Family responsibilities and domestic activities of US women physicians

Background: Women physicians may have a multiplicity of domestic roles (eg, cook, housekeeper, child care provider) that are of inherent interest and that may affect their professional lives, but are largely unstudied. Design, Setting, Participants, and Main Outcome Measures: We report data fr om respondents (N = 4501) to the Women Physicians' Health Study, a cross-se ctional, questionnaire-based study of a stratified random sample of US wome n MDs. Results: Women physicians with children aged 0 to 17 years spent a median o f 24.4 hours per week on child care. Women physicians typically spent half an hour per day cooking, and another half-hour per day on other housework. Little time was spent on gardening: a median of 0.05 hours (3 minutes) per week. Those performing more domestic tasks are likely to work fewer hours o utside the home and to be on call less often. Women physicians who are marr ied or widowed, have more children, have lower personal incomes, and have m ore highly educated and higher-earning spouses perform more domestic activi ties. We found no significant adverse relationship between time spent on an y domestic activity and career satisfaction or mental or physical health. Conclusions: Women physicians spend little time on domestic activities that can br done for them by others, including cooking, housework, and especial ly gardening. Women physicians spend somewhat less time on child care and s ubstantially less time on housework than do other US women. Despite abundan t editorializing about role conflicts of women physicians, our measures of career satisfaction and mental health were not adversely affected by time s pent on domestic obligations.