How do professional women who work long hours deal with judgement from family?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For op and others who are saying they could not visit due to the quarantine rules, I would be shocked if FMLA did not apply to you. You could or could have taken unpaid leave and gone to see your parents.

My sibling is a doctor who claims he can’t visit my disabled parents for the same reason. I do all the work, at the expense of my career. It’s bullshit. He could take fmla and come see the, and help share the load. And yes he can afford it. He has a beach house and a country club membership that he could sell if he can’t.

It’s all about priorities.

Way to pile guilt onto the OP. You’re projecting your own resentment toward your brother onto the OP. Physician here. There was an actual moratorium on time off at my hospital during the height of the pandemic. I had to beg for a day off for a medical appointment. The only way to take time off for us was to end up in quarantine ourselves. Yes, you can technically take FMLA but then you’re leaving your colleagues in a bind, who are already spread so thin and stressed/burned out.

+1. That’s not fair. I’m a teacher, not a doctor, so it’s much different. But still. DH and I don’t live near our parents and siblings and we constantly get asked why we can’t take time off to come help. OP has her own family too and you can’t instantly take FMLA, pick up and leave your job and family to go help across the country. We are also asked why we can’t take our parents and have them live with us for a while. Also not that easy to transfer all of the doctors and specialists, plus making the elderly leave their home to go live in a busy house with kids. What we can do is offer financial support and try to get them to outsource help.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who hates me is no longer my family.

[Anonymous]

OP, having lost my dad this year, dealing with a very old dog who will likely soon die, and working a demanding job, I feel your post a lot.

If my mother talked to me like that, I would refuse to speak with her. My own mother was an alcoholic and I did in fact cut her out of my life for many years. She is now three years sober and we are working on a relationship, but when she would call drunk I would hang up and block her until I felt like I could handle it. You don't owe her anything if that's how she's going to treat you.

Hugs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a SAHM and married to a surgeon. My dad is dying and I have visited him many times during Covid. They are driving distance though.

My husband would take time off if his mom was dying. He has had colleagues take time off for a dying spouse or parent.

My friend’s friend had a parent die during Covid (also from cancer). She is not a physician but also the breadwinner and had a baby. She did not fly to see her dying father and her entire family made her feel horrible about it except the dying parent. She did fly for the funeral during peak of covid.

It is heartbreaking to lose a loved one. Covid made it so much more difficult. Think of all who couldn’t have visitors and died alone in the hospital.

DH’s hospital did not allow visitors. I could not visit my father in the hospital or at rehab. I could only see him when he came home.

You’re just a SAHM so why are you commenting?

[Anonymous]

Okay, but in the end, the purpose of life for most people isn't their job or their professional relationships. It's their family and their friends, the human relationships that we owe each other.

I don't want you to look back on your life five or ten years from now and think, I owed something more to my family than I gave them. Or, I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't help my friend when they needed it.

Your mother doesn't sound like a very generous person and her comments need to be read under that lens. At the same time, she may be commenting in part out of fear -- what if I get sick but I am not important enough to my daughter for her to visit me as I am dying? She may be reacting in part out of fear and other negative emotions.

At the same time, I understand that you are working long hours in the medical profession trying to help people, and I'm torn by your choices here too.

[Anonymous]

To quote an exchange from Frasier:

Therapist: "I'm hearing that your relatives are a source of anger for you."
Daphne: "So? Aren't yours?"
Therapist: "Well they might be if I still talked to any of them!"

In all seriousness, I get it OP. I'm a primary breadwinning working mom with a long-hours demanding job, and I deal with all of the "issues" that come with it. Especially from my family, who I do think mean well (certainly I don't have the outright vitriol of your mom), but simply can't understand a "mom" working the way I do. You just have to let go of their judgment, someway, somehow. I've come to believe that my parents and siblings are literally incapable of understanding me and my choices, so why get bent out of shape when they demonstrate as much?

[Anonymous]

I feel it's odd that a doctor that deals with life and death issues everyday gets their feelings hurt pretty easily. Common Op.

[Anonymous]

First off, thank you for all you do and for your dedication to helping people under such awful circumstances.

Second, crazy parents are going to be be crazy. Judgmental people will judge. I gave up my original career path because of my kids has special needs so I work far fewer hours than before. My family thinks I am lazy shit. My child's teachers and my friends and random mom's who just see me volunteering and helping my kid tell me what a dedicated and loving mom I am, but my own mother and sisters think I am worthless and an embarrassment because so much of my work is for free. They cannot fathom what it is to have a kid with SN and medical issues.

Now my aging mother expects me to at her beckon call because apparently she is more important than my family I created and because i don't work full time I should be her servant. I had to get therapy to learn to detach and see them for the jerks they all are.

Now if I were a doctor like you I think my mother would be over the moon with delight, but knowing her she would brag to everyone and then find a new way to make feel like a loser. It doesn't matter. She is an emotionally immature and stunted person and she can have any opinion she wants. I no longer value it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
Thank you all for your comments (and for reading my vent).

Sometimes I think it’s a socioeconomic thing, too. My colleagues who worked their way up from less money have parents who are so so proud that they are doctors. Therefore, their parents don’t mess with them. Other female colleagues have mothers who had demanding jobs, and are understanding. I’m in a weird netherworld where we were UMC and my mom was a SAHM. My becoming a doctor was no big deal - a few of my moms’s friends sons are doctors - but my mom doesn’t have any professional experience and will say things like “you should just refuse to go to work! Tell them you have to some time with your family!” And two of her friends sent me mail (on notecards decorated with flowers) telling me I should quit my job “temporarily” in the middle of covid to take care of my dad. I’ll tell you this much, I’m sure none of their sons would ever EVER get a note like that.

Covid times have been awful for everyone, though. So I try to be understanding. But the dog comment made me lose it.

Oh man, look up narcissists and flying monkeys. Those friends sound like flying monkeys. You need to detach from this craziness. We need good female doctors in this world. Your mom is being controlling and bat shit crazy, but you know that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“In a sick and twisted way, she probably blames you for your father’s death, as in you as a doctor couldn’t help prevent his death or alleviate his suffering. She probably put her friends up to sending in the notes to you.”

OP here. I think you are correct on both counts. I am in a subtype of oncology and my mother keeps asking what good it is that I am a cancer doctor at a big research institution if my dad died of cancer. And she knew about the notes - she texted me before I even got them that she did NOT agree with notes that were being sent to me by her friends. But my husband commented at the time that she “doth protest too much.”

Ever since I was little, I have always done my own thing and bern very good at tuning out my mom, but the stress has been overwhelming and it just piles up with no sign of letting up. I can’t believe I hung up on my mom, but I am at the end of my rope. Seems like this problem is specific to my family though, and not commonly seen. Which is a good thing for society!

I miss our dog. He just loved me when I was home, and never gave me crap about my schedule.

Thank you all again.

OP, I am the mom with the SN kids who took the less work path and my mom is still horrible. It is too painful to go into detail, but she was horribly verbally and emotionally abusive when I started setting boundaries with her for saying such nasty things to me. It took me therapy to understand it's her mental illness and not about me. As someone else on here suggested, I had to learn to demote her and give her less real estate in my head and life. When you are in the thick of it, it is so so hard to realize someone is over the edge awful. I wonder how I endured such terrible behavior for so long. Now I have finally trained her to accept I call less, visit less and email less and she doesn't behave, I do those even less! A book suggested to me here that helped a lot is Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, if she doesn't behave, I do those less. If she behaves, I might increase a little.

[Anonymous]

Both my husband and I work long hours and we make it work but my mother has given me grief about it. I just don’t pay attention to her. Our kids are doing great with the help of a wonderful nanny and my mother is clueless. She didn’t go to college and was a SAHM and we grew up in a LMC area. I went to graduate school as did my husband and we expect more out of life.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I am on inpatient service this week (so very busy… what else is new) but have been periodically checking on the thread - it’s an excellent activity while waiting for the elevator!

Thank you all so, so much for weighing in - I appreciate everyone’s perspectives (including those of SAHM and doctors spouses!) and thoughtful commentary. I guess my best bet is to try just to let it go and try not to discuss too much about my life with my mom - just stick to the weather. People had some good thoughts about why she’d be so nasty (getting old & losing the filter between her brain and her mouth, worried that I won’t take care of her when she is old, etc), which was helpful.

Also, I feel less alone - though I’m sorry that others have to deal with this crap, too. Usually I can take it in stride, but when stressors pile up, the judgmental maternal commentary puts me over the edge.

You are all the best! Thank you!
(Also, thank you for the positive words about my parental abilities, but I am not a great mom… I’m an OK mom. I get the job done, but often not in style. For instance, my kids are on their way to using the same Halloween costumes for the 4th year in a row - but they are old enough to figure something out if they wanted, so I am going to let that one go, too!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a SAHM and married to a surgeon. My dad is dying and I have visited him many times during Covid. They are driving distance though.

My husband would take time off if his mom was dying. He has had colleagues take time off for a dying spouse or parent.

My friend’s friend had a parent die during Covid (also from cancer). She is not a physician but also the breadwinner and had a baby. She did not fly to see her dying father and her entire family made her feel horrible about it except the dying parent. She did fly for the funeral during peak of covid.

It is heartbreaking to lose a loved one. Covid made it so much more difficult. Think of all who couldn’t have visitors and died alone in the hospital.

DH’s hospital did not allow visitors. I could not visit my father in the hospital or at rehab. I could only see him when he came home.

You’re just a SAHM so why are you commenting?

I was offering sympathy. I was saying it is hard to lose a loved one but covid made it so much worse. I was saying even though I have time to visit my dad, I was not able to visit him in the hospital after surgery or at the rehab center. I was trying to make OP feel better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have never known a physician dad to face judgement like this. It is ridiculous. They get praised for, like, walking into the hospital with their shoes tied and changing a diaper once later in the day.

+1,000,00 So this!!!!!