This article is a literature review about the challenges that women face when having a child during their medical career.  It also discusses current policy on parental leave and strategies women enlist to cope with pregnancy and childbirth in the medical profession.  One interesting point of this article is the emphasis of the physical dangers of women being pregnant in medicine, which have been proven to be just as dangerous as pregnancies of women in other “physically strenuous jobs”.

This book is a collection of short stories and personal reflections of female physicians about their experiences as women in the field of medicine.  Topics include motherhood and family balancing, transcending gender biases, internship and residency, and barriers to becoming a physician for women. This will serve as an anecdotal supplement to all of the studies that are included in this bibliography.

This is a study comparing satisfactions across a spectrum of stages in medical career.  It was a survey of incoming medical students, current medical students, residents and physician teachers in which the authors analyzed the effect of sex, parenting, and level of training on the likelihood of recommending parenting to medical students or residents, and on parenting dissatisfaction, job dissatisfaction, career dissatisfaction and the importance of flexibility within the college program to accommodate family obligations.

This is a study that looks at the work and family balance of young professionals.  Doctors were interviewed in order to analyze differences in work hours among men and women physicians, whether or not parenthood affects work hours of men and women physicians, how work hours compare to desired work hours and how the work hours of parent doctors compare to work hours of non-parent doctors.

This article includes stats on the proportion of women in medical school.  This article is not a study but a review paper that gives an overview of what women in med school and residency are doing about having a family.

This article talks about efforts in Canada for promoting the empowerment of women, especially in the medical field.  This article is different from most of the others because it looks at the political elements of women in medicine and issues of gender in the field. It includes suggestions for improvement of the empowerment of women in medicine.

The website offers a lot of simple statistics on the involvement of women in medicine for this year and years past.  Stats include the proportion of women in medical school, in various medical careers and in each medical specialty.

A study that hypothesized that the responsibility for childbearing and child care has a major effect on general surgical residency and practice.  The authors surveyed all graduates, male and female, from a certain surgical training program between 1989 and 2000 and concluded that childbearing and childcare may have a very large impact on one’s decision to pursue surgery as a medical specialty.

This book is essentially a history of women in medicine that chronologically recounts the struggle of women to be treated as equal to men in the medical field over the last couple hundred years.

A review study seeking to answer the following questions about physicians and their personal relationships: 1) What do we know about healthy, intimate relationships? 2) What are some of the unique challenges to a relationship posed by a career in medicine? 3) What is the effect of a healthy relationship on physician well-being? 4) What are some strategies to create and maintain relationship intimacy?

This article is a commentary on medicine and parenthood in which she suggests that there has been too much emphasis on studying the intersection of medicine and parenthood and not enough emphasis on doing something about it.  She calls for the need to equalize the psychological and time commitment to home life when both parents work outside of the home.

This is an article on stressors and coping strategies of women in medical careers.  This review articles finds that suicide and divorce rates are higher for females who are physicians, but that the depression rate is not.  It was also found that women have less guidance and help when pursuing medicine. It also discusses the lack of resources and promotion for women and the initiatives that are being taken to try to improve this.

This article is about the correlation between medical specialty and the incidence of divorce.  People who entered John Hopkins School of Medicine from 1944 to 1960 were surveyed about marital and divorce information, psychological characteristics and demographics.  It includes a wealth of statistics of how divorce rates are correlated with the kind of medical career you choose and the kind of personality you have.

This was a study that looked at the likelihood of marriage failure in physicians as compared with other professionals.  Also looks at divorce rates by gender, ethnicity and medical specialty.  Results were based on all of the initial complaints of divorce, separate maintenance and annulment in California in 1968.

This is a study conducted with the objective of learning how physicians in dual-doctor families differ from other physicians in their professional and family lives by surveying a random sample of physicians from the classes of 1980 to 1990.  Found that physicians married to other physicians were more likely to get paid less, more likely to have a greater role in childbearing and less likely to feel like their career took precedence over their spouse’s.  This was especially true for female physicians. But although these things true, they were equally likely to achieve career goals and general child-rearing goals as physicians married to non-physicians.  Also found that being married to another physician is actually beneficial including things like family income and shared work interests.

This article is about the marital and parental satisfaction of married physicians with children.  It sent out a survey to an equal number of male and female physicians in Southern California. The survey questions covered seven general areas: professional characteristics; spouse characteristics; family characteristics; household help characteristics; career changes for marriage and children; and attitudes—role conflict, marital satisfaction, and parental satisfaction. This study shows that for physicians with children, minimizing the level of role conflict and having a supportive spouse are associated with higher levels of marital and parental satisfaction. Working in salaried positions and marriage to a spouse who is either working in a profession or who is a stay-at-home parent are also related to high parental satisfaction.

This study retrospectively looked at the balance between medicine and motherhood among women physicians (Yale graduates) from 1922 to 1999 using a questionnaire.   Found that women with children are less likely to be surgeons. More women are having their children during medical training (as opposed to after).  Maternity leaves are longer but mothers are less satisfied with them.