Dr. Mom
The truth about "the mommy track."
by Tara Bishop, M.D.
May 21, 2007
Five years later, I found myself doing exactly that. The first few weeks at home were a series of adjustments. I went to the playground and tried to become friends with other stay-at-home moms. I beamed as my son played his mini guitar better than all the other kids in his music class. I loved that I once again had time to read novels.
But I was also very, very bored. I would spend hours each morning trying to get my son to sit on the potty. I would answer his endless "why?" questions. By the end of the day, I was dying to talk to anyone who could complete a sentence.
To fight the boredom, I began to apply my Type-A personality to motherhood. If I was going to be at home full time, I figured, I would be the best damn stay-at-home-mom ever. I started watching the Barefoot Contessa daily on the Food Network and bought Martha Stewart's home-keeping bible. I made daily trips to buy antibiotic-free, locally raised, free-range chicken. I created a spreadsheet to compare all the Upper East Side nursery schools.
And while I'm not quite as compulsive these days, I continue to feel, every day, the weight of the brainpower I'm not using. Whenever I talk to former colleagues,
I don't see any battle between stay-at-home moms and working moms. All I see is a war we're all fighting with ourselves.I wonder if I can still read an EKG or diagnose pneumonia. I look forward to trips to the pediatrician because it gives me a chance to discuss the latest research on autism and vaccinations.
Books like Leslie Bennetts's recent The Feminine Mistake, which criticizes women for staying home, fuel the flames of the so-called "Mommy Wars," but I don't see any battle between stay-at-home moms and working moms. All I see is a war we're all fighting with ourselves. Before I had kids, I was great at my job. After having kids, I felt mediocre at everything: doctor, mother and wife. I wasn't willing to be middle-of-the-road, so I made choices.
Judith Warner, in her book Perfect Madness, says that "'choice' is the fetish word of our generation." We are the generation that took pride in the fact that we could break the glass ceiling or devote our lives to our children; society would accept anything.
But it won't. It's very difficult to work overnights when you're breastfeeding. There's always pressure to work more. So we have to give up something. And if you're an educated woman, that usually means neglecting your kids or your career, and feeling guilty either way.
I have no doubt that I made the right decision to leave my job. But I miss being a doctor. My new plan is to go back to work when my sons are in preschool, but not on the ambitious track I was on before. With luck, I can find a more reasonably paced job. I expect that will mean retiring the fancy cookbooks, missing some of my son's music classes and not always washing the dishes, but this level of compromise I can handle. And that's what I think about in those moments when I think I can't face another sandbox, another diaper: one day, I'll be part of the working world, and still able tuck the kids in at night.
©2007 Tara Bishop and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Tara Bishop a physician with degrees from MIT and Cornell. Her writing has appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine and Clinical Geriatrics. She lives in New York with her husband and two sons and is at work on a novel.
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