"I Don't Know Any Mothers Like Sarah Palin" (Mother's story/Huff Post)

[KoKo]

Sarah Palin: Family-Values Feminist?

by Christine Wicker

I don't know any women like Sarah Palin.

Most of the women I know became far less ambitious when they had just one child. That one child caused them to see their role in life quite differently. I know many women -- doctors, lawyers, journalists, business executives -- who've given up or postponed or cut back on their careers because they wanted to care for their children. I know a lot more women who desperately want to cut back but can't because their families need the money.

I'm told that Palin is part of a new trend: women with high-powered jobs who also have lots of children. I guess that's the latest version of having it all. I probably don't understand that because I'm a boomer. We tried it. Nobody gets to have it all.

But Sarah Palin is not like any of the women I know.

I don't know any women who would have agreed to run for vice-president of the United States knowing that their ambition would expose their unmarried, pregnant teenager to national publicity.

Issuing a statement that said her daughter would have to grow up too soon wouldn't have been nearly enough for the mothers I know. They wouldn't think that a quickie marriage between two teenagers would make everything fine. They would be soul-searching, repenting, anguishing over how they had contributed to this disaster.

Maybe Sarah Palin is doing that. Maybe she's doing it privately.

But again, I'm at sea. Bristol Palin has been nationally shamed because of the attention her mother's ambition has drawn. Party pictures are already circulating on the Internet. It's likely to get uglier.

Obama would like to spare her that. He's promised to fire anyone on his staff who throws the first stone. (He's got this follower-of-Jesus thing.)

But Obama shouldn't have to protect Bristol Palin. Her mother, who is said to have known about her daughter's pregnancy before she accepted McCain's offer, should have done that.

I don't mean to sound old fashioned or judgmental. I'm pro-choice. Sarah Palin has made her choices, as she has the perfect right to.

It's just that that she is outside my experience. I don't know any mothers who would have accepted McCain's offer knowing what Sarah Palin is said to have known. If the pregnancy had surprised them after their acceptance, they would be taking as much blame on themselves as they could, shielding their daughter, berating themselves, deflecting attention from their darling child. Publicly.

more at...........
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-wicker/sarah-palin-family-values_b_123372.html

[firedupdem]

1. Exactly......and that woman on the view

made my blood boil...as a matter of fact they all did with their tip toeing around the issues...sorry on another rant.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. That blonde, empty-skulled, bimbo is among the worst of the repuke party-line reciters.

Her big claim to fame is having been on one of the Survivor shows. hmmmmm Maybe that makes HER qualified to be VP too....
If if wasn't all so scary, it would be really, really amusing...like some sort of Monty Python or Coen brothers film.

[KoKo]

2. I don't know any mothers like Sarah, either...and I'm an older boomer

so have seen a bit of life. I don't know any women who have five kids, either. But, my MIL had four boys and didn't go back to teaching until the youngest was in school. Teaching was good ...because her schedule was close to theirs That was important to her.

[Matariki]

3. ugh. Can't say I like the 'ambitious women make bad mothers' theme.

[KoKo]

5. It's about compromise....

The article points out that all of the people the writer knows have made compromises to take care of their family. Palin doesn't seem to have cared or been willing to do that. Nor, her husband who she said would take care of the kids when she became governor. Turns out she had to later say that he just got tired of it and wanted to go back to work.

[Matariki]

6. Well, blame HIM then. He's obviously as much of a liar as she is.

[lukasahero]

18. "The article points out that all of the people"

"The article points out that all of the people the writer knows have made compromises to take care of their family." Does it really point out all of the "people" or just the women?

[Nikia]

15. I agree with you

See my post further down the thread.

[valerief]

4. Even Christina Crawford would have to concede Mommie Dearest was a better mom.

[Warpy]

7. Not quite true. What we boomer women found was that

having it all generally meant doing it all.

We didn't live in little towns with a large and obliging family to take our neglected children in, so we often had to make some very tough choices in our careers, choices that insured our incomes would be stunted along with our ambitions. We were new women stuck with men with 1950s entitlements and that meant the antiseptic houses we grew up in weren't repeated for our own children. We could never do enough, we could never do it all well enough to satisfy everyone, and we were just never good enough.

This broad is one hard, driven woman who wants to escape the domestic stuff she's running on being so great at. She's another Phyllis Schlafly who wants all the advantages the rest of us worked so hard for in order to deny them to all the women who are taking care of her kids.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. You sit it right on the head!!!!!

She's another Phyllis Schlafly who wants all the advantages the rest of us worked so hard for in order to deny them to all the women who are taking care of her kids.

[fishwax]

12. well said!

She's another Phyllis Schlafly who wants all the advantages the rest of us worked so hard for in order to deny them to all the women who are taking care of her kids.

:applause:

[KoKo]

17. So many of us had to "Relocate" all across America...to keep jobs..no "Extended Family"

to help us out...and our holidays had us "on the road" or "in the air" if we could afford it to go back for a brief few days to where we grew up. We had no resources like "Nannies" they didn't exist back then...and we had to rely on an inconsistent network of "word by mouth" kind women who would take our kids in if we "had to work." That's what it was called back then..."you had to work."

There really weren't "Day Care Centers" that we know of now...and the women that were willing to take our kids in weren't subject to "care standards for health and checked out by police department for "abuse records"...we just had to find folks as we could being away from extended family...trying to get through college or grad school or just to move out of "rural America" to find jobs in "New America" back in the 1960's.

It was a different world. But as more women went to work they DEMANDED better Day Care with some Standards from Health, Education and Vetting standpoint...so the "Day Care" did get better and there were more centers...and the wealthy, of course, suddenly could find "Nannies from South American Countries" who would cook, clean and take care of the kiddies all for one salary.

The "Two Class System" started to come into place when us 60's Women went out to work...because we needed a job given the fact that the Vietnam War sucked all the money out of our Economy and that many of us were getting better educated and wanted to do something with the degrees or we were working to get one...or our hubbies or partners were working and one income meant someone had to work...and if there were kids..one wanted to find someone to help us out.

BUT...I don't know anyone from that time who ever left their kids the way the Palin Family did...so that they were "on their own." We were WWII Babies and later...and there was just some "sense of duty," that we carried with us. I don't see that from Palin.

[marlakay]

8. I only had two children and I stayed home until

the youngest was in kindergarden. I purposely stayed home and sold tupperware and did childcare myself so i could raise my own and then worked in offices after that.

So its hard for me. What I see is a woman who has other people raising her kids and then uses having a bunch of kids to make her look like mom of the year. If thats all it took we could all pop out that many!

One of my daughters got pregnant at 17 and its not something i talk about too much because as a mom i take some of the blame of it, i moved to take a job out of the area and my younger daughter came with me but older didn't want to go and i let her live for her senior year with this nice christian family and thought she would be okay...she called me a few months later to say she was pregnant.

Now it could have happened whether i was there or not but i have always felt like i wasn't there for her and should have either stayed in the town or forced her to go with me. So when i look at articles that talk about Sarah "farming out" her kids and not watching them and seeing what happened to her daughter and this whole media mess...

what kind of mother would do that to her daughter just for ambition? its so sad...

[trof]

11. That's it! Dead Solid Perfect and Spot On.

K&R

[AZBlue]

13. "But Obama shouldn't have to protect Bristol Palin."

Precisely.

[Nikia]

14. My mother is like Sarah Palin

Minus the part about running for president of the United States and neither my sister nor I were pregnant when she was a local public figure. There are some things that I blame my mother for, notably marrying a well off man less than a year after meeting him who turned out to be abusive to my sister and I. Sometimes I wish that she had been around more. On the otherhand, I have great admiration for my mother and the things that she has accomplished and think that she was a good example to my sisters and I. My husband's mother, on the otherhand, quit working as a teacher when he was born and only got a "job" (as opposed to a career for a couple of years after he was done with elementary school. Her life focus has been her husband and son. She has very few interests other than that. I am glad that I had the experience of growing up with a mother with ambition and committment to public service and pursuing her intersts rather than a mother like my husband's mother.
I disagree with Palin's political stances, but I won't bash her for having children and being ambitious. It is unfortunate about her daughter, but since she was already governor of Alaska, it isn't like her daughter wouldn't have had the issue of being publically exposed anyway. That is just my view.

[KoKo]

16. Thanks for your experience and sharing that.......

It's not all one way with anything...shades of grey... So thanks for your view. :hi:

[KoKo]

19. ....