Many of the pictures I’ve seen of Sarah Palin, Republican vice presidential candidate, on the internet have been very close to cheesecake shots. In fact, I’ve seen already some air-brushed pin-ups of Palin in a thong bending over a football. I’ve also seen her hot-to-trot head shot baring her shoulders, and I’ve seen her up-do’s, the Vogue cover and family photos with the Alaskan landscape beautifully rolling itself out behind them. There’s no doubt she’s a beautiful woman. Very photogenic. Her family looks like a happy and healthy one. But pictures can be deceiving.
She’s being marketed as a perfect mother, qualified statesman and the dressed up version of those bikini-wearing, machine-gun toting babes who smile at us from websites like Gungirls.com. I’m wondering today, how that represents middle America exactly. Yes, it may be that Americans living in the Heartland want the right to tote guns and consider themselves pro-family, but how many middle American women would leave their three-month child with Downs syndrome home with Daddy (or nanny?) to campaign on the road…even for the vice presidency? Where are the family values there? I know we need women to represent in politics, but this seems to fly in the face of all the “family values” rhetoric that has been slung at working mothers for the past few decades…basically as a backlash against the women’s movement, and the idea that women can work and have a family.
Don’t get me wrong…I believe that women can work and have a family, but we need the rest of society to get in line with that idea, mainly so that women, like Sarah Palin, can spend the time with their newborn babies without having their careers penalized. I’m all for the ‘whole package’…husband, family, career…I think we can do it. But when we have groups of Americans (mainly conservatives) slandering women who work (whether they have to or not), and then Palin, who presumably represents these Americans, on the campaign trail with such a small baby…well, I have to ask, where are the critics now? Working women, like Sarah Palin, need support…both from their families and from institutions…in order to make the ‘whole package’ work.
We need government institutions and individuals alike to support paid maternity and paternity leave for all mothers and fathers of babies under one year. I think it’s wonderful that Palin is working and has the support of her husband and family (and maybe even a nanny, that remains to be seen), but not all American women have that kind of support. Not everyone has the family structure and support that Palin does.
Take me for instance.
My mother helps my sister to raise her son alone. Like Palin, when my sister found herself pregnant, but in a less than ideal situation (Dad wasn’t really around to help and wasn’t sure he wanted to participate), she decided to have the baby anyway. As a result, our whole family had to woman-up (as I call it). We rallied around her. We babysat while she finished her college degree. We took turns shuttling my nephew around town. After college my sister moved back in with our mother and went to work, and now my mother and our other sister help offset the outrageous cost of childcare. When I decided to get married and have children of my own, I had to take time away from my career as a college instructor and writer to stay home with my children. That also meant that there was one less babysitter for my sister. While I wanted to be close to the kids for the first year anyway, even if I hadn’t wanted to stay home for the first year, I had to because my family was centered around helping my sister…and rightly so since she needed the help more than I did. Our entire family makes do. I make enough at my job to necessitate working to help pay the bills (our mortgage being increasingly difficult to cover), but the childcare that we must pay for in order for me to work is just insane.
Nevertheless, you can see the difficulties there. You can call me a “whiner,” but I’m not whining. I think we are lucky, because I’ve heard from women in much more difficult and desperate situations.
I hope that when Palin’s riding that anti-abortion platform in the next couple of months that she thinks of the consequences of reversing Roe vs. Wade. How will all these women support their saved babies? With divorce rates settled around 50-60%, how will all these single mothers work and raise their children without affordable childcare, health benefits and government institutions that help single mothers and fathers afford food, shelter and utilities? I hope Palin thinks about all those dreaded taxes and government institutions that the country will need to help support the families that are created with such legislation.
I also wonder how good it is for Sarah Palin’s little child to have his mother campaigning at such a critical juncture in his life. Before we all start calling Palin “one of us” let’s think about what our lives are really like as mothers. How much is her life like ours? Clearly, she’s a politician first and foremost, and her other roles take a backseat. That’s fine with me…but how do social conservatives feel about that? I’m just wondering out loud.
Let’s not forget Emergency Rooms flooded with women who attempted illegal abortions.
Look at Nicaragua if you want to see the effects of making abortion illegal.
Your story is interesting, though not unusaul; however, your complaints sound unfounded.
Every woman is responsible for her own choices, and that includes the choice to have sex outside of marriage, which almost always leads to a child, sooner or later.
You are lucky to live near family, who are not so wrapped up in their own lives to help out with the grandchildren. Many, in the area I live, have no family close by, and those who do get little or no help…believing it is a parents job to raise thier own children.
As to the high costs of childcare… I hear this complaint often in the comunity where I live, and my only answer is “Do you have any idea what it takes to run a childcare?” I do. I ran one for five years. It is not just babysitting…and parents expect so much more than is realistic. For $50 a day(or less), they are asking someone to love and raise their child.
I now choose to stay home with my five children, and raise them to the glory of God, Most High.
Well, first and foremost Crystal…I think you miss my point entirely. The post is about Palin and I use myself and my family as an example of a family that DID make the choice to raise a baby under unexpected circumstances. I don’t get help from my family…I think I stated that pretty clearly in my blog. I think it’s wonderful that you stay home with your kids and I think that is an important and personal choice that all mothers have to make. Not all of us can afford to stay home and I often find that many of the women who stay home for moral reasons seem to overlook some very important things that money helps provide for…like health care, insurance, a well-rounded education, food, rent/mortgage etc. Not all of us can afford those things without two parents working. I know we can’t. I think it’s gravely irresponsible to forgo things like health insurance simply because you want to stay home with your children, and I’ve heard many women sing their own praises as martyrs for rejecting “materialism” to stay home with their children. I’m not driving a Mercedes, I just want to take my kids to the doctor. And truthfully, God doesn’t have anything to do with the issue of working or staying at home with your kids.
P.S. I don’t mind that you leave comments here, but this is obviously a progressive blog so if you want to participate, fine, but please do so with an open mind.
ANY FOLLOWING COMMENTS PLEASE ADDRESS TO THE BLOG ITSELF AND NOT OTHER COMMENTS OR I WILL NOT APPROVE YOUR COMMENT.
~Bleedingheartmama
It used to be the case that entire families helped raise the children. I don’t know what happened to those “family values” but i wish we could all live a different sort of life so we could all live closer and take care of each other. I think it is interesting to note that American families are making less now (with two parents working) than in the 1950’s with one parent working.
Here are some FACTS:
. . . . A 1975 Census report showed that only 8.9 percent of mortgage holders spent 35 percent or more of their income — including insurance, property taxes, and utilities — on housing.
The number of households spending half their income on housing — an amount that for most would be fiscal suicide — also has dramatically increased, from 10 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2006.
The cost of education has similarly spiked. Pre-school was largely non-existent in the 1970s, but today many families pencil in $1,000 a month for child care and early childhood education. On the other end, college costs have easily outpaced the cost of inflation. For example, the average bill for attending a four-year public college rose 52 percent from 2001 to 2007.
Health care costs have climbed steadily as well. According to the BLS, the average household spent 4.7 percent of its income on health care in 1984, and 5.7 percent in 2005.
In the end, the portion of an average family’s budget spent on fixed costs like housing has risen much faster than wages and inflation, while spending on discretionary items has declined. That means mortgages, more than lattes, are the source of middle-class anxiety, says economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a generally liberal think tank that focuses on the interests of low- and middle-income Americans.
The above is from:
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and chair of the Working Group on Extreme Inequality, an emerging coalition of religious, business, labor and civic groups concerned about the wealth gap. He is co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes.
Okay, i know this is a lot to swallow, Crystal…but the FACTS are important. So i’m going to direct, YOU, Crystal…to this study: http://www.cbpp.org/7-10-06inc.htm to check out what’s been going on since WWII. If you will just google some historical economic facts and comparisons, you will get a pretty clear picture of what is going on with US Families, and it’s not a pretty picture.
Anyway, speaking of complaining, Crystal, seems like you had a pretty cushy thing going with the childcare, and made enough to stay home and care for your own children. Good for you…what a good Christian! You got yours, and everyone who does not is somehow spiritually inferior to you? And I’ll bet you belong to the same crowd that want the women who made poor choices regarding sex out of wedlock to go ahead and have those babies BUT YOU WON’T SUPPORT INNOCENT LIFE!!!! Good luck with the heaven thing, Crystal!
I’ll tell you what, Crystal…I’ll be happy to support the most extreme pro-life platform, like PALIN’s, for instance, just as soon as she provides an economic plan to support the innocent lives she (and you) supposedly value. Oh, wait…you may NOT be your brother’s keeper, after all….
Okay, that last post happened at the same time that I posted. Melanie Formosa, you make some good points there. I can’t argue with that really. But let’s direct comments to the blog from now on. Let me reiterate:
ANY FOLLOWING COMMENTS PLEASE ADDRESS TO THE BLOG ITSELF AND NOT OTHER COMMENTS OR I WILL NOT APPROVE YOUR COMMENT.
As far as Palin being marketed as a perfect mother… yes, she is, but how easy is it to appear that way when you’re rich? The conservative agenda seems to suggest that people choose whether or not to be wealthy, which is an evil justification for conservatives not feeling any social responsibility toward their communities and people who may have less. I would have hoped that Palin’s experience as a mother would have made her sympathetic to those who struggle to raise children with fewer resources, but her record makes it clear that she does not. I have a disabled child too, and sometimes struggle to keep up with the unexpected bills. I can’t imagine what the myriad people with even fewer resources do. Do without? Are some children more valuable than others? With every scuttled comprehensive healthcare plan and every move to privatize education conservatives seem to be saying yes.
Obama was right. According to those people we’re all on our own. What a sad, scary America they want to build.
you read my mind! i can’t believe this person who does not want sex-ed in schools is ‘proud’ of her daughter. i am pro choice; but i sure do believe in birth control (which by the way i read Palin is in favor of?)..and I had sex for 13 years without getting pregnant because I was responsible. We have too many idiot celebrities setting terrible examples of getting pregnant at a young age or w/o being married … now the possible VP’s daughter is one of them. SIGH. i am so very depressed.
the really bad news is: this is probably going to work for the republican party. she is now the poster child for pro-life moms (and yes, wealthy, but you know what Jesus said: “if you’ve got it…flaunt it!”) AND oil companies! if a democrat with a pregnant UNMARRIED daughter was running, you know we would NEVER hear the end of it! and we are gonna have her in the white house extracting the oil from alaska (and yes the central california coast), while dick cheney is, i hear, tonight on his way to georgia….making sure the their oil is going to the “right” oil company. we need to be smart about this political campaign. myself, i am praying to GOD people are a lot smarter about who they vote for this time than they were in 2004…..not for McSame and his horrific sidekick!