Picket Fence Post

There they go again.

Savaging a working mother of small children for her choices instead of just trying to understand her decisions and realize that each family and each woman is very, very different.

This time it’s GOP VP nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a mother of five, who’s in the cross-hairs. She had a baby in April. And returned to work days after giving birth. Before the birth, Palin reportedly got on an airplane while her amniotic fluid was leaking after consulting with her doctor. Now, because she went back to work, because she boarded that plane and because she’s got a baby and is running for vice president, people are all over her. Calling her a bad mom and questioning her competency, particularly because her 4-month-old has Down Syndrome. (And I’m not even talkin’ about Palin’s policy positions, qualifications or her teenage daughter’s private situation which even her opponent says should be kept out of the political arena. Let’s leave those items aside and focus on the attacks on her bio.)

Today’s New York Times has a page one story about what they coyly dubbed, “The Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition:”

“. . . [T]his time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending [Palin], while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.”

The article continued:

“In interviews, many women, citing their own difficulties with less demanding jobs, said it would be impossible for Ms. Palin to succeed both at motherhood and in the nation’s second-highest elected position at once . . . Many women expressed incredulity — some of it polite, some angry — that Ms. Palin would pursue the vice presidency given her younger son’s age and condition.”

Yet several months ago, another high-profile political woman — this time a Democrat — drew brutal criticism which labeled her an anti-feminist for scaling back her work so she could campaign for her husband and care for their two young daughters. In calling Michelle Obama a bad example for today’s girls, a Salon.com  writer said, “She traded in her solid gold resume, high-octane talent and role as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals to be a professional wife and hostess.”

So Palin’s a bad, evil mother for going back to work after having a baby and for acting as though she can have it all. And Obama’s a bad, evil mother for setting a bad example for “our daughters” by taking a hiatus from her work so she can care for her daughters and help her husband campaign for the presidency, acting as though she can’t have it all.

This reminds me of a circular firing squad. Everyone winds up dead or wounded. If female critics take out all the political working moms with small children – no matter their work/motherhood choices – who’s going to be left to try to break that glass ceiling? The political men with small children who NEVER face such criticism about who’s going to take care of their young children and their babies? Lest we forget, when this presidential election began in earnest last year, five presidential candidates – all males — had children under the age of 10. No one was calling those men bad fathers for running for office.

I’ve got a solution. How ’bout you make your own, personal and career decisions. I’ll make mine. Palin and Obama will make theirs. And we’ll just agree that we don’t all see eye-to-eye on work and parenthood, that we all stand alone in our own shoes. If the mothers who are so quick to attack one another’s choices instead channeled their energies into something other than insulting one another, think of all the time that’d be left to do something more constructive.