The balancing act

A recent headlines in the Times of India caught my eye , it read “More women study medicine ,but few practise.” The article essentially spoke of how women are unable to balance work and home and many choose to forfeit their medical degree for their marital duties.

The article speaks of how 50.6% of admissions into a medical college are women, but only 17% of allopathic doctors were women. to read the whole article press here.

As a new mom and currently on a sabattical from work, I can in a way identify with the herculean task of balancing work and family.

Early into my pregnancy, or rather even before I conceived, I was well aware that I stood at a disadvantage to my non-doctor friends. First, as a doctor in a private hospital, I did not get paid maternity leave. Unlike government positions, a doctor working in a private hospital is not always paid for the 3 to 6 months that she takes to raise her new born. Doctors, especially those who have their own practices, or are freelancing in multiple hospitals, are essentially ‘daily wage earners’; they earn as much as they work, and for as many days.

This early realisation that I was more akin to my local bhajiwali, who got paid depending on the wares she sold, and whom I wouldn’t dream of paying if she decided to go on a maternity leave, made me feel more kindly towards her. I stopped bargaining for the extra 5 rupees, I even paid my cleaning woman her bonus, knowing fully well that these ‘working women’ were trying to balance a home and work, without the benefits of a government plan to safe guard our interests as we brought up the next generation of Indians.

The slogan says “beti bachao, beti padhao’ no where does it say, ‘beti ko job dilao’!

My friends working with multinationals and corporates spoke of their ‘maternity leave packages’ and ‘work from home’ plans, and ‘in house crèches and daycares’ within their companies. True, these were non-government jobs, and many of them financed by foreign investments, and yet, they seemed to care about the ‘working Indian woman’ more than many ‘indian companies’ did.

I did finally come to terms with my not getting any ‘paid maternity leave’, and then contemplated about my medical insurance.

It’s an honest declaration that doctors are extremely poor with understanding investments and finances. Maybe it is our inherent dislike for numbers, or the fact that we start earning much later than our counterparts in any other profession.  And medical insurance is something we doctors take extremely lightly, especially so early in life. All the minor ailments are easily solved by a quick call to another doctor friend, most doctors (atleast the ones that I have met) don’t charge other doctors any consultation fees as part of the unspoken ethical code we follow.

If being ‘jobless’ was scary enough for me, the fact that no health insurance covered pregnancy/delivery/newborn care was another new revelation.

We were going from a double income family of two, to a single earning member of a family of three! With the loss of around six months of pay as well as the added costs of hospitals, as well as a full time baby care if I ever wanted to join back work, the financial dilemma was obvious.

For doctors there is also the question of ‘losing our practice’. Our patients would need to see other doctors in our absence, and what are the chances that they would return once I resumed work?

I don’t know about the 50.6% of female doctors who decided to take up the medical studies, but I always planned on practicing my knowledge and not  just because I wanted to gain degrees.

Yes, it’s true some parents hope that a degree will help their daughters marry a better prospective husband, and they never intended to use their medical degree for any other reason, but if a degree is all that one is after,I can think of less gruelling courses to apply for.

Is it not sad then, that after excelling in competitive exams, burning the midnight oil, many female medical graduates have the coveted Dr. in front of their name, but are essentially homemakers?

Don’t get me wrong, being a home maker is bloody hard work!

If the last couple of months have taught me anything, then it is that staying up feeding, burping and rocking to sleep a baby, is as tough as any night duties I did as a doctor (maybe even tougher on some nights). The physical tolls of motherhood, the continuous undivided attention that a baby demands is more than the most demanding bosses in any profession.

It’s like an alarm without the snooze button, which can ring at any given time day or night. You are never on a coffee break, and you can never call in sick, neither are there any furloughs as a mother. I have done it only for 5 months and I can only imagine, how many women volunteer to do it all their life. Being a stay at home mom is a demanding job, more demanding than maybe even being a doctor, and yet I want to be able to practice my profession.

Why is it so difficult for doctors? First, there is no concept of ‘working from home’ doctors. Maybe in years to come we will have online consultations and doctors working in atleast a few fields will be able to work from home, but all in all medicine is a field where we need to palpate, percuss, auscultate and do various hands on tests on a patient. Secondly, many medical fields have emergencies and do not have flexible timings, say an anaesthetist who is dependent on the surgeons hours, or a gynaecologist who can hardly decide when her patients go into labour.

 Nuclear families have made the need for caretakers a necessity, and unlike multinationals which have in-house crèches, very few hospitals have such facilities for their doctors. As one hospital administrator once told me ‘Hospitals don’t owe doctors anything’. In an age where we are well into second generation working moms, and where even grandmothers are working women , we can hardly hope for ‘grandmaternity leave’ where we expect working grandmothers to leave their jobs and look after the grandchildren. (to read my article on caretakers and nannies read ..  here)

India is going through ‘growing pains’ where we want our women to work, but we want them to look after home and hearth as well. Doctor- moms, who always kept their patients first, find their priorities changing once they have children and they become mom-doctors where they are moms first.

As I inch towards the arbitrary 6 months period , after which it is generally considered that women who hope to have a professional life start to resume the role of a ‘working mother’ rather than just a ‘mother’, I will soon be lifting the balancing scales. Sometimes they will tip in favour of being a mom, and I will be judged as not being professional enough, and sometimes they will tip towards my work and again I will be criticised for neglecting my child. I realise that the balance will continue to swing up and down and I may very well never have the perfect balance. But, I hope that I am part of the 17 % women doctors who are practicing doctors, for then I will know that I have beaten the odds. And even if I meet a doctor mother who chose to not practice, I will not judge her by saying that she let her weighing scale fall or that she lost her balance, it’s just that she decided to weigh her life on a different scale.  

other posts by doctor parents

http://doctorparents.blogspot.in/2015/12/honest-goodbyes.html

http://doctorparents.blogspot.com/2015/12/2-gynaecs-and-baby.html

http://doctorparents.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-mother-knows.html