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Creating a Family Care Giver: How We Did It

By Linda | July 26, 2010

Remember Jane and Michael Banks, of Mary Poppins fame? They hopefully sing to their parents their version of a perfect British nanny. “If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition….play games, all sorts.” Contrast their hopes with the realities of their mother’s busy schedule fighting for women’s rights while staunchly supporting her husband, in his role as the undeniable master of his life and theirs. What was, and continues to be, so poignant about this deliciously dysfunctional family is that it is no different from all of our own families. We all have our wishes, our needs and our points of view. And rarely, except in the fairy tales of movies, do they intersect well enough that we are all happy all of the time and all of our needs are met.

Here is how we did it.

First, we started with the assumption that the perfect person does not yet exist. The operative word is “yet.” It takes time and a lot of communication, even about the seemingly smallest of things, like how you like to store left-overs, or what you consider the best position to feed the baby or to what music/games/TV you want the child exposed. Naptimes, meal times, and other child oriented activities were part of the day that included care to your home (and you) as well. Yes, if you could do all this if you stayed home, so can a person you hire take on those responsibilities.
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University of Texas at Houston: Welcome to the Hall of Shame

By Linda | July 21, 2010

Can Misogynists Be Rehabilitated? Art Day, MD and the Case of the Travelling Neurosurgeon

Assaulted by multiple communications about Art Day, MD, former chairman of neurosurgery at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and soon to be program director for neurosurgical residents in the South, I have to interrupt my blog series for this important announcement. Yes, indeed. Day loses in a huge gender discrimination lawsuit brought forward by Sagun Tuli, MD in the liberal state of Massachusetts, so he leaves Boston to find refuge and a prestigious job in not so liberal Texas, in Houston at the U of T. Recycling at its finest.

Not a first-time subject of my blog, Day should have faded into the sunset sporting a big red “M” on his scrubs. Despite the tremendous, not very flattering, publicity surrounding this man, he will now be “training” medical students (50% of whom are women) and residents in neurosurgery (less than 5%, if that many, are women) at UT Houston. Wow, I claim gender discrimination and fight it for ten years. U. at Buffalo’s interpretation of my settlement is that I cannot even talk to residents and students. Day is found guilty of harassment in Boston and he gets to direct their training in Houston. Yes, I should have left Buffalo and go where I would be appreciated. Day did. Read More »

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Family Care for the Busy Woman

By Linda | July 21, 2010

“How do you do it all?” That is the most common question I get from family, friends, students, residents and other random people who want to know how to fit in a busy career, raising three children, having a home to enjoy, a spouse to beat up on, and some time for myself. (Only kidding about the spouse—he’s there generally to help.) Our general division of labor: I manage the inside, he does the outside.

My answer: “I don’t do it all. I have lots of help.”

“But you can afford it!”

Well, so can you. So can anyone. It all depends on your priorities and how much you want to shift your energies and your resources from one mindset to another.

Step 1. Ask yourself, what are my needs? As residents we had call duties that would take us out in the middle of the night. We couldn’t risk being both called and leaving the children alone. Our days would be long and busy and coming home at night we didn’t want the few hours we had to be filled with chores and arguments about who was going to do what. (BTW, only once in 28 years did I have to wake Jeremy, age 7 and Dana, age 5, to take them with me while I cared for a sick child. I planted them on the couches in the OR lounge. It worked, but I wouldn’t want to do that too often.)

We needed people whom we could be there when we weren’t and who we could trust to care for the children, care for our home, and care for us. We chose the live-in concept because then we would get to know this person well, and feel more comfortable with her as part of our family life. Some people require more privacy or have other needs, and they should take a different approach.
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Affordable Childcare Is Not Enough

By Linda | July 19, 2010

Any discussion about working women always includes the mantra, “If only we had affordable child care.” Affordable child care is necessary, but it is not nearly enough to allow women and men to function optimally at home and at work. By putting this issue front and center, we are unable to imagine (and then implement) different strategies that would make life more integrated and less frenetic and burdensome for both men and women. This transformational concept is the key to transcending the concept of “men against women.” We are all in this together—shared solutions will bring these artificial barriers down.

Issue #1 is pay equity. If women were paid equitably then child care would be more affordable for everyone. That extra 23 cents for most women workers (and 38 cents for women physicians) on the dollar would go a long way to affording the help that we all need. This is not a woman’s issue (as I have said for years.) Think about the husband who lost his job and now expects to support his family on his wife’s lesser pay. He and his whole family have been cheated as well.

Issue #2 is about rethinking who really needs the care. Affordable child care is just not enough and it only addresses the need of one member of the family: the child. The family, as a whole, needs care and help to function in a way that brings out the best in each family member.
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Posted in My Family/My DNA, On the Job, The Confessional | 1 Comment

The Zen of Flexibility Part 2: Family Care–A New Concept for the Working Woman

By Linda | July 15, 2010

Flexibility is a learned habit. First, it takes courage to break out of rigid societal and personal expectations and become more flexible in your role as “headmistress” of a busy family. Second, it requires insight and then careful planning so that you (and the people you love) feel comfortable, cared for, safe and loved.

There are endless numbers of tasks to care for a family of only one. This number multiplies when the family also includes a spouse, certainly children, and maybe a pet or two or three. When parents seek a career outside of the home, child care weighs upon them most heavily. But if f taking care of children was all that there was to taking care of a family, life would be much less stressful.

The reality of the situation is that child care, though a very important part of family life, is not the only care that the family requires. We, as a society, have been focusing too narrowly on what is needed to achieve work-life integration. It’s the entire family who needs the care. Yes, the mommy and the daddy as well as the baby.

I first internalized this concept, learned a long time ago from my friend Dr. Diane Chalal, a psychiatrist married to a radiologist with three children all about a year or two ahead of ours, when we had our first child. At that time, I didn’t realize how revolutionary a concept “family care” is.
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The Zen of Flexibility—Transform Your Life and Your Work

By Linda | July 13, 2010

It’s time to turn yourself inward and find the flexibility you need to integrate all aspects of your life. And to do it, you are going to need lots of help.

What kind of help? That depends on what you are doing. Since I have been writing about the career and decisions of the academic physician (as that is, quite frankly, what I know best), let’s focus on that. But keep in mind that no matter what it is you do in life, exercises in self-exploration and improvement will be invaluable to transforming your life and your work.

Get yourself help—in the workplace and in the home—as often as you can. Your once-limited time and resources become limitless if you allow yourself to get help.

Help at Work. Make sure you have adequate staff support and other resources necessary to be successful. When the women scientists at MIT found that they had smaller labs and fewer assistants than did the men, they demanded a change. And they got it. Do you have an office? Does the space work well for your responsibilities and needs? Is your schedule efficient and conducive to optimal productivity? Do you have enough staff support—nurses, research assistants, and secretarial help? What about information technology resources? Do you have a laptop which can link you to the library, your charts and the office no matter where you might choose to do your work?

Don’t be afraid to articulate and negotiate your needs. If the answer is, “No one else has that,” don’t give up. If your institution or organization is unwilling to give the matter some thought and try to be flexible, maybe it is not supportive enough of its staff members, particularly the women. Unyielding and inflexible demands of work that unquestionably and needlessly prevent you from integrating your life/work, likely will be considered “gender unfriendly”. Paying attention to these details and insisting on a flexible and manageable environment will make the difference between success and failure.
The concept of support staff and resources also carries over to your home. Women often complain that their husbands do not do enough at home. I take a different view: If a husband, like his wife, is working hard all day, why should he then come home and have to work hard some more? If I don’t want to do the dishes, clean the house, or mow the lawn, why should he?

Engage a wonderful person to help. I know of no better way to gain flexibility in life than to integrate other wonderful people to help with child care, and housekeeping, and errands, and anything else that you really don’t have the desire, or the time or the energy to do. Here are two suggestions to start you on your way.

If you’re lucky enough to live near family (and want them to be an integrated part of your life), involve them in your life. If you’re not near family but you should look to hire someone to help, not just with the kids, but for you, too. It may be more cost effective to have someone in your home than to pay for daycare, especially if your work hours are unpredictable. Work hard to find the right fit because when you do (and we have been lucky three times in 28 years), your newly-inducted family member can relieve you of stressors and provide you with more free time for whatever you want to do.

My mantra is “who can help?” Think about it. Do you really need to do everything yourself? Let go, find inner peace and begin your practice of the zen of flexibility.

Posted in My Family/My DNA, On the Job | 1 Comment

The View To the Top, When You Are At the Bottom—Finding Flexibility in the Workplace of Academic Medicine and Other Rigidly Evolved Work Settings!

By Linda | July 7, 2010

The academic medicine mountain is a steep climb, but the view from the top is worth the climb if you have certain goals for your professional medical life. Research, teaching and service gives you the opportunity to have impact well beyond the important, but necessarily limited, one on one physician-patient relationship. Heady stuff, but the difficult path is worth the effort. (Academic medicine does not have a monopoly on inflexibility, so think how this applies to your own challenging work place.)

An academic in medicine wants to help thousands or maybe millions of patients by teaching the next generation well. Adding to the fund of knowledge that drives what other doctors do for their patients, again reaching untold and unseen numbers. Driving policies and programs which shape the future direction of medical care. Exciting? You bet! But when you are in your early 30’s and have spent 8-11 years in the rigidly scheduled pursuit of the goal of “becoming a doctor,” these are tough to imagine as you think about having families and lives beyond the world of medicine, a very demanding world, not just for women but for everyone.
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Climbing The Academic Medicine Mountain—Lesson 1. Getting on the Right Path

By Linda | July 1, 2010

Collision of two of my projects has left me with a mission to enlighten you about academic medicine. Academic medicine is medicine which is practiced in the setting of a medical school or a post-graduate (after medical school) residency training program. Definition: Residency training refers to the 3-7 years after medical school when the doctor is apprenticed to learn how to put the medical school knowledge into practice in a certain field in medicine. The word “residency” comes from a time when the doctor actually lived in the hospital as “house staff.” This way they could be close to the patient and learn all about medical care as a first line apprentice. With the new work rules limiting residents to 80 hour work weeks, the term is obsolete but still hangs on.

The academic physician has an interest not only in caring for patients, often the sickest and who require a university hospital based setting, but also in research, teaching and programmatic development through service to the medical school and university.

Sounds like a huge commitment? Well, it is. And climbing the academic ladder is difficult. It is made more difficult when you don’t know the path, the obstacles, and there isn’t a good guide or two. And that is where I come in.
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Posted in The Confessional | 1 Comment

The End of Men? The Atlantic Monthly Reports on One of Its 14 3/4 Biggest Ideas of the Year!

By Linda | June 28, 2010

Hanna Rosin, Atlantic Monthly associate editor, is the author of a highly entertaining and certainly controversial stance taken in this article. She begins with the very interesting story of the scientific journey of Ronald Ericsson, a biologist who, forty years ago, separated sperm by sex, thus offering potential parents the hope they could choose the sex of their baby. After many years and many promises, his scientific methodology did not pan out as he had predicted. But what he did learn from following patients who came to his clinics was that one gender would be requested over the other. And that it would be women directing these choices, and they were overwhelmingly asking for girls.

Notwithstanding the possibility that Ericsson’s observations of what was happening at his clinics may be biased, Rosin further points to Ericsson’s observations of his own grandchildren’s achievements “as good an illustration of the rapidly shifting landscape as any other.” The girls are all accomplished and thriving, while he submits that the boys are lucky to just stay afloat. Again, another anecdote, which, may or may not provide proof, that the status for some women has changed the status for all women.
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Posted in Adventures in Advocacy | 1 Comment

Remembering The Past, While Living the Present—Writing “The Buffalo Bitch Trials”

By Linda | June 21, 2010

If you are a regular reader, you know that I am writing a book: The Buffalo Bitch Trials. I am, of course, the Buffalo “Bitch”. And proudly so. Just in case you didn’t know, the word “bitch” has been transformed from one of degradation to one of pride. In 1968, in her “Bitch Manifesto,” feminist attorney Jo Freeman redefined this word for us: “A Bitch takes shit from no one. You may not like her, but you cannot ignore her….[Bitches] have loud voices and often use them.”

And that is the way I am. I speak up, I speak loud, and I speak things people often do not want to hear. Especially when it rocks their nice little, mostly unfair, not to mention probably illegal, little boats. My trials are about more than the 25 years of living in Buffalo: the first 13 or so living in la-la land believing that I was having it all; the next 12 years finding out how wrong I was, how much I had ignored, and how far I had to go if I was to get fair treatment as a woman.

I have outlines and timelines. I am beginning to develop new “worry” lines as I try to get my arms around massive amounts of material. So far I have 17 “major” stories to tell, and dozens of detours to make. What voice will I use? What stories will be told in which order? How do I start? When is it going to be finished? Can I really say this in 250-300 pages?
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