The women I've met who've dated surgeons vowed not to date them again, and the children of surgeons I've had the pleasure of talking to vowed never to do surgery. I think this says volumes.
This has not been my experience AT ALL. In my program alone we have probably about 20% or more who are sons of surgeons. Almost all of us are all happily married and so are our attendings. I feel like your statement is a stereotype perpetuated by people without either the grades or the work ethic to do surgery, and it's how they convince themselves that its okay to do something else. I hear this crap from people that "wanted to do surgery but...I don't want to work those hours, so I became an anesthesiologist."
Reasons I went into a surgical specialty:
1. OR AND Clinic. It helps break up the week. I think do either 5 days a week would be incredibly tedious.
2. Definitive interventions. You identify a problem and fix it. You don't wait 3 months to find out the patient was non-compliant with their medications. You don't piddle around with chronic problems that will never be fixed (for the most part).
3. You actually know (and care) about your patients. I find it very difficult to like what I do unless I actually care about my work. Radiologists/Pathologists/ect... just grind out the day so they can get home. They rarely meet the patients or see the results of their work. Meeting someone with a problem, fixing it, and seeing them get better makes working the long hours worth it.
4. Surgery will never be done by a nurse. Surgeons don't need to worry about the DNP's encroaching on our field.
5. Surgery can not be outsourced.
6. More jobs are created by surgeons doing what they do than any other specialty I can think of. This will give them significant bargaining power in the future when most doctors become hospital employees (prediction I know).
7. Surgeons have great stories. Not as good as psych, but close.
8. Surgeons get to work with their hands. I know watching surgery as a med student SUCKS. It is MUCH more fun when you actually do it. Besides, I would much rather do 8 hours of surgery than 8 hours of rounding and writing notes. The day literally flies by during the day when you are in the OR concentrating on what you are doing. My surgery days feel much shorter than clinic days (even if they are longer). There is nothing better than losing track of time and then realizing its 5 and almost time to sign out and go home.
9. I always had a greater sense of pride in my surgical work than I ever had on any other rotation.
Things less appealing about surgery:
1. The training is much harder and rigorous than any other specialty in medicine.
2. Your complications are YOUR complications. They are a direct result of something you did (even if it wasn't your fault - because deciding to go to surgery was your decision). You can't blame it on a medication side effect, a patient sensitive to the medicine, or a natural progression of the disease. Its all on you, and you have to be ready to deal with it.
