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So, I thought the case of Sophie Currier was open and shut, but then I did a bit more digging. Hers is not the ideal test case for advancing the cause of nursing mothers. Because she has dyslexia and ADHD the exam board had already granted that she take the normally one day test over the course of two days. It’s one thing to ask for a concession, it may be another to ask for concession on top of concession. So much for that. Anyway, even if Currier is a poor standardbearer (and I’m not sure that she is, I’m simply not sure that she isn’t), her case raises interesting issues.
One thing that surprised me was the venomous tone of so many of the comments on her blog. The mommy blogs I read are all of the type that attract sympathetic commenters. People comment because they agree with you and want to say something nice. Currier’s blog is wallpapered with people who wanted to tell her what a whiner she was, what a disgrace to working women she was, what a disservice she was doing for nursing mothers, how stupid she was, how her litigiousness was the root of all ill in our society, what a poor physician she would be, and how foolish she was to choose to have children during medical school. Whew! Ouch.
All of this fills me with 100 different blogposts I would like to write, but as always, I don’t have time.
So, two questions:
1. When one has a disability, when should one ask for a concession or accommodation? What is the force of “should” in the previous sentence? When is it morally proper to ask for/expect an accommodation? When does it make sense to ask for an accommodation from the perspective of life efficacy?
This issue is becoming very real for me because my daughter has a disability. She has very poor fine motor control. This makes her handwriting nearly illegible. She can write legibily but only with great difficulty and extremely slowly. Unfortunately, her challenges are beginning to color her entire school experience. I don’t want her to decide that she hates school or even worse to conclude that she simply isn’t very intelligent. From that perspective, it makes sense to give her the wings that keyboarding allows. She can type much faster than she can write. She will never write well. Why not let her start typing everything now? It’s pretty clear that if we push it, her school will make accommodations that allow her to avoid most handwriting. But avoiding handwriting now, when her struggles are the greatest, means she will need an entire lifetime of accommodations. She will be unable to fill out a job application without a computer or help from another person.
So: When is it best to soldier through a problem, doing one’s best in light of disappointing results? When is it best to throw in the towel and acknowledge one’s limitations?
2. How should the availability of birth control color how we view timing of motherhood and working motherhood decisions? Many who left comments on Currier’s blog felt that she had no business planning pregnancies for the lifestage she did given the demands she knew her program would present. These weren’t people urging Currier to become a SAHM, but rather people opining that if she was serious about being a physician she didn’t have any business shorting that side of her life in order to bear children.
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One Response to “Should a nursing mother get extra time? (Part II)”
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Oh, we wrestle with this too. I tend to choose: sometimes I ask for extra considerations for my boys, and some people/venues I just avoid. But my feeling is that a test-giving company who has the power to keep a person from a JOB should be flexible. They’ve denied other nursing mothers the chance to have pumping time – Sophie Currier isn’t the first, she’s just the loudest.
I just wish she wasn’t so complicated as a test case. The ADHD and dyslexia are muddying the waters, and making her an excellent target.
P.S. nice graduation photo.