Many people have written about Sarah Palin’s lack of experience and about her stand on women’s issues (she’s against all of them). I will go into none of that here. If you want to know where she stands on the issues, surf around the net. Check out her Web site. Read a newspaper. You’ll learn she’s pro-gun, pro-life (even in the case of rape), pro-heterosexual marriage, pro-creationism, pro-Iraq war, anti-stem cell research, anti-sex education, and anti-federal funding for better health care.
What I have to say here relates to none of that. What I have to say is also not remotely politically correct. Indeed, when I found myself asking the questions I will pose here, I automatically shushed myself. I thought, “That is not something a feminist, career woman should think.” Yet, I think it. I can’t stop thinking it.
Other women have to be thinking it too, especially other moms, especially other career moms.
Sarah Palin, I must ask you, where is your invisible umbilical cord? Where is your attachment to your five children, particularly your newborn and your pregnant teenage daughter?
You and the rest of the Republican Party say you promote Family Values yet, I must ask you, where are yours?
Where Are Your Family Values?
You have not one, not two, not three, not four, but five children. They range in age from just born to 18. Your newborn has Down’s. You have two more children in middle school. Your teenage daughter is pregnant.
I don’t know too many families who manage to raise five children with both parents working. Let me correct that: I know no families who’ve done it successfully. None.
This is what I do know. I know women who have given up high level jobs as company Presidents and CEOs because they knew they were missing the chance to see their children grow up. I know mothers, such as myself, who stopped at one child or, at the most, two, because they knew they could not balance more children with a full-time career.
Yet, you seem to be the most amazing of women. You seem to be able to balance your role as a self-described hockey mom with your role as governor, and, if you get your way, with your role as Vice President and possibly President.
Yet, I must ask, when you move to Washington and go to meeting after meeting, when you travel the country for ribbon cutting ceremonies, when you meet with ambassadors and heads of state, who will:
• Change your baby’s diapers?
• Rock your baby back to sleep in the middle of the night?
• Teach your tween daughter about abstinence?
• Help your children with their homework?
• Go to those hockey games?
• Take your children to well-child visits and make sure their vaccinations at up to date?
• Help your teenage daughter transition to the role of mother?
• Parent that grandchild so your teenage daughter might have the opportunity to graduate from high school and perhaps, dare I suggest it, college?
Sexism vs. Realism
Is it sexist of me to ask these questions? Perhaps it is. Yet, as a feminist who once met Gloria Steinem in person, it’s unlikely. The questions are valid. They are realistic. They are important.
You see, Sarah, you and I both know about the empty promises of the first wave of the feminist movement. You, like me, grew up with the notion that we women could have it all. We could birth children, have demanding careers, keep our marriages strong, and have time to go to book club, too. (Or, in your case, moose hunting).
Well, you know what? It’s not true. Ask any working mother. You don’t need to ask, though. You know it already. If you can’t admit to yourself that you are already dropping many precious balls, you are fooling yourself.
Ours is not an egalitarian world. Women still must work harder than men to earn job promotions. Women must work harder than men to earn the same paycheck.
At home, we work harder, too. Ask any married mom. Close to 100 percent of them, when pressed, will admit that they do 80 percent of the housework and 80 percent of the parenting. And this includes women, such as myself, who’d thought we’d married evolved, egalitarian-leaning men. Perhaps, Sarah, you thought you’d married such a man, too. Yet, I’m sure you are well aware that there are a few egalitarian marriages. There are even fewer Mr. Moms.
I’m the family breadwinner. My husband is a business owner. We have one child. We stopped at one for a reason: if I had two children, I’d drop every single ball I was trying to juggle. I would either neglect my children, my career, my marriage or all three.
Yet, you seem to be a true Super Mom. In my mind, the following three jobs are the most demanding of all: Mother, President, and Vice President, in that order. You plan to take on two of them at the same time? I wish you luck. I wish your children luck. I wish our country luck, too. We will all need it.
I wonder, the thousands of times when family and country call at the exact same moment, which call will you choose to answer?
If your Down’s baby is hospitalized and the country is in crisis, where will you choose to be—in the oval office or in the PICU?
Will you attend the birth of your grandchild? Will you hold your daughter’s hand as she screams through one contraction after another, or will you be in Washington instead, lobbying to bring handguns back to that city?
What about those hockey games you are so proud of attending. Will you fly home to Alaska for every game? Or will someone else cheer for your children instead?
Who will raise your children for the next 4 to 8 years, Sarah? Who will mother that Down’s baby? Who will mother that grandchild? Who will get that teenage daughter back on her feet and moving in the right direction?
Yes, I could be asking similar questions to any number of men in Washington. But the truth of the matter is that men do not have invisible umbilical cords. Most of them do not attach to their children as we mothers do. Male politicians have been neglecting their children since the beginning of time.
Am I against women in politics? No way. Am I against a woman Vice President or President? Not a chance.
Give me a woman with no children or grown children, give me a woman who actually supports women’s issues, give me a woman who has the time, energy and experience to put into the job of Vice President or President, and I’ll give you my vote.
Sarah Palin: you are not that woman. You are not even close.
