ADHD, medication, and motherhood - Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I gave some background about my struggle with ADHD and the conflict I felt between taking medication to advance my career at the expense of becoming a mother. Even though that post has no comments, I've received more feedback and emails about it than any other post I've written. I interpreted that to mean that I touched on a couple of important issues for women, but these are issues that we're still not comfortable discussing publicly. For that reason, I think this is going to be an issue I'll be revisiting often, but hopefully from a different angle each time.

This post is going to pick up where I left off last time and fill you in on my thought process while I was making my decision. I was considering whether to take medication for my ADHD. I left off wondering whether a PhD and a career in academia would be fulfilling or if I would regret not having children. I sought out advice and guidance from others, but encountered more frustration than support.

I'm a reflective and instinctive person by nature, so even though I talked about my struggle with others, I knew that my answer would have to come from what I was feeling and not what I was thinking. On an intellectual level, I knew there were women who balanced work and family. I knew medication could be a short-term solution and that I could stop if I were to get pregnant or wanted to get pregnant. I knew I was legally entitled to disability accommodations. I also knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, that ADHD is real despite the public misperceptions. Intellectually, I understood this.

My intelligence and rationality couldn't overcome my gut feelings, however. I knew there were women who balanced work and family, but I felt like my ADHD would never allow me to fully balance the two in a way that would work long-term. I knew that I could stop taking medication to have a baby, but I've always felt that I will have difficulty getting pregnant and that "medication break" could extend for years. I also knew that even though I had a right to accommodations, the faculty looked down on me for asking for them and they treated me like I was dumb or incompetent. Even though I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, I felt ashamed.

On the other hand, I didn't have the biological drive toward motherhood that I thought I should or that I felt I should. Kids bugged me. That's not entirely true. I adore my niece and nephew (they're the greatest kids ever but I'm sure I think that because I get to spoil them, feed them sugar, and send them back to their parents) and I enjoy spending time with my friends and their kids. I don't enjoy the temper tantrums or the child-centered conversations or the general adjustment of my life to suit the needs of kids. As much as my breeding friends assured me that having children was worth all the sacrifices, they often expressed jealousy at my life and resentment toward theirs, especially when I got to do things they wished they could do, from the simple, like going out to nice dinners whenever I wanted, to the extravagant, like going to Spain. I couldn't ignore those feelings either. I love my friends, but I did not want to become them.

All of these issues created the confusion and the conflict I felt, but my husband was really the one underlying force behind my decision-making. He has always been incredibly supportive and encouraging of my career path, but I also know that he wants children. In a lot of ways, he is a big kid and for a while I was concerned that I would end up parenting my husband and my child, rather than have a partner in raising a child. That concern was misguided. He will be an amazing dad and any child will be lucky to have him as a father.

My hesitations had more to do with his job demands than any concerns about his parenting skills. His job is incredibly unpredictable in terms of hours and travel, so I can't always count on him to be home at a certain time. This is annoying but generally fine when it's just the two of us, but if there was a child involved, I don't think it would be okay. There could easily be days when he wouldn't see our kids, leaving me as the primary caretaker for the kids. Of course I could have help - I would need help - but I also know that help doesn't come cheap and I'd probably be working to pay for a nanny. I know my work would suffer because I couldn't be at every meeting, go to every conference, or travel to collect my data because I wouldn't have the flexibility. One of us would need to have a job that had consistent hours, jobs that didn't require a fifty-plus hour time commitment each week. I knew faculty jobs - especially tenure-track faculty jobs - wouldn't meet this criteria. I knew my husband would never be satisfied in a job that fit that criteria either.

As much as I believe in and am thankful for women's liberation and equal rights, the reality is that marriage isn't about equality - it's about partnership. Sometimes one person has to make a sacrifice in order to do what is best for both spouses. In our case, one of us was going to have to sacrifice our career ambitions in order for us to have a family. When I honestly looked at the dual-career couples in my field who were making it work, I saw that one person had a stable 9 to 5 job and the other had the PhD, and I knew that would never be my husband and me if we continued on our current paths.

So in addition to the concerns I had about taking medication and what that meant for me professionally and personally, I also had to decide if we did have a child, could I ask my husband to give up his career so I could pursue mine, or was I willing to give up mine so he could pursue his?

Stay tuned...