Where was the lecture in medical school for dealing with a mansplaining boss?

Stethoscope. Reflex hammer. Short white coat.

There was a long list of materials that we needed to obtain in preparation for medical school. In the early years, we were taught about cultural differences that can lead to miscommunication, the importance of eye contact, and learning to listen more and speak less. We were taught humility. Years of residency training taught us to perform within a strict, militaristic-type hierarchy, and to hold our opinions to ourselves and keep on marching through the dead of the night.

Throughout my 12+ years of medical training, this preparation has served me well during difficult patient encounters and unraveling a diagnosis from a complex history.

But none of this prepared me for dealing with my mansplaining program director.

None of those professionalism lectures taught me what to say when my senior attending and fellowship program director tells me that my marriage doesn’t involve enough “team work” with respect for child care. None of the books gave me guidelines on what to do when this boss grills me on whether my husband gets my “permission” when leaving town for work (I mean did I get *his* permission for my gazillion overnight calls during residency?!). None of my standardized patient encounters gave me the tools to keep my mouth from hanging open as this man began a pedantic lecture to myself and another female colleague (who also has children) about what constitutes a “mother’s worst nightmare,” and how our opinions on the matter were simply incorrect.

If anything, learning to hold my tongue since I was 22 years old has made me feel like Defiant Bitch, MD, when I try to stand up for myself.

Today’s encounter was prompted by me showing up late to a 7am lecture due to needing to drop my baby off to daycare. My husband is out of town for work, and, as anyone with young children in daycare knows, getting anywhere by 7am with childcare duties is a near impossible task. Furthermore, my clinical activities for the day would not start until after 9am (I know I’m lucky- I love this rotation at the VA hospital!), so it didn’t make sense to arrange for additional coverage for the morning (and I’m not even sure what this would even entail– hiring a one time nanny from care.com?).

So I showed up late. Mansplaining Program Director actually didn’t say anything about my tardiness, but he did wonder aloud about why there was ZERO faculty attendance at this particular lecture. (Of note, this is a non-surgical specialty, where mornings generally don’t have any reason to start before 8am.)

I explained to him that 7am is a difficult time for anyone with young children. I told him about my own daycare drop off situation, as an example. His response was a rather derisive, “Well can’t your husband help?” I blurted out “He’s in Mexico! For work! He works too!”

I thought it was over at that point. How wrong I was.

Next came the questions about my marriage: “Did you husband ask your permission to go on this trip?”

Excuse me?

Me: “Actually, he doesn’t have a choice. He’s the project manager, he had to go, or else risk losing his job.”

Him: “Well did he ask you?”

Me: “Are you kidding me? I need him to keep this job!!”

This response, though, didn’t even begin to express my outrage. I delivered our son during my final year of residency. While there was significant elective time during this year, there were also many weeks when I would disappear on the inpatient service, generally not coming home until well after baby went to bed. My husband, without a question, or a single complaint, became the primary caretaker for our infant son. In addition, he did all of those invisible chores which often fall to women in a household: meal planning, grocery shopping, paying bills, cleaning bottles, stocking up on diapers and endless loads of laundry.

Honestly, that probably doesn’t even cover it– I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. Even when I came home, I was often staffing patients by phone through the night (while breastfeeding), or triaging patients at outside hospitals as the covering physician for our answering service.

My mansplaining boss still wasn’t done; he then began a lecture about how in a marriage, there should be an effort for both parents to trade off child care responsibilities. That it should sometimes be one parent or the other, but an equal contribution.

The skin on my face felt hot with indignation. My heart pounded. How could anyone possibly say this to me, particularly about my marriage, when my husband has silently, unflinchingly, more than the majority of the time, taken on the lion share of childcare responsibilities?

I gathered my courage, looked him in the eye, and spoke:

“Why am I getting a lecture on teamwork?”

I was surprised at myself for talking back at all. In medical training, particularly during the third year of medical school and the years of residency, it is ingrained into your psyche that you, as a lowly peon, do not have opinions that matter. Your job is to take care of patients and not make your attending look bad. You are certainly not supposed to talk back. Sass is not encouraged.

So now, following 4 years of medical school, 3 years of a PhD (it was an MD/PhD program), 5 years of residency, and now most of the way through my first year of fellowship, I am finally learning how to speak.

I am 35 years old, a former musician, a mother, a board-certified physician in my specialty and a scientific researcher, and following all of these years of indoctrination into the culture of medicine, I am just now realizing that I have a voice.

Hear me ROAR.

Defiant Bitch, MD

UPDATE: After this particular argument, Mansplaining Program Director agreed to “revisit” our lecture timing with the faculty, in an effort to boost faculty attendance. There has been been a hilarious ensuing email chain, in which, one by one, every faculty member has unanimously voted against the 7am time in favor of a noon lecture.

Defiant Bitch, MD: 1. Mansplaining Program Director: 0.