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Balancing Work and Family: Viewpoints from Different Careers
Women in Physiology Committee
Career Opportunities in Physiology Committee
Education Committee

The APS Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship (UGSRF) Program supports 24 undergraduate students in the labs of APS members for 10 weeks in the summer. This year the UGSRFs discussed possible career choices and the pros and cons of various careers.

One topic of recurring interest was that of balancing a demanding and highly satisfying job with having a family and life away from work. Here are a couple questions that were asked:

"My main concern with this type of [surgeon] position is the lifestyle that comes with it. Only 8% of surgeons are women and I believe this is due to the additional responsibility of childbearing that women face in a relationship. I am wondering if it is possible to have both the life of an overworked surgeon and that of a loving wife. Would it be possible to balance your life well enough to fit a child into the equation or will one end of the spectrum ultimately suffer?"

"I had the chance to shadow a cardiothoracic surgeon and even had the opportunity to ask him about his personal life. He described the difficulties he had in balancing his work with family, but stated that it was in fact his wife that was always there to take care of family responsibilities. Is it okay, or even possible for me to expect that situation in reverse?"

Responses by:
Christin Carter-Su, Ph.D., Basic Researcher
David I. Soybel, M.D., Surgeon and Researcher
E. Lisa Breen, M.D., Surgeon

Balancing Work and Family: A Physiologist’s View
Christin Carter-Su, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology, University of Michigan

(Excerpt from "Mentoring for Success in Physiology" by Christin Carter-Su, Professor of Physiology, University of Michigan, 2005 Recipient of the Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen Distinguished Mentor and Scientist Award, published in The Physiologist 48(4: 167, 172-178, 2005)

Being a successful woman with a husband and two children, I probably get asked most for advice about balancing work and family. This is the advice I give women (see Table 4), but most of it applies to men as well as women:

Table 4. Advice for women (and men) with children:

Choose your mate carefully. Get lots of outside household help. Build a strong support network. Form friendships with other working families. Forget about domestic perfection. Delegate.

Family gives women happiness; Work gives women  self-esteem. For this reason, it is important to keep a balance in your life. You should not feel guilty for working and you should not feel guilty for having a family and wanting to spend some quality time with them. But there are ways that you can make your life easier.

Choose your mate carefully. It is difficult and time-consuming to work full-time and have a family. It is virtually impossible if you are expected to work full-time and handle all the traditional female roles of wife, house-keeper, care-giver and cook. It is best to find a mate who values your job equally with his/hers and will share willingly and equally in household responsibilities.

Get lots of outside household help. If both you and your spouse are working, you need to think of it as 1 and 1/2 incomes, not as two. You need to plan on spending at least 1/2 of an income on help. Hire someone to clean your house for you. Hire the best daycare provider possible, preferably someone who will come to your house and will also do the laundry and other household chores. Hire someone to mow the grass. In essence, hire someone to do those jobs that you do not like doing so that you will have time to do the things that you do want or need to do, such as spend quality time with your children and spouse or write up another paper for publication.

Build a strong support network. If like me, you do not have family in the area who can help when emergencies arise, you need to build a strong support network. When my children were young, my husband would ask every teenage girl he saw in our neighborhood whether she babysat. We made arrangements ahead of time with other friends and neighbors who had childcare to cross cover for each other if our childcare fell through. We paid for our children to attend before and after-school programs even when we had after-school childcare at home just so we could send our kids to those programs on those days we did need it, such as when I had to give an 8 am lecture, the childcare giver called in sick, or the teachers were having one of their many in-service training or reporting days. We got the phone numbers of our friends’ current and former caregivers, graduate and undergraduate students who were willing to baby-sit in a pinch, preschool student helpers, anyone who might be able to take care of our children on snow days, when our children were sick, or when our caregiver was unable to come for whatever reason.

Form friendships with other working families. And as a corollary, try not to live in a neighborhood or send your child to a preschool where all the other families have a stay-at-home parent. Our daughters went to a preschool where a requirement was that both parents had to have at least a half time job. Until they were five and went to public kindergarten, our children did not realize there was such a thing as a stay-at-home mom. Our children’s preschool did not ask you to contribute food and help serve a Thanksgiving dinner—they prepared it and served it to you! Other working families can provide valuable information and emotional support. This is true for both men and women. It was one of my husband’s male colleagues who helped persuade us of the benefits of having at-home care for our newborn. Other working families can tell you how and where to find good help, the best preschools and summer camps for working families, how to cope with having one spouse out of town, where to buy the best “home-cooked” food to bring to school events, which sports teams have the best coaches and more importantly, the most convenient practice times, locations and car pools.

Forget about domestic perfection. There are times in your life when it is impractical to have the perfect house, the kind of house many of us grew up in. You need to make priorities. My husband’s and my priorities are to spend time with our children and each other rather than to spend time straightening the house, cooking gourmet meals or having a Sunset magazine garden. For quite a few years, we entertained at home only those friends we knew well enough to have over without straightening up the house.

Delegate. Learn how to delegate. This goes for the home as well as work. There was one year when it became obvious that I was not going to be able to get my grant application out doing it primarily by myself as I had usually done or even by getting help from just those people in my laboratory whose work was funded by that grant. In desperation, I announced to the laboratory that I needed everyone to stop working on his/her experiments and help with the grant. I had people looking up techniques, proof reading, shortening the text, checking references, working on figures, and buying food for everyone working on the grant. What was enlightening to me was finding out afterwards that no one really minded helping, despite some very long days and nights. Some in fact told me they really enjoyed it because it made them feel an important and integral part of the laboratory. They learned a lot about the science going on in the entire laboratory, and about what it takes to put together a grant application. I have never looked back!

Many female students today would like a medical career but are concerned whether they can manage both a demanding career and a family. Being a surgeon (general and GI), I wanted to give you some insight into how I and my colleagues are balancing work, home and family.

The proportion of women in surgical specialties is increasing. Right now about 50% of each entering class in medical school are women. In many surgical residencies-- especially the most competitive ones-- 50% are now women.

Surgical residents are not overworked compared to other residents-- all are now mandated for training in an 80 hr per week time frame. Training Programs that fail to adhere to these standards can lose accreditation-- and have been put on probation quite readily when they showed a lack of sincerity in addressing the work hour limits on residents. In our surgical residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which is affiliate with Harvard Medical School, five of the seven incoming interns are women and the overall proportion of women in the residency is about 35 to 40%. The percentage of women on the Staff of General Surgery is about 20% and increasing each year with new recruitments.

Many of the women on our staff are married and have children or, if they are in the early stages of their careers, they plan to have children when the time is right. Several of these women have important or time-consuming leadership positions and practices that are high profile or involve complex clinical problems.

The solutions that each family finds for taking care of itself are quite varied, and many people figure it out. It isn’t easy but they take it as a challenge and work on it-- with their partners/spouses. Some don’t, but there are just as many men who don’t figure it out either. Certainly things are changing. Many surgical residents who are husbands are routinely taking paternity leave, something that was not offered, in fact unthinkable, when I was training in surgery 20 years ago. Many of our best residents who are men and women have signaled the older generation that they want to be surgeons but they are not willing to live in the hospital their whole lives just for the privilege. The principles on which they plan their careers are as follows:

1. You might be able to do it all, but not all at the same time. Pick and choose, for each phase of career and life, the things that are most important.

Many young surgeons plan specialty training, which limits the kinds of surgeries they do, but also limits their activities within that specialty. Choosing a specialty is like building a fence. It limits what you can do, but it can also keep out the riff-raff.

2. You are not the only person who can do what you do. If you have good coverage of your practice, then your patients will get good care for their unexpected problems whether you are there or not. So you can sign out on weekends and take your turn to cover only when scheduled. A well-oiled practice and group of colleagues/partners who work well together can provide coverage in a way that makes patients feel safe and respected. So by the time you want to go into practice, you will see this idea as the standard, not the vanguard.

3. It is important for both parents to get to important events in kids lives. So both have to help each other get there and not burden the other with tasks that may make it harder, not easier, to spend time with the kids at times that count.
The family chooses priorities and then uses resources (i.e., its income or social/family networks) to get both parents to the recital or the soccer play-off.

I think these principles of choosing are not unique to surgeons; we have just been a little slower to adapt them than other specialties.
 

Additional Comments from a Woman’s Perspective
E. Lisa Breen, M.D.
Director of Anorectal Physiology Laboratory
Associate Surgeon, Brigham and Women's Hospital

1) Numbers are changing and women are choosing surgery. I think the statistic I just read was that in 2006, 42% of 1st year surgical residents nationally were women. When I saw that graph at ASE (Association for Surgical Education), it looked like 2006 was a big jump up and was only one year, but I would say trends are positive.

2) The challenge/concern most women express (although I suspect equally applicable to many young men) is the ability to combine a career in surgery with a meaningful role as a parent. I would say that various strategies employed by women, men and couples are emerging. The couple needs to define between themselves what role each will have in parenting their children (predominately the mother, the father or a split) and then structure their career to accommodate their other job- parenting. Parenting demands also change as children grow and your need to be home and available may change during the time of your career.

   a) For those who opt to do less parenting, all models of a career are open to them - the traditional long hour, lots of emergency coverage to one of the "newer" models

   b) For those who want to do more parenting, the biggest variable seems to be to decrease the unpredictability of their schedule as much as possible and likely the total amount of work they agree to do.
       i) Unpredictability is most often generated by patient care. Strategies to control this include:
          - subspecializing, so you feel you are an expert in a smaller amount of material and can better predict how your patients will do.
          - sharing care of your patients with trusted colleagues (a call group where you can depend on being "off call" in turn for caring for other's patient like they are your own at other times)
          - dividing your career between clinical care and other non-patient care activities (research, teaching, administration)

       ii) Taking on less work will free you up to go home and parent. My concerns here, however, are:
          - In some competitive patient environments surgeons who are viewed as less available will get less referrals and then not even be able to keep up the volume they feel they can handle.
          - The amount of income generated while doing less work may not be enough to pay the bills (nannies, housekeeper, household manager, etc.)

Overall, I feel positive. I think numbers are increasing and as more women (and "modern men") join the ranks of surgeons more solutions and strategies will evolve. The job, however, is no doubt demanding of time and stressful. Most of us would say that we get to the hospital earlier in the morning than our medical colleagues and often stay later. Luckily, the rewards are high and with some planning you can find a way to combine a career as a surgeon and a family.

Comments:

Balancing my career in academic biomedical research with having my family has been harder than I ever imagined it would be, and equally rewarding. I thrive on the sense of accomplishment I get from work. It is hard for me to imagine a less demanding career that would be as interesting or provide the same sense of accomplishment. I am also motivated by my sheer enjoyment of research. On the other hand, I definitely can’t say I never question whether the struggle has been worth it. I spent several years before finding my faculty position in a pretty unhappy state, not sure I would ever get a chance at research independence. Because the job market for faculty positions is pretty tight now, and looks like it will continue to be, I do think current trainees in biomedical research should approach their training with an open mind about career paths whether or not they have a family. On the other hand a lot depends on level of motivation, determination, recognizing, and seizing opportunities. I do think success is 9/10ths determination. Also having a flexible, supportive spouse is key. There have been 2 aspects in particular that have been the hardest for me - limitations on relocation and the time crunch.

Limitations on relocating for training and jobs. If you have a family, you probably have some limitations on your options for relocation. The good news is this limitation seems to have grown much less stigmatized in the last 10 years. It seems to me that many established people now have dealt with this issue personally. For me, I spent many years haunted by the knowledge that I wasn’t able to do postdoctoral training in my first choice laboratory. My postdoc was in CNS development when I really wanted to study kidney development. I finally had an epiphany last spring sitting in a Women in Physiology mentoring session at Experimental Biology listening to others describe their experiences. As the late great Gilda Radner as Rosanne Rosanna Danna used to say on Saturday Night Live, “if it’s not one thing, it’s another”. If you get to choose the postdoctoral training laboratory you want, then you end up getting scooped on your project and losing the high impact paper. In other words, there are usually pros and cons to any situation.

Instead of focusing on the compromises you have made, focus on recognizing and seizing the opportunities your situation presents. While I did postdoc training in CNS development instead of kidney, I did receive excellent training from an excellent scientist and very supportive mentor. I also seized an opportunity that arose to get involved in the American Physiological Society. I have met many people who have been supportive and valuable contacts, and helped me obtain my current position. Getting involved in a professional society is something you can do from anywhere, and is very valuable for getting to know people in your field who can help. Another workaround to the relocation problem is to recruit investigators from other institutions to collaborate with your mentor on the project you want. Now that there are more grant opportunities for postdocs with supply money this is more possible. People are often willing to contribute to a project if they think it is interesting, will be productive, and if you can make minimal and efficient demands on their time. For example, maybe you can visit their lab for a week to learn a critical technique and then get by on some brief occasional guidance.

All this said, you will probably have to relocate at some point to move up the career ladder. Don’t underestimate the importance of going where the opportunity is. This is one place where a flexible spouse is key.

The time crunch. We have kept our kids in group home-daycare (until 18 months old) and then institutional. We think of it as extended preschool. Who says preschool has to start at 3 years old and be part time? Our 3 kids have thrived on this schedule. It is hard sometimes shortening the day to accommodate pickup and dropoff, but we feel like we would be missing out on too much if we left that to someone else. We do take turns and periodically recruit other parents and babysitters to help when needed. As for getting things done at work, I try very hard to be as efficient as possible. You can usually find ways to do things faster if you really need to. On the other hand, I have had fewer publications since having kids, and it has taken me longer to advance from postdoc to faculty. I do think established scientists need to give junior scientists who are parents (especially women) a temporary break in expectations during childbearing years. I am optimistic that this message is gradually sinking in as frustration within the scientific community grows with the increasing age to first NIH grant and limited numbers of women advancing in academic research. Though it has taken longer, I am now faculty with a shot at succeeding at independence.
I cherish the time I spend with my family, and I feel in many ways it makes me a better person, a better colleague, and a better boss. I am more sympathetic to other people’s needs and motivations, a very helpful quality when it comes to people management. So maybe there are actually some advantages to balancing work with family!
Caroline Sussman
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine

It is possible to do both, but it may be at the expense of your own quiet time or interesting hobbies, beyond family, of course! Mothers inherently are able to multi-task and this is a must for working moms at home and in the lab and office. Try to stay current at work and don't put off to the last minute as invariably, that is when a crisis at home occurs. Interestingly, although I am an empty nester now, my parents are starting to need assistance with healthcare issues. So when life is going well, appreciate the ease of your work schedule associated with a smooth running home and personal life!

Accept that you may not always be able to do everything at work all the time. Accept that others at your academic level may advance more quickly because they do not have the same responsibilities or priorities at home as you. However, you have your family and your time will come when the nest is empty and you can attend every meeting, serve on different committees, manage more people and projects in your lab, enter into collaborations, write more review articles, serve on editorial boards, etc. Remember, coffee breaks or a one hour lunch break during the week at work can equal about a 2 hour field trip with a child, or leaving early a couple of days to hit the soccer field. Prioritize!

Most of all enjoy your children and spouse. Make time for them, but don't forget about yourself. I am lucky to have a close friend that is also in science. We have had a standing lunch date once a week for over 15 years. We discuss science, how to fit in a weekend away with our husband, joint grant proposals, our gardens, where to find a good technician, and before-how to deal with that teenage child, and now -how to fit taking care of parents into a schedule that has allowed our own personal and spouse time for the past few years! Life is about change as is science.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A woman is like a teabag, you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.” So be flexible, work hard, and preserve!!! Most of all-enjoy! Science is a great career!
Barbara Alexander
University of Mississippi Medical Center

Juggling a normal family life with the demands of a high pressure job is no mean feat! The term juggling is very appropriate as some days one feels like the person in the circus who is trying to keep all those plates balanced atop the tall sticks. It can be done however and the most important skills necessary to survival are "time management" and "prioritization".

Time Management
Learn to combine 2 tasks into 1 where possible (do as many of your errands such as grocery shopping and dry cleaning on your way to or from work). Cook in big batches so that you cover several meals in one cooking "event". Enlist other family members so it becomes a family event.

Prioritization
Prioritize every aspect of your life every day. If you work for a company make sure that they know that family is your top priority. All other tasks can then be prioritized to fit into your day (or the next day) so that your family needs are met.
Nansie McHugh
Huntingdon Life Sciences

Balancing work and family is probably an issue in most professions and is not unique to Science. As a mother of a young son, the infant and preschool years have been the most difficult so far, with profound lack of sleep a constant issue. However, this would have been a difficult period no matter what profession I had chosen.

Even so, some aspects of working in Science are particularly challenging to family life, such as the extended period of training from graduate school through postdoctoral work, when pay is typically low and long hours may be required to make progress on a project. With a toddler son at the time, my post-doc years were more manageable because my husband decided to stay home full-time and my post-doc advisors were very understanding about how important it was for me to be home for dinner every night.

Now that I’m a faculty member at a small college, with roughly equal time spent teaching and doing research, I find that my flexible schedule is ideal for family life. While long hours may often be required during the academic year, I’m still home for dinner almost every night and have been able to attend all of my son’s school events.
Despite its challenges, Science is a profession that I find exciting and uplifting, and believe that this has enriched my family.
Robin Looft-Wilson
College of William & Mary

In the concern over the demands of a career in science, the flexibility of a scientific position is often overlooked. The job may require long hours in the laboratory or office, but they are usually at the discretion of the scientist.

In my position as a faculty member, it is relatively easy to adjust my schedule to accommodate family-related meetings or activities in the middle of the day. I live in a college town, and I often find that the majority of people attending these meetings are also faculty members or other professionals. When my children were much younger, I would attend "father-son" and "father-daughter" breakfasts at the local elementary school. There were times when we could have probably held a general faculty meeting after eating, given the number of colleagues who were also there.
Thomas Pressley
Texas Tech University Health Science Center

I write this while my wife (also a PhD researcher) is getting our daughter ready for bed and I've finished working on presentations for work - perhaps that sets the stage a bit.....

My single piece of advice in finding a balance between work and family (or the equivalent if one doesn't have a family - be it marriage, significant other, etc.) is to START EARLY. Even in graduate school it is critical to learn not only science, but also the skills that will help balance you as a career scientist.

Obviously, having children complicates matters several-fold, and in many cases, the children BECOME the balance for work. In terms of getting science done, in the case of Big Pharma - the rules might be seen as more rigid, when it comes to work hours, etc., but not necessarily - many companies have policies in place which allow working mothers (and even fathers) to develop a more flexible work schedule with their managers. Especially for bench scientists, where science doesn't really know a 9-to-5 regimen, it's possible to work less standard hours to fit around a day-care drop-off/pick-up schedule, or even working fewer days per week to spend more time with younger children.

For as many scientists as you can poll for this kind of advice, you will get that many opinions on the issue - in the case of having kids and working as two career scientists, it is important to know what each parent's career AND parenting goals are ahead of time (and agreeing that this can easily change). Start early, be flexible, and try to relax.
Doug Johns
GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals

In addition to my career in science, my wife works full time and is earning a second post graduate degree in the evenings. We also have three children under the age of 7.

The best advice that I could give would be to make certain that you and your spouse work together and share the daily tasks. When one spouse is going through a particularly busy time, the other needs to pick up the slack. This has seemed to work well for us. In addition to this, I try to get as much done during the day as possible so that I can have time with my family in the evening. No matter how busy we are, we always try to all sit down together for dinner. Once the kids are in bed, there is usually time to review/read papers as needed, get everything ready for the next day, and spend with my wife. It's not always without stress but it has been very manageable for us this way.
Mike Ryan
University of Mississippi

You can be successful with both career and family. But you have to redefine your definition of success and expectations for both.
Heather Drummond
University of Mississippi

Balancing career and a personal life is a quest that many of us engage in, for the most part using a formula that entails 1% of our intelligence, 49% of creativity and 50% of flexibility. In reflecting on what has been crucial in how I have approached my balancing act, it is clear that an analysis of one’s ultimate goals is crucial. Having done this, I would venture to say that first and foremost, it is important to take control of your career path. You are the ultimate architect of your academic developmental path. The first step of mapping out your future development is identification of your priorities. If you want to become Department Chair, you may want to reconsider the 6 children you told your fiancé or husband you wanted to have. In turn, if your dream is to participate in every one of your children’s activities, be room mother, den leader and soccer mom….then maybe, a career as an independent researcher is not going to be the best choice for you. So ask yourself; what do I want? What do I want to achieve? What am I willing to forego? What must I have?

Assuming that being an independent scientist, running your own lab, teaching and mentoring students and actively participating at your institution’s administrative activities as well as being part of NIH study section, member of Editorial review board of journals in your area, leader in the scientific societies that you belong to, (must I go on??).. is your goal. Then, my advice is; take your life and plan it out as if you were performing a key experiment necessary to complete your dissertation! I realize that planning is not a very appealing or spontaneous way to live, but it is necessary for success. What are some of the basics?

1. Nothing compares to a supportive partner in life. Academic life is not a walk in the park. It requires commitment and dedication and that may bring with it sacrifices including long days at the lab, lots of travel and lots of stressful times! Not having a supportive family or partner can be detrimental to your ability to succeed! Engage your significant others. If possible (i.e., and it is not too late and you have already picked a dominant, high maintenance, partner), be selective there as well.

2. Network as much as possible with other moms, family members and friends. Identify opportunities to car pool or to trade favors.

3. Use a good part of your income to hire help; nanny, house- and yard-keepers are a big help. You don’t want to spend your free time cleaning the bathtub and weeding the yard (unless that is your favorite pass time).

4. Find ways to get involved in your children’s life. If you can’t bake cookies and cover recess time for the teacher, offer to come in and give a science lecture to your children’s class. Your kid’s friends will know your child does have a mom (or dad), your child will be unbelievably proud, and the teachers will cut you some slack for not volunteering to be on all field trips.

5. Instill in your children love and respect for learning. Be their role model as much as possible, so that your competition with “the best soccer mom” and “the best room mother” is not so tough.

6. Chose your activities wisely. When asked to be on a certain committee or task force, ask yourself: What is in it for me? How can this help me? If you can’t find a good answer, turn the assignment down. HOWEVER, be careful, because you want to be considered part of the team! Don’t say NO to all invitations, just be selective!!!

7. Identify the needs of your immediate family members. Realize that they need you even on the days when your grant gets triaged. Do not make them pay the price!

8. Protect your family time. Work on being efficient so that you can really dedicate time to your family when you are home in the evening, weekends or on vacation.

These are some of the rules I try to keep myself. It is not always easy, and sometimes it is tough to compete with that perfect parent that keeps track of all events at school and never forgets to send in a cake when requested to do so. But once your family understands the importance of your career development, and once you make them an active participant of your academic life; their support will help you through.
Patricia E. Molina
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans