There are many jokes around the fact that the generation of our African parents consider only a few types of roles as “proper jobs’: medical doctor, engineer, lawyer and maybe an architect. The list is very short and the options available are not many.
I always told my mum that she was lucky that I love medicine and I have always had no problem studying, because of my stubbornness and pride. But to think about it, at the same time I did not have so many options here either: the agreement with my parents was that I could do other activities until I got good marks (let’s say the maximum) at school. Yeah, excellency is not debatable.
But can we blame them?
I had a very interesting and nice conversation with a friend, a little sister, who is still in medical school and we were talking about our experiences as medical students from an African family. She was explaining that she was the first woman in her family to enter university and that seeing her mum in tears of pride during her white coat ceremony, she said “ I knew I was not doing only for me.”
And I thought that it was the same for me as for many other migrant children.
The reason for the very few options provided by our parents is that those are the only ones considered “very stable jobs” that won’t allow us to go through the struggle that they did. Our parents want us to excel and to be the best, in order to have the good and comfortable life that some of them did not have when they moved to the Western world.
But even though their actions are full of love, often they did not think about how living in countries mainly with a white European mentality, society, and education based on systemic racism and discrimination, would affect our well-being. Family pressure, peer pressure and self-pressure impact our health and so our journey and growth. It is true that many times we have to work double or triple compared to our white and European mates to excel, not because we love to suffer and always feel anxious, but because we know we are not just doing for ourselves but for our ancestors and future generations.
As my friend then continued, “ Sometimes I believe that if our parents could have fulfilled their dreams, it would be different”. I remember when my mum was so scared to tell me that she wanted to go back to nursing school. She felt that doing that she would fail as a mother because she could not constantly provide for me. I felt so guilty because I could understand how many things she probably had to give up and how the feeling of provider and sacrifice was so instilled in her to make her scared to do something that would have been definitely beneficial for her and the family, even when I was almost done with medical school. I would have obviously adjusted and made sacrifices for her dream to come true (and luckily she made it!!). But her aim, as for my father, was for me to be in a comfortable environment without thinking of anything. They want me to be in a better position than them.
I am really happy with my background, and how I grew up because I could see with my eyes all the hard work my parents did to let me be who I am. Sometimes they forget that even if we were small, our eyes could see and we remember.
I am happy things are changing little by little as we are changing the narrative and many more opportunities are opening to black and other minor ethnic groups, not only in the few options but even in other sectors. This is because the struggle is not as hard as before.
“I like medicine as I liked other sectors. In the end, I decided on medicine, so that my brothers and sister don’t have to choose by force this journey and can choose something else”, concluded my friend still reflecting on her journey and decisions.
In the end, the final aim of our parents is for us to have more options than they had. They might have restricted the list a bit because they thought the system won’t support us, but they don’t really care (yes, we know they love the epitome doctor) about the job that we are doing, and how we are doing. They want the best for us and voluntary and involuntary, we are increasing the options in the list for the future.
The Feminist Health CIC 