DOCTORS' WIVES: The Truth About Medical Marriages

by Cynthia S. Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 5, 1980

Is life really so tough for the doctor's wife? According to Cynthia Smith, many women find that the difficulties nearly outweigh the advantages: ""No Bed of Roses,"" as one medical school course puts it. Perhaps, but it's hard to work up much sympathy for doctors' wives as a suffering minority--their problems, though real, seem modest compared to too many others. Moreover, magazine editor Smith has turned genuine complaints, uncovered in a Medical/Mrs. survey, into a repetitious book that tends to inflate the unique difficulties it represents--how doctors are ""deified,"" for example. Although many contentions are valid and the anecdotes and short case histories are apt, the prose is distracting--frequently overheated or sluggish (""physicians inhabit an ambience fraught with factors that are contributive to infidelity""). Also, Smith tends to focus on the deeply disillusioned, gives less attention to hardier souls, and fails to appreciate others with similar marriage-problem configurations, such as corporate wives. As a corrective to a popular notion, this lacks a sharp cutting edge and the capacity to generate much outside interest, but it does offer a picture of the many strains which medical marriages encounter.

Pub Date: Jan. 5, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Seaview-dist. by Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION