I am 29 years old and my wife and I are the parents of a gorgeous 6 mo. old girl. We have been discussing much the difficulties we may face if I am indeed accepted to medical school and then the trials of a residency. Can anyone tell me anything that we could take into consideration? Anyone who has been there or who knows someone who has been there that can sort of tell it like it is and tell me how they made it through? Am I going to miss my child's formative years? Help!
I just graduated and am doing a year of research while I try to answer some of the questions you are posing about residencies. I have toddler twins.
Are you going to miss your child's formative years? It depends on your definition of "miss", not to Bill Clintonize too much. You certainly will miss a lot of time with her. The first two years of med school aren't that bad. But there's no way around overnight call or rotations that require enormous amounts time every day during the 3d and 4th years. You will be absent or busy a lot; whether this will count as missing her crucial years depends on your definition of an active, engaged mother. For some, that means being there 23/7 (obviously, these are not the people who go to med school when their kids are tots). For others, it means staying plugged in with the primary caregiver, whether it be a spouse or a pro, and making time with her when you can.
When looking at med schools, I would ask whether you will be required to do away rotations, if any assistance is provided for childcare, and the number of students who are parents. The last question is a biggie. If you are seen as a fluke or oddity, and attendings are not used to med students as parents, then you may encounter additional trouble. I would also find a discrete way to discover whether a med school has an extended program in case you feel that you need more time.
I've spent a lot of the last year asking similar questions to attendings and residents about residencies. And, to be honest, I've regretted doing so in most situations. One's view of what it means to be a good mother and spouse is so personal and the societal pressure to either conform or put up a good show that many answers seemed distorted. I had one attending tell me that residency is not so bad as it does not require that I never see my kids. And she meant that literally: That even if I only see them while they are asleep for weeks on end, I still will be able to see them. Asleep. Without them knowing I'm there, and zero interaction. I found this to be a laughably bad attempt to calm my concerns and realized we had completely different views on our expectations of ourselves as parents. I had another senior attending who is a single mom to 4 kids, 2 with special needs, who said that the kids need to learn to be independent at some age and so starting at, say, age 2 is fine. She's so fine with her kids being "independent" (which I think means being taken care of nearly exclusively by nannies) that she is picking up a Ph.D. in an unrelated field, despite also having extra administrative and research duties. Obviously, she doesn't see her time with kids as being too limited with her medical responsibilities. Our perspectives were utterly different, and thus her advice was not useful to me.
So my bottom line is to gather as much information as you can about med schools and residencies, but beware of people's views of being a parent and a spouse during the process (and a big red flag should go up for people who have not gone through the process, regardless of their good intent - this is why I can't say anything about the residency experience). These are just too idiosyncratic to be able to apply reliably to one's own situation. The best you can do is to become as informed as possible about med school and residency, share all this with your spouse, and decide together if it will be worth it, knowing that both of you (ETA: all three of you, really) will most likely make a lot of sacrifices to further your goal.
Good luck.
🙂
