By Becky Vickerstaff
Staff Writer
Parenting in today’s world requires juggling many competing interests, and dads in the medical professions have their own unique challenges. First there is the reality of the educational investment; studying, rotation, and other complementary activities take up lots of time. After school, there are internships, residencies, fellowships, and of course, being on call. How does Dr. Dad get it all done?
One SDN member, who we’ll call “New Intern,” has just completed medical school and is beginning residency. He has two sons, now 4 and 1, and he and his wife have had to reach out to other medical students to help balance things. “We had no family in the area where I attended school. Occasionally we had some of my school friends baby sit so we could see a movie once or twice. But otherwise, it was just us – with my wife doing the majority of the child care.”
Similar to New Intern, Foughtfyr, father of one with another on the way, says that the only way to make having a family and a challenging health career work is to have a support network. “We had a GREAT daycare set-up. Our next door neighbor had a licensed daycare in her home. My wife worked a 9-5 job and took care of the baby after that,” he said.
Farmercyst, who is beginning his first year of pharmacy school, also credits his wife for her support. “She’s a stay at home mom and so she uses her mom and my mom to get out of the house on occasion. Between them I’ve had relatively few issues juggling school and work that were kid related.”
SDN member Oldbearprofessor, dad to two teenagers, says he and his wife, not living near family, formed their own support network. “My wife, who has a doctoral degree, works from home primarily and our parents are not in town, so mostly we’ve relied on others for the usual things like house-cleaning and babysitting.”
Being doctor dad has its challenges outside the support network required to raise a family. After all, the hours are long and choices have to be made. Sometimes the choices are hard – like when your child is ill and you can’t easily reschedule your shift – and sometimes they are just about being a parent.
New Intern says that the conflicting emotions he sometimes experienced were a bit challenging. “I’d spend so much time away from my family and get upset when I felt I couldn’t keep up with either them or school. School and family were in direct competition for my time and attention.”
Foughtfyr, who is in the middle of his second year of residency, has challenges that are very immediate. His wife, expecting their second child, is experiencing the ups and downs of pregnancy with a small child in the house. “It is very hard for me to leave home for a shift knowing that she is nauseated and still has to chase a toddler around the house,”
Farmercyst said the hardest times were immediately after the birth of both children, and now finds himself wondering just how much pharmacy school will impact his family life. “My suggestion is, if you’re planning to have kids, planning the timing is very important.”
“I asked my kids what they thought,” says Oldbearprofessor, “and they laughed at the idea that they needed me around more than my career allowed. Of course, they are teens and really need me mostly to drive them somewhere and give them money.”
Of course, there are rewards to having a medicine man in the family. For Farmercyst, it has been beneficial during times of illness in the family. “I’ve been able to explain to my wife the different medical conditions that our family has had to deal with as well as why the doctors have suggested different methods to diagnose and treat the different problems.”
Oldbearprofessor, who has established himself as a neonatologist, is able to share some of the perks of working in medicine with his kids, along with a little perspective. “I do a significant amount of traveling relating to international medical work and usually am able to bring at least one child along, especially now that they are teenagers. For me, medicine has been a way of showing my children the world, including some very poor parts of it.”
While much remains unwritten for the newer fathers as they develop their professional goals, the advice they’d give themselves in retrospect is poignant.
New Intern says that ultimately, you need to achieve some sort of balance in medicine and your personal life. “I’ve noticed other people consumed with medicine to the detriment of everything and everyone else around them.”
Farmercyst’s advice to others – focus. “Ten years ago I was a 20 year old bachelor. I had left school the year before and wouldn’t return until 2000. If I had to give myself advice I’d have to say, hey, in 10 years you’ll be 30 and have two kids, stop goofing off and get back to school.”
And Oldbearprofessor, who now is raising teenagers, has reassuring words for all parents in the medical profession. “Absolutely nothing I’ve seen or done suggests that the balance between good parenting and a medical career is not doable if you are committed to this balance.”
On this Father’s Day, remember to recognize all the doctor dads for their hard work in school, their efforts to balance fatherhood and medicine and most of all for standing up as a role model to their children. Their challenges may be great, but they all agree that the rewards are even greater.
Artwork by Brandon Luk
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GREAT Article!! Will take these points into consideration since I’m hopefully going to be a Doctor Dad someday
But one of the Doctors mentioned that timing is really important, when do you think it would be a good time for a doctor to have his first child?
Thanks!
Can some one interview a surgeon that is a mother with no family in the area and see how she does it. And when is it a good time for a woman to have a baby who wants to be an orthopedic or podiatric surgeon?
Inspiring article. I’m starting MS1 in August as a 35 y.o. with a wife and a 5 y.o. daughter. I feel terrible for the burden my wife is going to have, and for knowing how school and career demands are going to compete with our personal family time. But then again, if I didn’t have such a strong marriage and connection with my wife and daughter, I never could have come this far. They are definitely the inspiration for all that I do.
Jojo: For me timing was “right” during undergrad, timed so I could take advantage of state programs allowing for paid paternity leave. Timing is an individual variable, it doesn’t necessarily translate across schools, states, or professions.
don’t forget about doctor mom…;)
Wonderful and very insightful article! Do you think that one should complete their residency before having kids?
Thanks!
Wonderful and very insightful article! However, do you think that it is better to complete one’s residency before having kids?
Thanks to Farmercyst for setting a good example to me. I’m 28 w/ a 4 day old daughter and will start pharmacy school this fall. Life has now been condensed to wife/daughter and school.
Great article! While there is much focus on being a mother and a physician, fathers pursuing a career in medicine are often overlooked. Kudos for maintaining a balance of family and career. It is nice to see more fathers (and mothers) pursuing careers in medicine. I think that parents bring an added perspective to not only their patients, but their colleagues as well.
What about couples where there’s Dr. Mom and Dr. Dad? Any tips?
good article. Agree w/ ‘Dr. Mom to be’… could we have some interviews of double Dr. families, where both mom and dad have challenging schedule? that would be helpful. THanks!
My wife and I have two little girls, and I want to become a family doctor. How can I provide for my family and attend school?
Many people have an exaggerated image of doctors in terms of wealth and lifestyle. In the first place, the lifestyle is definitely not friendly – except for certain fields like dermatology – and the training period is extremely long and intense. The pay is indeed very good, but doctors don’t start making big sums of money until they reach their 30’s, and by then many of them are in several hundred thousand dollars of debt. Besides, malpractice insurance and other costs are very high right now, so the overall pay for medicine is not nearly as good as it was two-three decades ago.
I loved the article. My wife and I are in undergrad, graduating in August. We are both looking into medical school and she is planning on a dual PhD/DO degree. We want to have children but we don’t know when to start. I am almost considering P.A. just to be able to clock in/clock out and have time for family. Any suggestions? They will be greatly appreciated.
It’s all well to speak of “balance” as an ideal, but junior house staff don’t decide the rotations, pay, or schedule, at least not where I work. Having family in the area is often a crap-shoot when you begin applying for residencies. Unless you’re receiving outside help, cost of living can easily outstrip resident stipends, or you can start looking for “affordable” family housing to rent in the seedier parts of larger cities with teaching hospitals like Baltimore or D.C. You don’t like the local schools? That’s unfortunate.
It seems that either your spouse is well-established in his/her career and can help contribute to child care or the couple has the non-medical spouse stay at home exclusively (often jettisoning his/her own later workplace viablilty). Chalk that one up next to the bitter arguments about overcooked pasta and who gets up more in the middle of the night. The couple that is able to have a daycare or nanny look after their child for most of it’s waking hours might wonder why they bothered to have kids in the first place. Sometimes, there’s no middle road.
You may find yourself pressured into working when your spouse at home is too sick to care for your kids, hoping your child remembers where her sippy cup is if your spouse is incapacitated and couldn’t quite make it to the phone. Hospitals will use you shamelessly for cheap labor with the pretext of it being essential for “educational purposes”. You have to pay your dues.
You can try and plan a pregnancy, but babies are conceived and arrive in their own sweet time. I suppose you could always schedule a C-section so the neither the hospital you’re working for or the hospital where the baby is being born is overly inconvenienced. The first year of residency is hard on a physician-in-training, but it’s just as hard being the bitch of the bitch, following the student doctor wherever the system takes him/her. Heaven help you if that person should have a bedrest pregnancy or sometime in those many years get into a car accident.
You may also have to deal with having only one car. Crayons sometimes find their way into the dryer with white coats (let’s hope you don’t get “magenta” like I did). Benevolent parents may become less generous, withdrawing financial support because you won’t let junior get a puppy before he’s three. You may constantly have to justify even incidental family purchases to your parents. “Doesn’t the generic toothpaste work just as well?”
You’ll need to work hard with little thanks. You’ll need a lot of luck. Someday, when you’re almost past your childbearing years, you might finally get your shot at the American Dream…or you might still be paying off your massive student loans and then get sued for malpractice.
Well for realitycheck, you need not be so bleak. And the fact is that while it is a difficult path, it doesn’t have to be so grim and depressing as you put it. You may have a had some major bumps or set backs in your way, but not everyone is the same. I am not saying one needs to romanticize the idea of being a doctor to the point where they ignore the obstacles, but the “reality” is that many people do it and truly enjoy. Like so many people say, “anything worth doing isn’t going to be easy, it will take hardwork and sacrifice.”
Another thing to consider is that many other people in this country work just as hard, sometimes more hours per week (considering doctors cap out at 80hours/week legally at work) and they make significantly less doing things they do not enjoy. My father works over 80 hours a week for the military (which is a salaried job) and it is something that he doesn’t truly enjoy and that he feels is not rewarding. I have had family friends work more than 2 or 3 jobs to barely make enough money to pay bills and get through hard times. The trifles you talk about (crayons in the dryer, bickering between spouses) are experienced by everyone, whether or not they are a doctor, intern or medical school student. So have a reality check for yourself and make it point to really look at what real obstacles are and what other things are faced by everyone, regardless of their careerpath.