On her own terms

Roberts' provocative editorial ‘On our own terms’ (JRSM 2007;100:538-9)¹ unintentionally makes the point that for ambitious women, the ‘rule book’ is not good enough. Isn't this part of the problem besetting our entire society? The sexes operate by different rules, as brilliantly expressed in ‘The female of the species’.²

The first question should surely be not what is good for women, but what is good for the community. The ratio of male to female medical undergraduates has changed from 9:1 in 1958 to 4.5:5.5 in 2006. This requires explanation, since many women practice part-time or leave medicine entirely. In the recent past, men formed the bulk of medical practitioners. What has happened to their male successors? The second point therefore concerns the education of boys and their nurture. Their developmental and educational needs differ from those of girls; the sexes are different.^3,4

The idea of a ‘right to motherhood’ and also to a glorious career is problematical. It can be done at a price, but let's remember the rights of the child. The child analyst Donald Winnicott wrote of the need of all infants and small children to have the instinctive maternal responses of their mothers holding them physically and psychologically in a shared bond, supporting the vulnerable developing ego throughout the early years of life.⁵ Only a full-time nanny can adequately substitute. Boys are likely to be the bigger losers of mother's belief and support, particularly in one-parent families. The roles of mother and father are complementary and not interchangeable. Boys, particularly, suffer from ‘father hunger’;⁴ indeed, the father is needed now more than ever, not as a surrogate mother, but as himself.