ABSTRACT
An analysis of the impact of professional socialization on the family life of students who are spouses and parents then follows, with specific focus on the processes that students and their families engage in to achieve a balanced family life. The analysis concludes with an examination of medical students as spouses and parents, and the crises they commonly face in behaviorally articulating these identities with one another. As a process, inundation refers to an individual's life being flooded and dominated by a substantively narrow set of concerns and rounds of activities. Professional socialization can be conceived of as an equally profound societal reaction. Students' orientation toward medical training does not 'naturally' drift in the direction of flexibility and individual accommodation. Students' behavioral exemption from family life can come to be seen as incompatible with, or a breach of, their identities as spouses and parents, and then many problems of both a practical and sociopsy-chological nature can surface.
