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seriously considering...single mom,etc.From: Anna Meenan, MD (annam@uic.edu)Mon Aug 10 17:23:59 1998
I guess I missed all the fun on this forum over the weekend, and it looks like Bob got all the flack, even though I agree with him. My final assessment of all the notes I've read is that, in general, all the moms who successfully started careers with kids is that they were either a)married or b) had extensive social support from parents, partners, or others, c)entered their careers when their kids were older, or d)entered careers that didn't require quite the commitment of time, energy, money, and emotions that becoming an ob-gyn does. Becoming an Ob-gyn will pretty much take Tia out of this kid's life until age 12 or 13 and possibly beyond, unless she manages to practice only part-time, perhaps gyn-only. If she has parents who want to raise the kid for her and be its parents, and she doesn't mind being a peripheral parent, she might be able to consider it, but suddenly ringing in a new authority figure on a 13-year-old kid doesn't always work out so well either. The literature on the long-term outlook for children of single, teenaged parents is full of dismal statistics: poorer school performance, more behavior problems, higher drop-out rates, higher delinquency rates, increased teen pregnancy in the girls, increased aggression in the boys, etc. etc. When Tia enters medical school (assuming she does well enough in undergrad to even get into med school with the added stress of a kid to raise), this kid will be entering kindergarten or first grade. Tia will be spending every third or fourth night at the hospital, and getting home at 7 or 8 PM on the nights she doesn't spend at the hospital. Leaving at 6 AM every morning, and studying somewhere in between. Who's gonna read the notes from the teacher that come home with the kid, help with the homework, monitor the TV-watching, cook the nutritious dinner the kid needs, get her tucked into bed with a story, that kind of stuff. It won't be Tia, and whoever it is will be that kid's parent. There aren't even day-care centers that are open that many hours. That kind of schedule will go on for 8 years of med school and residency, right through the kid's entire grammar school career. That is why Bob is aghast at Tia's plan, and I agree, though he could've been a little bit friendlier in his tone, his message was right on. Tia cannot become an Ob-gyn and still hope to be anything remotely resembling an effective primary parent to her kid. A commited husband or a very commited set of grandparents would come in real handy here, but we have not heard that either one exists.
-- Anna L. Meenan, MD
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