He advises physicians who find themselves in the role of a single father to “be prepared for some rapid changes, get the appropriate legal and professional counseling, and read books on the subject. Get up to speed as quickly as possible, recognizing that the decisions you make will last your child's entire childhood. Expect that you are going to have to make some accommodations in your career. You have to make some adjustments.”
A Big Dose of Humility
In 2001, Dr. John Whelan was stunned to discover that his former spouse would have provisional custody of their 2-year-old son, Olivier, while their divorce was pending.
“I subsequently discovered that's routine,” said Dr. Whelan, a pediatric rheumatologist at the MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston. “Unless a mother has a drug use history or is imprisoned, my understanding is that the mother always gets provisional physical custody and the father becomes the noncustodial parent while the divorce is pending. For a period of about 2 years, I was basically the second-class parent until the whole divorce was resolved. This is one of the cruelest things about the family law system in our state: One day a child has two parents who are important in his life, and the next day, he has one important parent and one unimportant parent.”
The court ultimately ruled that the parents would have joint physical custody, “but that is a rare thing in Massachusetts,” he said. “Only 6% of divorces involving children in Massachusetts are said to result in joint physical custody.”
Today, Olivier resides with Dr. Whelan 3 nights a week, mostly on weekends, and for vacations. His former spouse watches their son generally after school during the week.
“My son and I have a close relationship,” Dr. Whelan said. “Part of it is a result of the fact that when he's with me, I do nothing else: I spend whole weekends at a time with him. I do take him on rounds with me occasionally when I'm covering call on the weekend. He enjoys going to the hospital and it helps that I'm in pediatrics. I can come into a room with a child patient and it's very reassuring to these young kids to see that I have a 'child assistant.'”
Olivier, who turns 8 in October, plays soccer and Little League baseball, and is starting his third year of piano lessons. “Before that, he took weekly music classes at a local music conservatory,” Dr. Whelan said. “Music has been a big part of our life. He's been to Boston Symphony Hall a couple of dozen times. He can sit through a 2-hour Wagner concert, which is amazing.”
Last year, they took a weekly Mandarin Chinese class together, and Olivier is fully fluent in French.
Dr. Whelan described his relationship with his former spouse as “conciliatory,” which “is so critical to the well-being of children who are living in a two-household situation. Do whatever you can to remain on good terms with your former spouse.”
He advised physicians new to the single father role to assemble “several tiers of babysitters and contingency plans for those times when you get called into the emergency room in the middle of the night. Who can you call to come into your house and watch your child while you're in the ER evaluating somebody?”
For him, the road to becoming a single father brought a big dose of humility. “As a doctor, you are used to being treated with deference,” he said. “People trust your judgment; they look up to you. To be in a situation where your judgment often is questioned and you're not respected can be somewhat humiliating. If you are able to go at it [in] a humble frame of mind and keep your sense of humor, then you'll probably come out a lot better off than if you follow the human instinct to fight back and constantly defend your honor. A life in medicine is stressful enough, family issues aside. It seems to me that doing what's best for your child and nurturing that strong relationship is the deepest balm for all the other challenges we face as doctors.”
'I had to fight hard for equal parenting time, losing most of my life savings in the process.' DR. SOMMER