she? She obviously loves her kids and her kids can feel that. She remembers five years later that she didn't show up for a muffin thing at her kids' school. I'll bet her kids don't remember. I'll bet her kids see her as the caring, involved mother she clearly is, and are proud of her, and -- as she says in the piece -- offer her the grace she has trouble offering herself.
posted by escabeche at 6:56 AM on June 3, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 6:56 AM on June 3, 2018 [11 favorites]
I wish I could reassure her. I was raised by two doctors. The words on call entered my life at a very early age. By five years old, I understood that when somebody was on call, we couldn't go too far from where we might be reached, and wherever we were, Mom or Dad might get called away, and they had to go, because people needed them. I know that I whined and sulked about this sometimes, but I also know that I was endlessly proud of my parents. I still am, and we have always been close. There were some lonely and scary nights, but what child doesn't have any of those? Growing up around medical knowledge enriched my life tremendously.
I also know by now that telling someone they shouldn't feel bad about something the entire culture demands that they feel bad about is a kind gesture, but works, at best, temporarily. This article reminded me of some early-twentieth-century literature I was reading in another volume, talking about how a Career Woman would invariably neglect her children. It's a modern construct. If this were a village thousands of years ago, do you think that the midwife's children would be expected to be unhappy that she had gone to help someone else? (And do you think they'd have a "Muffins with Mom" day? No. They would not. That's setting folks up to fail.)
Lisa did a truly lovely thing. I hope that this essay helps Lee resolve any lingering guilt that she feels.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:18 AM on June 3, 2018 [28 favorites]
I also know by now that telling someone they shouldn't feel bad about something the entire culture demands that they feel bad about is a kind gesture, but works, at best, temporarily. This article reminded me of some early-twentieth-century literature I was reading in another volume, talking about how a Career Woman would invariably neglect her children. It's a modern construct. If this were a village thousands of years ago, do you think that the midwife's children would be expected to be unhappy that she had gone to help someone else? (And do you think they'd have a "Muffins with Mom" day? No. They would not. That's setting folks up to fail.)
Lisa did a truly lovely thing. I hope that this essay helps Lee resolve any lingering guilt that she feels.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:18 AM on June 3, 2018 [28 favorites]
I hope Lee takes some consolation in the fact that work interferes with many parents' ability to make/keep promises to their kids and most of them can't take comfort in the thought that they're doing literally life-saving work. E.g., the line cook stuck at work because another cook failed to show up for the next shift, the child care worker who can't leave on time because other parents are late for pick up, or the plumber dealing with someone else's household emergency.
posted by she's not there at 8:16 AM on June 3, 2018 [24 favorites]
posted by she's not there at 8:16 AM on June 3, 2018 [24 favorites]
she feels she has a painful conflict with no easy resolution. Does she?
No, and that’s the saddest part.
My daughter was a soldier’s baby from the moment she was born, living in a military town until she was in elementary school. A school that emphasized, as her daycare emphasized, that sometimes parents will be distant from their children because they are Doing Important Things, and that is just how it is and that’s how the world works. Moms and dads alike.
So she was sometimes disappointed when I couldn’t make things, but not hurt - because I knew not to promise certainties instead of “I will do my very best” and also because her peers and world knew to lift her up in those moments instead of feeling ashamed.
The civilian world doesn’t do this. When people’s working mothers don’t come to Special Days, the teachers don’t oooh and aaah about how their mothers must be working very hard at important jobs. They just..don’t do or say anything. There’s no wraparound world - society still thinks it’s a mothers job to be at Muffins With Mom, not in the operating room. And that’s the problem - not women having jobs that change at short notice.
posted by corb at 8:48 AM on June 3, 2018 [88 favorites]
No, and that’s the saddest part.
My daughter was a soldier’s baby from the moment she was born, living in a military town until she was in elementary school. A school that emphasized, as her daycare emphasized, that sometimes parents will be distant from their children because they are Doing Important Things, and that is just how it is and that’s how the world works. Moms and dads alike.
So she was sometimes disappointed when I couldn’t make things, but not hurt - because I knew not to promise certainties instead of “I will do my very best” and also because her peers and world knew to lift her up in those moments instead of feeling ashamed.
The civilian world doesn’t do this. When people’s working mothers don’t come to Special Days, the teachers don’t oooh and aaah about how their mothers must be working very hard at important jobs. They just..don’t do or say anything. There’s no wraparound world - society still thinks it’s a mothers job to be at Muffins With Mom, not in the operating room. And that’s the problem - not women having jobs that change at short notice.
posted by corb at 8:48 AM on June 3, 2018 [88 favorites]
One of the things that I said to my mother as a teenager was: Don't make promises you can't keep. She would make promises like - I'll pick you up from school, I'll be there on time. She almost never was, usually so late that if I had taken the bus I would already be home.
I was and am proud of her. There was very little that I actually minded her missing. I would have happily gotten myself home on the bus every day, but the thing was she felt that she had to say those things, to try and be the superwoman, to be the exception to the rule that doctors never leave on time. Expectations that male doctors (in general) just do not have - I will happily bet a large sum of money that the school in the piece doesn't have a "Dads and donuts" for Fathers Day.
I hated the occasions when she promised and failed to keep that promise. They are the ones that still stick in my memory, not the ones where she just told me she couldn't come. I'm glad that the author of this piece made the decision to stop making promises. Don't lie to yourself, and don't tell those same lies to your children. Also, smash the patriarchy.
posted by Vortisaur at 8:50 AM on June 3, 2018 [13 favorites]
I was and am proud of her. There was very little that I actually minded her missing. I would have happily gotten myself home on the bus every day, but the thing was she felt that she had to say those things, to try and be the superwoman, to be the exception to the rule that doctors never leave on time. Expectations that male doctors (in general) just do not have - I will happily bet a large sum of money that the school in the piece doesn't have a "Dads and donuts" for Fathers Day.
I hated the occasions when she promised and failed to keep that promise. They are the ones that still stick in my memory, not the ones where she just told me she couldn't come. I'm glad that the author of this piece made the decision to stop making promises. Don't lie to yourself, and don't tell those same lies to your children. Also, smash the patriarchy.
posted by Vortisaur at 8:50 AM on June 3, 2018 [13 favorites]
the teachers don’t oooh and aaah about how their mothers must be working very hard at important jobs
Actually, I HAVE heard teachers say this ... but only to the children in their class whose parents are teachers. :(
posted by saucysault at 9:31 AM on June 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Actually, I HAVE heard teachers say this ... but only to the children in their class whose parents are teachers. :(
posted by saucysault at 9:31 AM on June 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Holy shit, that was brutal and beautifully written. Thanks for sharing.
posted by tristeza at 9:44 AM on June 3, 2018
posted by tristeza at 9:44 AM on June 3, 2018
"My kids did not know I saved a woman’s life. They did not know that Jonah died. And to them, those truths did not matter."
I think she's wrong. Having unreliable parents is very painful, but I never experienced my mother's being called in to work as a nurse (they, too, work on-call) as being unreliable. It was part of the job. We badly needed the money, but I also understood that very sick people needed her help. I bet her kids did, too--if not in the moment, certainly afterwards. I was a little bit older than her kids, but I had younger siblings, and I've never heard them express any resentment of mom's on-call hours.
When I was working a job that required unpredictable hours that, at their worst, could be 75 hours a week or more, though, I often found myself reflecting that having that job would not be compatible with even my moderate expectations of a parent's availability to their child. Part of that may have been that we weren't saving any lives.
posted by praemunire at 10:06 AM on June 3, 2018 [8 favorites]
I think she's wrong. Having unreliable parents is very painful, but I never experienced my mother's being called in to work as a nurse (they, too, work on-call) as being unreliable. It was part of the job. We badly needed the money, but I also understood that very sick people needed her help. I bet her kids did, too--if not in the moment, certainly afterwards. I was a little bit older than her kids, but I had younger siblings, and I've never heard them express any resentment of mom's on-call hours.
When I was working a job that required unpredictable hours that, at their worst, could be 75 hours a week or more, though, I often found myself reflecting that having that job would not be compatible with even my moderate expectations of a parent's availability to their child. Part of that may have been that we weren't saving any lives.
posted by praemunire at 10:06 AM on June 3, 2018 [8 favorites]
I have mixed feelings about treating women's desire to be both with their kids and to do other jobs in the world as a non-conflict because some of us actually experience this as a real conflict based on our understanding of our children's needs and not because society is forcing us to be with them. If anything what I experience more is society forcing mothers and parents to be separated from them and tells us it's not a big deal and maternal connections with children aren't that big a deal if you're a real feminist. I feel forcibly taken from my kids far too much and I don't really like cultural norms that make this accepted.
Like- I want the empowerment for women to have careers and kids and that to not be any more of an issue than for men having careers and kids- however in the meantime I feel like bureaucracy is a poor substitute for parenting and I also feel like the idea that mothers who were doing the work of mothering weren't already doing something valuable gets missed in the conversation. Like, does it matter if we show up for the every day things with our kids or is our absence irrelevant if they just know we love them from a distance? I was a kid with a very very distant (as in other states months of the time) parent and I felt it mattered. My parents worked all the time and missed important things and were too exhausted to do parent things and it mattered to me. And even now I make decisions based on knowing what that was like for me and that it DIDN'T feel ok to me. I knew how different it was when they were or weren't working as much, I saw the difference in my life. I can't pretend if I choose absence from my kid that because I decide they should be unaffected it means they won't be.
Do kids need mothering and parenting and how much? And can we simply hand over the duties to poorly paid underclass members, because the work isn't that important and it doesn't matter? Or do we need to find other families members to do this work for FREE?
Like.... are we maybe both neglecting kids needs and failing to pay and respect those who tend to them by treating kids needs for close and present relationships with parents as something that doesn't take up much time to make ourselves feel better when we can't be there?
I remain unconvinced that my kids don't need me a lot more than I'm told they should be allowed to if I have to work 50-60 hours a week or work full time and also go to school and never see them. When being forced to choose between these things, I can't help but feel like we aren't really fighting for families when we tell moms their kids don't need them so they can be "leaning in" to a work force that gives us too little time with our family without having mixed feelings. And I will also say that I feel passionately about fighting for the rights of families to have non-traditional roles that meet their families needs (i.e. mom is breadwinner, dad is nurturer, or one mom is breadwinner, other mom is nurturer, both are great at both etc etc on and on) I also feel like my experience birthing and nursing my children created a kind of bond for me that I think many women might be more likely (THOUGH NOT UNIFORMELY) to experience and that not being able to talk about that or seek protections for those bonds and the subsequent desire to be with our children when this happens is as limiting as it is supposedly empowering.
I see free daycare/year round full time school as the assumed solutions most often put forward instead of increasing maternity and paternity leave and giving families money to have a parent stay at home more with their kids (as determined by the families needs, not by gender). And what's more we can fight for BOTH these options and allow families to choose either free daycare OR a stipend to help a parent stay home and be with their kids more.
There aren't easy answers and I appreciate these conversations being given the nuance and conflicting emotions they deserve. So often what we really have feels like a LACK of options to be with our families and still contribute/survive financially and I don't think a lack of options is empowerment.
posted by xarnop at 10:06 AM on June 3, 2018 [15 favorites]
Like- I want the empowerment for women to have careers and kids and that to not be any more of an issue than for men having careers and kids- however in the meantime I feel like bureaucracy is a poor substitute for parenting and I also feel like the idea that mothers who were doing the work of mothering weren't already doing something valuable gets missed in the conversation. Like, does it matter if we show up for the every day things with our kids or is our absence irrelevant if they just know we love them from a distance? I was a kid with a very very distant (as in other states months of the time) parent and I felt it mattered. My parents worked all the time and missed important things and were too exhausted to do parent things and it mattered to me. And even now I make decisions based on knowing what that was like for me and that it DIDN'T feel ok to me. I knew how different it was when they were or weren't working as much, I saw the difference in my life. I can't pretend if I choose absence from my kid that because I decide they should be unaffected it means they won't be.
Do kids need mothering and parenting and how much? And can we simply hand over the duties to poorly paid underclass members, because the work isn't that important and it doesn't matter? Or do we need to find other families members to do this work for FREE?
Like.... are we maybe both neglecting kids needs and failing to pay and respect those who tend to them by treating kids needs for close and present relationships with parents as something that doesn't take up much time to make ourselves feel better when we can't be there?
I remain unconvinced that my kids don't need me a lot more than I'm told they should be allowed to if I have to work 50-60 hours a week or work full time and also go to school and never see them. When being forced to choose between these things, I can't help but feel like we aren't really fighting for families when we tell moms their kids don't need them so they can be "leaning in" to a work force that gives us too little time with our family without having mixed feelings. And I will also say that I feel passionately about fighting for the rights of families to have non-traditional roles that meet their families needs (i.e. mom is breadwinner, dad is nurturer, or one mom is breadwinner, other mom is nurturer, both are great at both etc etc on and on) I also feel like my experience birthing and nursing my children created a kind of bond for me that I think many women might be more likely (THOUGH NOT UNIFORMELY) to experience and that not being able to talk about that or seek protections for those bonds and the subsequent desire to be with our children when this happens is as limiting as it is supposedly empowering.
I see free daycare/year round full time school as the assumed solutions most often put forward instead of increasing maternity and paternity leave and giving families money to have a parent stay at home more with their kids (as determined by the families needs, not by gender). And what's more we can fight for BOTH these options and allow families to choose either free daycare OR a stipend to help a parent stay home and be with their kids more.
There aren't easy answers and I appreciate these conversations being given the nuance and conflicting emotions they deserve. So often what we really have feels like a LACK of options to be with our families and still contribute/survive financially and I don't think a lack of options is empowerment.
posted by xarnop at 10:06 AM on June 3, 2018 [15 favorites]
Ouch. This article really hit home. After my dad died, my mom also worked in medicine and I remember her job taking priority over my needs and those of my sibling. As a kid, I was proud of her and appreciated the important work she did but I did get angry and hurt by what I saw as her decision to put her patients first way too often.
Now, many years later, as an adult, I get angry at the lack of social support for working mothers and single parents, and at the dearth of resources allocated to things like important health care services. If society prioritized the needs of families, children, and sick people more, we would organize things so that there were more doctors to care for people without getting burned out and/or harming their families. My mom should not have had to make those tough choices.
The personal really is political.
posted by rpfields at 10:11 AM on June 3, 2018 [8 favorites]
Now, many years later, as an adult, I get angry at the lack of social support for working mothers and single parents, and at the dearth of resources allocated to things like important health care services. If society prioritized the needs of families, children, and sick people more, we would organize things so that there were more doctors to care for people without getting burned out and/or harming their families. My mom should not have had to make those tough choices.
The personal really is political.
posted by rpfields at 10:11 AM on June 3, 2018 [8 favorites]
My mom should not have had to make those tough choices.
For a job like the author's, I don't see how you can ever eliminate the need for irregular hours. Emergencies don't come on schedule, and can you imagine scrubbing in a new surgeon in the middle of Lisa's delivery because the author's shift was over?
Similarly--though I don't know how it is now--at the time, the reason my mom was on-call was because the hospital absolutely had to maintain minimum staffing levels at all times, and yet health care professionals do themselves get sick, have car accidents, etc. And occasionally you have truly unexpected volume of patients, and that has to be provided for. Scheduling and paying regular hours to 2x the number of nurses you actually expect to need is not sustainable.
Some professions, or at least some specializations within some professions, just don't allow for perfectly predictable hours.
posted by praemunire at 10:28 AM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]
For a job like the author's, I don't see how you can ever eliminate the need for irregular hours. Emergencies don't come on schedule, and can you imagine scrubbing in a new surgeon in the middle of Lisa's delivery because the author's shift was over?
Similarly--though I don't know how it is now--at the time, the reason my mom was on-call was because the hospital absolutely had to maintain minimum staffing levels at all times, and yet health care professionals do themselves get sick, have car accidents, etc. And occasionally you have truly unexpected volume of patients, and that has to be provided for. Scheduling and paying regular hours to 2x the number of nurses you actually expect to need is not sustainable.
Some professions, or at least some specializations within some professions, just don't allow for perfectly predictable hours.
posted by praemunire at 10:28 AM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]
My mum, a carer for the elderly, tried her best to not make promises, and the one time she ever did- because I was the narrator for the play, one of her charges died when she was due to go off shift. I wish she'd told me at the time because I was horrible for a week or two.
posted by threetwentytwo at 10:43 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by threetwentytwo at 10:43 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
My therapist keeps telling me it’s ok that I prioritize medicine over my children because I’m modeling something they’ll grow up to be proud of and emulate. I think it’s bullshit, plus I’d never wish for my kids to go into something like medicine.
As doctors, we advocate for all kinds of things for our patients that we can’t manage in our own lives. Balance. Quality family time. Healthy whole foods that take time to prepare. Exercise. Enough sleep. One of my colleagues gave birth last year and stopped breast feeding early because there was *always* something that was more urgently pressing than pumping and our practice manager decided we could not afford to reduce her patient load. I called our COO a string of four letter words in public because a scheduling error led me to be unable to coach a soccer game I committed to that was scheduled 2 hours after my shift was supposed to end. Her response, literally, was “If you can’t make this job work with your family, then maybe this isn’t the job for you.” Ive been a doctor for 20 years, she finished her MBA 3 years ago.
It’s not just that you occasionally have to miss a school play because you’re busy saving a life. Those things happen and they’re easy to deal with. The choice is clear and no doctor resents the truly exceptional situation where there’s no other option but to step up and be a hero.
It’s that in medicine, I’m constantly told my family is *always* less important. On a good day, I come home and am merely exhausted and have to summon everything I have to pretend I want to play catch or go to soccer practice. There are bad weeks where I don’t have dinner with them all week and sometimes don’t get home til after they’re in bed.
And I work a 0.75 job, because every time there is some change to adapt to the financial pressures, everyone just cuts their hours because we are all at the limit already.
I’m happy this author made peace with this one event and her kids I’m sure were fine missing that one event but I’m skeptical that this is really illustrative of how her career affects her family. Some of it is the patriarchy, the idea that men can work long hours while the women make sure everything is handled at home, but we’ve had near parity in med school admissions for a while and shit isn’t changing. My wife is also a physician in underserved medicine with inpatient responsibilities so there’s never any relief at home. My brother and sister in law are also doctors and that situation ended with an affair with a nurse and divorce despite the fact they were paying other people to raise their kids for 60 hours a week.
The system is brutal. It’s bad for providers, it bad for patients, and it’s bad for medicine. And it’s a reflection of where the priorities are in health care that the doctor who is counseling you on your own health likely can’t manage any of the things that mean “being well” in his or her own life.
I’ve taken my COO’s words to heart. This lifestyle is not for me. But fuck her and the thousands of others in health care that think it’s ok to maintain a work environment that crushes families. My family can and does wait when I am genuinely needed by a patient, but more often they’re waiting because I’m being exploited by capitalism, enabled by the notion that doctors are super humans that just get the job done while the CEOs are already home having dinner with their families.
Anyway, this is ranty and personal, but I see it as part and parcel of everything that’s chaotic and inadequate with US health care and if doctors can’t even take care of their own it really betrays where the systems priorities are. Building compassionate and humane health care also means we treat ourselves with compassion and humanity and it starts with tearing down nearly everything about the current money-driven system.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:01 AM on June 3, 2018 [72 favorites]
As doctors, we advocate for all kinds of things for our patients that we can’t manage in our own lives. Balance. Quality family time. Healthy whole foods that take time to prepare. Exercise. Enough sleep. One of my colleagues gave birth last year and stopped breast feeding early because there was *always* something that was more urgently pressing than pumping and our practice manager decided we could not afford to reduce her patient load. I called our COO a string of four letter words in public because a scheduling error led me to be unable to coach a soccer game I committed to that was scheduled 2 hours after my shift was supposed to end. Her response, literally, was “If you can’t make this job work with your family, then maybe this isn’t the job for you.” Ive been a doctor for 20 years, she finished her MBA 3 years ago.
It’s not just that you occasionally have to miss a school play because you’re busy saving a life. Those things happen and they’re easy to deal with. The choice is clear and no doctor resents the truly exceptional situation where there’s no other option but to step up and be a hero.
It’s that in medicine, I’m constantly told my family is *always* less important. On a good day, I come home and am merely exhausted and have to summon everything I have to pretend I want to play catch or go to soccer practice. There are bad weeks where I don’t have dinner with them all week and sometimes don’t get home til after they’re in bed.
And I work a 0.75 job, because every time there is some change to adapt to the financial pressures, everyone just cuts their hours because we are all at the limit already.
I’m happy this author made peace with this one event and her kids I’m sure were fine missing that one event but I’m skeptical that this is really illustrative of how her career affects her family. Some of it is the patriarchy, the idea that men can work long hours while the women make sure everything is handled at home, but we’ve had near parity in med school admissions for a while and shit isn’t changing. My wife is also a physician in underserved medicine with inpatient responsibilities so there’s never any relief at home. My brother and sister in law are also doctors and that situation ended with an affair with a nurse and divorce despite the fact they were paying other people to raise their kids for 60 hours a week.
The system is brutal. It’s bad for providers, it bad for patients, and it’s bad for medicine. And it’s a reflection of where the priorities are in health care that the doctor who is counseling you on your own health likely can’t manage any of the things that mean “being well” in his or her own life.
I’ve taken my COO’s words to heart. This lifestyle is not for me. But fuck her and the thousands of others in health care that think it’s ok to maintain a work environment that crushes families. My family can and does wait when I am genuinely needed by a patient, but more often they’re waiting because I’m being exploited by capitalism, enabled by the notion that doctors are super humans that just get the job done while the CEOs are already home having dinner with their families.
Anyway, this is ranty and personal, but I see it as part and parcel of everything that’s chaotic and inadequate with US health care and if doctors can’t even take care of their own it really betrays where the systems priorities are. Building compassionate and humane health care also means we treat ourselves with compassion and humanity and it starts with tearing down nearly everything about the current money-driven system.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:01 AM on June 3, 2018 [72 favorites]
I should point out that my wife and I work for non-profits. None of the pressures we face are to make shit tons of money to buy yachts. It’s just to stay financially viable and open for business.
I’d gladly ignore my kids for a yacht.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:04 AM on June 3, 2018 [21 favorites]
I’d gladly ignore my kids for a yacht.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:04 AM on June 3, 2018 [21 favorites]
I hope my earlier comment wasn't insensitive about the experiences of other children. Personally, I was a weird, solitary kid, and I wanted even more time alone than I got. Sometimes I'd want to play or read by myself instead of spending time with my parents, and it would make them unhappy, and I wouldn't understand why. I realize now that my time was unlimited, but theirs was not.
Slarty Bartfast: I hear you. My parents told me very early on that I should never be a doctor, and they didn't have to tell me twice. (Although they did, often late at night.) I was in awe of what they did, but I could see it wasn't just a job; it was something they were and could never stop being. Even after my mom left practice, she has the instincts of a doctor. It changes people. And it's got to be enormously hard to try to reform the working habits of a profession that isn't just facing late capitalism but the legacy of hundreds of years of self-destructive self-denial.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:13 AM on June 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
Slarty Bartfast: I hear you. My parents told me very early on that I should never be a doctor, and they didn't have to tell me twice. (Although they did, often late at night.) I was in awe of what they did, but I could see it wasn't just a job; it was something they were and could never stop being. Even after my mom left practice, she has the instincts of a doctor. It changes people. And it's got to be enormously hard to try to reform the working habits of a profession that isn't just facing late capitalism but the legacy of hundreds of years of self-destructive self-denial.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:13 AM on June 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
"But fuck her and the thousands of others in health care that think it’s ok to maintain a work environment that crushes families." A million times this, in your profession and too many others. We are absolutely capable of investing in the healthcare industry to hire more health care professionals and decrease this kind of burden on each specific health care provider. (And prioritizing needs to be with families and caregive and have a life outside of work in every profession). It's not an impossibility to make changes but like so many systems in upholding the status quo people have convinced themselves we can't change it. We can. Breath into the change humanity, we got this.
posted by xarnop at 11:35 AM on June 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by xarnop at 11:35 AM on June 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
I’m also the child of two doctors. And like Lee, my mother is also an obstetrician. I remember her at few of my early milestones: piano recital, maybe at some parent conferences? My father carried the early parenthood load for this stuff. He’s a radiologist, so he didn’t have cases to follow up. It was all triage or short appointments. he almost always left work on time.
My mother still berates herself because she thinks she missed out on our childhood. I disagree. I’m the eldest. I remember. She was there in the middle of the night when we needed her. If anything, my father got more of our childhoods than most. He knew our doctors (well, okay, they were friends of the family), he knew who hated smooth peanut butter, etc. Childraising was accidentally equitable. Even now my father remembers the oddest things; maybe that’s why she feels guilty.
They begged us not to go into medicine, so none of us did. For all their issues, and they had a fair few, we were and very much felt love from my parents. She was the example of woman + career to me and my sister. And for better and worse, I’ve modulated my work life because of that.
I hope Lee begins forgiving herself now.
posted by lemon_icing at 12:24 PM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]
My mother still berates herself because she thinks she missed out on our childhood. I disagree. I’m the eldest. I remember. She was there in the middle of the night when we needed her. If anything, my father got more of our childhoods than most. He knew our doctors (well, okay, they were friends of the family), he knew who hated smooth peanut butter, etc. Childraising was accidentally equitable. Even now my father remembers the oddest things; maybe that’s why she feels guilty.
They begged us not to go into medicine, so none of us did. For all their issues, and they had a fair few, we were and very much felt love from my parents. She was the example of woman + career to me and my sister. And for better and worse, I’ve modulated my work life because of that.
I hope Lee begins forgiving herself now.
posted by lemon_icing at 12:24 PM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]
After twelve hours of standing, gravity pulled blood into the veins of my feet, my ankles, my calves. I felt as if there were weights in my shoes––I was tired.
As the Labor and Delivery nurses rolled the woman into a triage room, the emergency department team explained that her name was Lisa.
The tragedy here isn't (just) that the doctor's dedication kept her at work and she had to lose out on a special breakfast with her kids - it's that the hospital doesn't hire enough doctors to give them 8 hour shifts, that might be extended if a last-minute emergency comes up. That the doctor couldn't have traded shifts so she wasn't working up to a few hours before the Mother's Day event, knowing that her job is one that sometimes requires an extra 2-4 hours at the end of a shift.
We know damn well that efficiency and decision-making skills drop after 8 hours; why do we want our most delicate medical procedures done, during emergencies, by people who've been on their feet and dealing with stress and pain for 12 hours?
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:51 PM on June 3, 2018 [19 favorites]
As the Labor and Delivery nurses rolled the woman into a triage room, the emergency department team explained that her name was Lisa.
The tragedy here isn't (just) that the doctor's dedication kept her at work and she had to lose out on a special breakfast with her kids - it's that the hospital doesn't hire enough doctors to give them 8 hour shifts, that might be extended if a last-minute emergency comes up. That the doctor couldn't have traded shifts so she wasn't working up to a few hours before the Mother's Day event, knowing that her job is one that sometimes requires an extra 2-4 hours at the end of a shift.
We know damn well that efficiency and decision-making skills drop after 8 hours; why do we want our most delicate medical procedures done, during emergencies, by people who've been on their feet and dealing with stress and pain for 12 hours?
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:51 PM on June 3, 2018 [19 favorites]
Some of it is the patriarchy, the idea that men can work long hours while the women make sure everything is handled at home, but we’ve had near parity in med school admissions for a while and shit isn’t changing.
No, increasing the number of female doctors does not improve childcare etc. What it does is reduce the status, pay, prestige and a whole lot of other things (see: computer science). A system which exploits parental labour while saying that childcare is not an important, worthwhile task that should be appropriately prioritised/remunerated is full-on patriarchy. The number of women in the workforce does not change this.
posted by Vortisaur at 12:59 PM on June 3, 2018 [10 favorites]
No, increasing the number of female doctors does not improve childcare etc. What it does is reduce the status, pay, prestige and a whole lot of other things (see: computer science). A system which exploits parental labour while saying that childcare is not an important, worthwhile task that should be appropriately prioritised/remunerated is full-on patriarchy. The number of women in the workforce does not change this.
posted by Vortisaur at 12:59 PM on June 3, 2018 [10 favorites]
man all this rock-solid certainty that good kids don't remember small things forever or hold petty grudges or have bad feelings about good parents.
this doctor is a great human being who unquestionably has right priorities and makes right choices. a hero, even. to have this be true doesn't require the heavy pressure of expectation on her or anyone's children to grow up and say Of course it was worth it, not just for you and the people you saved but for us, of course we don't still remember or mind the times you weren't there. as if they, of all people, have to validate her work or her heroism doesn't count.
maybe they will and maybe they won't. lots of children of people in the helping professions have complicated feelings and resentments years later. some have no resentment towards their parents but plenty towards intrusive patients. some were and feel neglected. many, maybe most, are proud and happy. but a doctor's kids don't have to be professionally proud of their mother in order for her to have made heroic and right choices, and it is kind of cruel to talk like it's their job to pass correct judgment on adult professional choices. they aren't qualified and if they are incapable of the kind of unselfishness that even adults have a hard time with, it doesn't make them bad children. and it absolutely wouldn't make her hard and correct choices into retrospective mistakes.
I don't think it damages children at all for them to know that their parents have duties of care for those outside the family, that money comes from work, to know that they are not "the most important thing in the world" or the center of their mothers' universes, that they are sometimes temporarily quite low on their mother's priority list. that is, while sometimes painful to learn, extremely good for them and children who don't learn that grow up unbearable. but it does damage them to insist that the very pain that is essential and good for them doesn't really exist.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:48 PM on June 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
this doctor is a great human being who unquestionably has right priorities and makes right choices. a hero, even. to have this be true doesn't require the heavy pressure of expectation on her or anyone's children to grow up and say Of course it was worth it, not just for you and the people you saved but for us, of course we don't still remember or mind the times you weren't there. as if they, of all people, have to validate her work or her heroism doesn't count.
maybe they will and maybe they won't. lots of children of people in the helping professions have complicated feelings and resentments years later. some have no resentment towards their parents but plenty towards intrusive patients. some were and feel neglected. many, maybe most, are proud and happy. but a doctor's kids don't have to be professionally proud of their mother in order for her to have made heroic and right choices, and it is kind of cruel to talk like it's their job to pass correct judgment on adult professional choices. they aren't qualified and if they are incapable of the kind of unselfishness that even adults have a hard time with, it doesn't make them bad children. and it absolutely wouldn't make her hard and correct choices into retrospective mistakes.
I don't think it damages children at all for them to know that their parents have duties of care for those outside the family, that money comes from work, to know that they are not "the most important thing in the world" or the center of their mothers' universes, that they are sometimes temporarily quite low on their mother's priority list. that is, while sometimes painful to learn, extremely good for them and children who don't learn that grow up unbearable. but it does damage them to insist that the very pain that is essential and good for them doesn't really exist.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:48 PM on June 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
I have such mixed feelings.
My mother did not go to medical school although she wanted to, and she stayed home with us. All the passion and drive that would have gone into a career (as well as darker things) ended up going into the pressure for my sister and I to make her sacrifice worth it, a tension in our family that endures to this day and which did me no favours.
On the other hand, I left a non-livesaving reasonably large career for a step down to a job in my neighbourhood after a number of small, small things that made me feel like I was missing out on moments with my kids that I wanted to have. I also found that for my particular kids, some of their problems were better handled by a parent and we were both far away. I don't yet have regrets and am about 8 months into the experiment. I'm not sure that it won't mess them up anyway, y'know?
As for the medical system...my obstetrician walked past me as I was heading in to deliver my first, off for March Break with her kids. I throw no shade her way at all for that! However, behind me, the L&D ward closed to new comers because, as I did not know at the time, they were not really adequately staffed. Ultimately after a lot of progressive "holes in the swiss cheese" screw-ups, my daughter died. Fuck the medical system that does not hire and staff adequately.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:54 PM on June 3, 2018 [9 favorites]
My mother did not go to medical school although she wanted to, and she stayed home with us. All the passion and drive that would have gone into a career (as well as darker things) ended up going into the pressure for my sister and I to make her sacrifice worth it, a tension in our family that endures to this day and which did me no favours.
On the other hand, I left a non-livesaving reasonably large career for a step down to a job in my neighbourhood after a number of small, small things that made me feel like I was missing out on moments with my kids that I wanted to have. I also found that for my particular kids, some of their problems were better handled by a parent and we were both far away. I don't yet have regrets and am about 8 months into the experiment. I'm not sure that it won't mess them up anyway, y'know?
As for the medical system...my obstetrician walked past me as I was heading in to deliver my first, off for March Break with her kids. I throw no shade her way at all for that! However, behind me, the L&D ward closed to new comers because, as I did not know at the time, they were not really adequately staffed. Ultimately after a lot of progressive "holes in the swiss cheese" screw-ups, my daughter died. Fuck the medical system that does not hire and staff adequately.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:54 PM on June 3, 2018 [9 favorites]
PREGNANT LADIES: If you are pregnant and wondering if you should read this article, I recommend you do not. Give it a year postpartum when the hormones have cleared your system. Then go read it.
Okay, that out of the way, I just want to say that this mirrors some of what I feel about my parents and their divorce. My mom has, to this day, lamented that she couldn't keep the family together, and that her and my dad broke up. And me -- I have always felt -- always -- that she made the right decision by leaving him. Like, I remember the turbulence of the break up, and it was hard, yes, but I also remember the happiness that followed when the two of them stopped having to pretend they were in love. Because they weren't. And they were just so damn unhappy. And raising four kids when you aren't happy with your spouse, well, it sucks.
I occasionally work OT because of my job and we've explained it to my daughter and she mostly gets it. She gets sad, but, she also gets sad that she can't have ice cream every night. I think sometimes modern day society puts way too much load on working parents and especially on working women. I don't see my male counterparts carrying nearly the same load.
And look -- when the mom guilt does crush me, I make up for it with days out with her -- we do a special lunch or get our nails done or go for a walk together or hit the farmers market -- but at the end of the day I'm the wage earner and that's life, and we do our best because mom would go nuts if she had to stay at home with the kids all day.
posted by offalark at 3:32 PM on June 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Okay, that out of the way, I just want to say that this mirrors some of what I feel about my parents and their divorce. My mom has, to this day, lamented that she couldn't keep the family together, and that her and my dad broke up. And me -- I have always felt -- always -- that she made the right decision by leaving him. Like, I remember the turbulence of the break up, and it was hard, yes, but I also remember the happiness that followed when the two of them stopped having to pretend they were in love. Because they weren't. And they were just so damn unhappy. And raising four kids when you aren't happy with your spouse, well, it sucks.
I occasionally work OT because of my job and we've explained it to my daughter and she mostly gets it. She gets sad, but, she also gets sad that she can't have ice cream every night. I think sometimes modern day society puts way too much load on working parents and especially on working women. I don't see my male counterparts carrying nearly the same load.
And look -- when the mom guilt does crush me, I make up for it with days out with her -- we do a special lunch or get our nails done or go for a walk together or hit the farmers market -- but at the end of the day I'm the wage earner and that's life, and we do our best because mom would go nuts if she had to stay at home with the kids all day.
posted by offalark at 3:32 PM on June 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
I don't remember it, but apparently my father missed an event of some sort when I was in kindergarten because he was taking his qualifying exams. Apparently, I got home that afternoon and told him "Other people brought their daddies." My father likes to remind me about this right before things like Father's Day, which - you know. Turnabout is fair play, but the process of realizing that you are not the center of your parents' world can be hard.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:28 PM on June 3, 2018
posted by ChuraChura at 6:28 PM on June 3, 2018
I think the idea that a child should be the center of their mother's universe and the highest possible priority at all times is a relatively recent invention--if nothing else, it presupposes mothers with nothing else competing for their time, whether that be contributing economically to the household in other ways, caregiving to other relatives or in the community, political involvement, artistic work...something that simply wouldn't even have been consistently possible in earlier centuries. I'm far from sure it's been an entirely positive development. Maybe one of the reasons we didn't take our mother's unpredictable absences so hard is that we were taught early on that there were other priorities that could take the place of personal happiness.
posted by praemunire at 7:30 PM on June 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 7:30 PM on June 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
My sister and I were born into a dirt poor family and as we grew up we watched our parents work their asses off during the Reagan 80’s to get ahead. Before that, they were always there, volunteering in our schools, leading our scout troops all while we never had a vacation and shopped at thrift stores. And we were happy and well adjusted. Then came this idea that wealth was theirs for the asking and we endured night school (sometimes we were brought along with a box of crayons and some paper), real estate investments where my dad spent whole weekends fixing the plumbing, and we became latch key kids from the age of 10 onward, learning to cook for ourselves and do our own laundry. From the time we were 16, we were told to get jobs to pay for things like clothes, transportation, and school trips and by 18 it was made clear that we were on our own for college or whatever. At the time we were told we would be better off knowing how to provide for ourselves and I recall a vague pride that my folks lifted themselves out of poverty to become independently wealthy.
But neither my sister nor I feel like we were better off. We spent our high school years just struggling to get by when we could have been excelling. We started off with an unnecessary handicap that didn’t make us more mature or self sufficient, it just made us not reach our full potential because we were flipping burgers while our classmates were building homes in El Salvador or whatever. And we both got into some seriously dangerous shit that involved parents would have been all over and it’s a miracle neither of us ended up pregnant or in jail. And all those kids that didn’t have to learn how to get by without active parents in their lives ended up doing better, not worse, in their careers and with their own kids.
Not surprisingly, my sister and I both ended up in careers focused on making the world better than we had it and have chosen to put way more into our families than we received because kids deserve way better. And our parents who retired at 55 and have been traveling the world for the past 20 years have almost zero relationship with their grandkids and exactly zero respect for our career paths but they’re obliviously happy and self satisfied at “winning” capitalism.
But we are both middle aged now and are both feeling that doing something positive for our communities has put our kids in the same position we grew up — less valued— despite our best intentions and our conscious decision to make family more important than money as a motivating force in our lives. And it’s so aggravating that doing so remains an option only for the people with privilege and financial security. And that’s a huge problem.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:58 PM on June 3, 2018 [13 favorites]
But neither my sister nor I feel like we were better off. We spent our high school years just struggling to get by when we could have been excelling. We started off with an unnecessary handicap that didn’t make us more mature or self sufficient, it just made us not reach our full potential because we were flipping burgers while our classmates were building homes in El Salvador or whatever. And we both got into some seriously dangerous shit that involved parents would have been all over and it’s a miracle neither of us ended up pregnant or in jail. And all those kids that didn’t have to learn how to get by without active parents in their lives ended up doing better, not worse, in their careers and with their own kids.
Not surprisingly, my sister and I both ended up in careers focused on making the world better than we had it and have chosen to put way more into our families than we received because kids deserve way better. And our parents who retired at 55 and have been traveling the world for the past 20 years have almost zero relationship with their grandkids and exactly zero respect for our career paths but they’re obliviously happy and self satisfied at “winning” capitalism.
But we are both middle aged now and are both feeling that doing something positive for our communities has put our kids in the same position we grew up — less valued— despite our best intentions and our conscious decision to make family more important than money as a motivating force in our lives. And it’s so aggravating that doing so remains an option only for the people with privilege and financial security. And that’s a huge problem.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:58 PM on June 3, 2018 [13 favorites]
Two things:
First: is a preschool "Muffins with Mom" event setting up kids and parents to fail? What about kids who are being raised without a mom for any number of reasons? Our school has events from time to time, but I don't know that they do stuff that makes it SO CLEAR and SO CONSPICUOUS when a particular parent is not available. This seems more common in schools that cater to well-to-do families. My kid's school seems to work under the presumption that a parent cannot necessarily be available on-demand.
Second: that was an intense read, but for me, it's not that I related to the doctor or her kids (even though I am a working mother of a small child). I related to Lisa: I had bleeding at 36 weeks, I called 911 from my office parking garage at 4:54, turned out to be a placental abruption. Baby Girl was born via emergency C-section at 6:18. In my case the baby was small but totally fine, not even a day in NICU, I was fine. We were lucky, very very very lucky, and I am forever grateful to the paramedics, OB, anesthesiologist, and nurses on-call that night.
posted by vunder at 11:21 AM on June 4, 2018 [3 favorites]
First: is a preschool "Muffins with Mom" event setting up kids and parents to fail? What about kids who are being raised without a mom for any number of reasons? Our school has events from time to time, but I don't know that they do stuff that makes it SO CLEAR and SO CONSPICUOUS when a particular parent is not available. This seems more common in schools that cater to well-to-do families. My kid's school seems to work under the presumption that a parent cannot necessarily be available on-demand.
Second: that was an intense read, but for me, it's not that I related to the doctor or her kids (even though I am a working mother of a small child). I related to Lisa: I had bleeding at 36 weeks, I called 911 from my office parking garage at 4:54, turned out to be a placental abruption. Baby Girl was born via emergency C-section at 6:18. In my case the baby was small but totally fine, not even a day in NICU, I was fine. We were lucky, very very very lucky, and I am forever grateful to the paramedics, OB, anesthesiologist, and nurses on-call that night.
posted by vunder at 11:21 AM on June 4, 2018 [3 favorites]
.
posted by limeonaire at 4:34 PM on June 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by limeonaire at 4:34 PM on June 4, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by Catseye at 5:58 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]