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Knife before wife, or so they say James Berwin
Knife before wife, or so they say. But what if you and your partner both have careers, and you want to start a family? In this modern day and age, is knife before life the only way?
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head of the birth of our daughter, my wife and I considered the amount of time we would take off on parental leave. My wife is a plastic surgical trainee; I’m an orthopaedic trainee. We are at similar stages of training and are essentially on identical pay. Given the equality in our professional lives, why then would it be fair to divvy up parental leave in anything other than equal measure?
James Berwin is a Specialist Trainee (ST8) in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery in the Severn Deanery.
Disclaimer: there are many ways to do parental leave. The choices you make are specific to your situation. This article is not designed to pass judgement on those choices, rather to explain what I did and why, in the hope that it may help others feel able to take the time they want on parental leave.
Why take shared parental leave? The ‘Share the Joy’ campaign launched by the government to promote shared parental leave (SPL) states that less than 2% of eligible parents in the UK take up the opportunity1. The explanation for this low uptake is multi-factorial, and could include financial considerations, office culture and professional reasons. Whilst there are barriers to taking SPL, from my experience the balance is tipped firmly towards being overwhelmingly positive. Sadly, there are perceptions, firmly held by some, which may be the legacy of a generation for whom work-life balance was inconceivable. Many of my senior colleagues have spoken of their regret in not spending more time at home watching their children grow up. “Cherish those early years, you don’t get them back”, they say. In their defence, they didn’t have a choice. Shared parental leave was only made possible in April 2015. My hope for today’s generation of
30 | JTO | Volume 10 | Issue 01 | March 2022 | boa.ac.uk
young doctors is a positive culture change that is supportive of modern professionals trying to balance their careers with family life.
Burnout We are in the midst of a burnout pandemic. The BOA tells us that current levels are at 58%, up from 40% in 20182. Burnout is characterised by feelings of being overextended and the depletion of one’s emotional and physical reserves. Poor work-life balance is a major contributor to burnout, which itself is an important contributor to attrition from surgical training programmes. This represents a loss of both financial investment and human capital and its prevention is therefore vital to protect our future workforce. Thankfully, I have not experienced burnout myself, but taking SPL during those early weeks and months of my child’s life may have helped prevent it.
Gender equality Female surgical attrition is a proportionately greater problem3, a fact illustrated by the decreasing numbers of women at increasing levels of the surgical hierarchy (women make up 55% of UK medical school graduates 4, 41% of core surgical trainees, 30% of surgical specialty trainees and 12% of surgical consultants)5. This is reflected in the corporate world with only 7% of UKs FTSE 100 companies being chaired by women6. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that work and home life is not yet shared equally between partners on a societal level. A conscious or subconscious bias appears to exist against colleagues who choose to take an extended period of parental leave or work
