Return To Sender
WPost columnist Ruth Marcus angsts over the terrible message sent by Michelle Obama’s announcement that she’ll be mom in chief, stay home with the kids, let the husband be president of the United States. It’s a whine about women having to put career second, all the usual. Motherhood, the great nuisance.
When Michelle Obama took to describing her new role as mom in chief, my first reaction was to wince at her words. My second reaction was to identify with them.
I was okay, actually, with what Obama said. But I worried: Did she have to say it out loud, quite so explicitly? Is it really good for the team — the team here being working women — to have the “mommy” stamp so firmly imprinted on her identity?
And most of all: What does it say about the condition of modern women that Obama, catapulted by her husband’s election into the ranks of the most prominent, sounded so strangely retro — more Jackie Kennedy than Hillary Clinton?
She is, after all — by résumé, anyway — more Hillary than Jackie. But the painful paradox of campaign 2008 is that it came tantalizingly close to giving us an Ivy League-educated female lawyer in the Oval Office but yielded an Ivy League-educated female lawyer sketching out a supremely traditional first lady role.
“My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom in chief,” Obama told Ebony magazine, “making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls . . . that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.”
A couple of things.
A woman ran, hard, for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, and narrowly lost. Quit whining. The man is president, and he’s got a wife and two kids. Even Hillary gave up lawyering and sitting on corporate boards when her husband got the job. It is not a normal family situation even within the broad spectrum of American family experiences, and there would be serious issues raised about the appropriateness of any First Spouse working for any outside employer, working as a lawyer, sitting on corporate boards, doing the kinds of things Michelle Obama has done. So what does Marcus want?
Marcus also references the angst and whine among all her friends, Washington’s power couples, over who gets to sidle up to the new Obama admin in power jobs, the husband or the wife, and whose career has power down for the kids. It’s a fine whine.
But before we get to the matter of whether anyone’s priorities are screwed on straight, and whether that’s any of Marcus’ business, there’s the Palin thing. A couple of months ago, lefties were firing cheap shots at Sarah Palin. Questioning how she could leave her children to run for vice-president. Here’s Ruth today discussing her column with readers online, expressing her unease about that. Not the cheap shots. The Palin family’s career choices:
Dallas: … would we be having this discussion if Mrs. Palin had taken office? According to the family biography, doesn’t her husband serve as “First Father” to their young children?
Ruth Marcus: … As to what conversation we’d be having if Sarah Palin were vice president, can I just say I’m relieved that we’re not?
Yeah. Then she’d have to scratch her head about some commoner … a woman who went to a public university … actually achieving high office on her own merits, something Michelle Obama hasn’t attempted and Hillary Clinton, whatever her talents, can only claim with a major asterisk called Bill. A backwoods self-made Republican fundamentalist Christian power player whose husband was set to take on full childcare duties. Awkward.
Later in the chat:
Ruth Marcus: … The previous questioner made a different point about Todd and Sarah Palin, and their more “liberated” arrangement, which I think has some validity. I have to confess to feeling uneasy both ways. I was concerned about the degree to which Sarah Palin was exposing her pregnant daughter to such national attention at a difficult time, and also about her decision to take on the vice presidency and campaign with a special needs infant. But of course I’m uncomfortable to some extent in the other direction with Michelle Obama’s signals.
Sounds like Marcus needs to make up her mind which kind of parenting she wants to trash. Power women taking on power jobs and leaving the husbands with the kids, or women staying home with the kids so the husband can take the power job. It helps of course when the former’s a Republican and the latter’s a Democrat. Actually, it sounds a little like Marcus is one of those lefties who suddenly turned into an old-fashioned sexist the minute her crowd was outpaced by the right. But in fairness, it sounds more like Marcus would prefer the Obama kids were left to be raised by the hired help, so Marcus and the rest of American womanhood could be inspired by less motherhood, more careerism.
Here’s a thought. Maybe families, even in the public eye, should be able to make up their own minds about what is best for their children given their circumstances, without having to worry about whether they are satisfying some old bat’s agenda. Maybe a little of her own guilt is at play.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, and not only because of Michelle Obama. I’m in the midst of one of those periodic work-family recalibrations, balancing the needs of adolescent daughters, my husband’s busy job and my own overextended one.
I wonder who’ll win that one. Here’s another thought. How about respecting a woman’s choice to take on what should be seen as one of the noblest and most valuable roles anyone can fill in our society. Full-time parent, mother in this case, ensuring that her children get the best care, and the most love and attention possible, particularly in such trying circumstances as the national spotlight on the First Family. How about the message this sends as an affirmation of parenthood as a career choice. This could be a great learning moment for our notoriously self-centered society. You’d think with the nation’s First Couple-elect, the Obamas, making this choice, at last the lefties might be ready to receive it.
But it’s the wrong message. Address unknown.
Topics: husbands and wives, moronocy, sexism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:44 pm on Wednesday, November 26, 2008
2 Responses to “Return To Sender”
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November 27th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Marcus’s choice is very simple: Choosing a career over motherhood is to be encouraged and celebrated in a Democrat, but deplored in a Republican. It’s called having your cake and eating it too.
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Nicely written.