Wifehood, Motherhood, Doctorhood, Womanhood

Tonight I met two bright, female high school teachers who love science. They were closer to my mother's age than to mine. Both told me that when they were in college, they wanted to be doctors. But both of them decided to forego that career path and chose teaching instead. Both said they made that decision because, as one of them put it, "I realized I couldn't be the wife and mother and doctor I wanted to be" all at the same time. They don't regret their decision one bit, both of them said. They don't make a lot of money, but they're happy and love what they do. Now, normally my English major mentality would leap forth at a moment like that and scream "Methinks she doth protest too much!" But I really don't think those women meant anything negative by what they said. I really do think they're happy, and they love what they do, and they don't regret their decisions at all. 

I reassured the AP biology teacher that as a medical geneticist, I won't be making a fortune either, not compared to people in business and certainly not compared to physicians in many other subspecialties of medicine. And then I stopped to think.

For most of my early childhood, my mother was a stay-at-home mom. Though she started working outside the home after my sister and I got a bit older, and continues to work outside the home, she and my father demonstrate very traditional gender roles. My mom does all the cooking. My dad cleans up after dinner. He pays the bills and drives the family around and is the family's primary breadwinner. She tries to teach my sister and me to cook, say Hindu prayers, and generally gain other skills that will make us suitable wives someday. It surprises me a little that I didn't give motherhood even a moment's thought when I decided to become a physician. Believe me when I say I wasn't one of those kids who dreamed of being a doctor all her life. I resisted the idea of going to medical school for quite some time, but by the time I was in college, I knew it was a field in which I would excel, and a career that would give me deep satisfaction. And that's where my thought process more or less stopped. Sure, I wondered if I'd ever have time for anything outside of medicine, but my focus was more on a vague sense of a personal life, and not caring for a family the way my mother always did. 

I suspect that more than a little of the hesitation of the women I mentioned earlier, and my lack thereof, has to do with the fact that those women likely had boyfriends or husbands with whom they were planning a future while they were considering medical school, and I simply didn't have that pull then, and don't really have it now. Because I don't have one person to mentally Photoshop into my imagined scenes of domestic bliss, I'm not very attached to that vision of the future. Here's what I know: I'm going to make a good physician, and my career will make me happy. Maybe someday I'll find myself in a domestic situation that causes me to change my tune and become a stay-at-home mother and wife. Maybe I just won't like the idea of someone other than me being at home with my children. Maybe none of those things will happen. Whatever the situation, I'm glad I decided to go to medical school, gender roles be damned. I think I can find a way to make doctorhood live in harmony with motherhood, wifehood, and womanhood, or whatever -hood life throws at me.

The Truth Is, I'm a Man.

A few days ago in one of our Behavioral Science lectures (psychosexual development, ie how people grow to "act" like their gender), the lecturer spoke briefly about a study that explored the difference between how men and women attempt to understand themselves and others...essentially, how do the two sexes approach relationships? The study concluded that while men feel that by understanding themselves, they can understand others, women go about things in the opposite way: by understanding others, they can understand themselves.

Funny thing is, I take the male approach much, much more than I do the female one. I am a personal essayist. I take a lot of pride in, and derive a lot of joy from, the fact that people think I know myself well. I am confident in who I am; I love holding forth on my beliefs and past and the way that I see things. I guess that sounds a little narcissistic..but all that is to say that I really do place a lot of value on understanding myself, and I think that by knowing myself well, I can manage my world, and my life, more effectively. Sadly, I've found that life doesn't quite work that way. I used to think that as long as I could regulate myself and my actions, I could deliberately and carefully guard and nurture my relationships with the people I care about. If I can control myself, why wouldn't the things that I call mine--that is, my relationships--also be in my control, right? But alas, I may have to modify my approach.

Other girls I've talked to have said that they really are the opposite way: they love to understand what makes other people tick, to people-watch and hear about others' backgrounds. I suppose I enjoy that, too. I like a good personal essay as much as the next girl. But I suspect that I don't actively unravel and engage the things I learn about others, don't come to understand how others' pasts and beliefs and experiences will color and inform their actions, their prejudices, their weaknesses. It's an interesting dilemma.

In short, though, turns out I'm kind of man-like. Maybe I should try being more of a woman and see if that wouldn't make things better. I hate to break it to myself, but I suspect it's never quite that simple...

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

I just finished Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman, which was kindly given to me by a friend who interned at Penguin this past semester.

A short summary: main character Cecelia Rose Honeycutt has looked after her psychotic mother for most of her twelve-year-old life while her father has been traveling for work--and also to get away from his family's problems. When her mother passes away in an accident, young CeeCee is whisked off to live in Savannah, Georgia with her great-aunt. Over her first summer there, she meets a host of eccentric and loving women who help her begin to heal all the wounds inflicted upon her by cruel circumstance.

The book is a love song to the South (and also a bit of a downer about the North, which I'm sure would rub a few people the wrong way) and a testament to the power of female companionship. It was a bit disconcerting, too, in that though it is an adult's book, it is written completely from the twelve-year-old main character's perspective, which means that sometimes the reader understands things the protagonist does not, and also that the writing seems a bit elementary at times, when really it's just reflecting the protagonist's point of view.

I was touched by the author's brutally honest descriptions of CeeCee's mother's antics, and of the pain that CeeCee feels because of them. A few quotable quotes:

"And now here I was...thinking about how much easier everything would be if my mother was locked up in a sanatorium. I sometimes even wished she were dead. It was terrible to think such a thing, but I just couldn't help it. I'm not saying I wanted to skip through life in a rosy blur from one Disney experience to the next--all I longed for was to know one whole happy day." (22)

"As I knocked on her door, begging her to let me in, I realized I had just taken my father's place: there I was, standing outside her locked bedroom door, frustrated and helpless and just plain tired. Tired of it all." (76)

"I wondered if I'd ever be so lucky to have a girlfriend I'd grow old with, a girlfriend who knew my secrets, my fears, my hopes--and loved me anyway." (111-112)

"I felt selfish and small as I watched my aunt from the kitchen window. She had given me so much, so freely, yet I was unable to do something as simple as sit at her side." (115)

"'But I guess some folks is willin' to pay anything for hope.'" (145)

"'Ain't no sun in the kitchen without your face lookin' up at me.'" (142)

"'Don't go wastin' all them bright tomorrows you ain't even seen by hangin' on to what happened yesterday. Let go, child. Just breathe out and let go.'" (290)

"'It's how we survive the hurts in life that brings us strength and gives us our beauty.'" (302)

Also, I'm not going to lie: with the book consisting of such a female-dominated world, I felt as if homoeroticism was the huge elephant in the room the whole time I was reading. Everyone's husband was dead or divorced with or absent in some other way, but there were just so many women. I almost felt like it was a slight cop-out on the part of the author. I'm not saying she needed some sort of graphic scene of homoeroticism, but she could have hinted at it subtly the way other things were hinted at in the novel. I do applaud her portrayal of free female sexuality, though.