Picket Fence Post

During last night’s vice presidential debate a number of references were made to the candidates’ parenthood.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a self-described pitbull of a hockey mom, said that if you want to gauge how people are feeling about the economy, just go to a kids’ soccer game, talk to the parents and you’ll hear expressions of fear and worry about the future. She also said that, if elected, she’d bring her Main Streeter, average mom point of view to Washington.

Meanwhile, Senator Joe Biden said he understands all too well what it’s like to be a single dad who sits around the kitchen table wondering how he’s going to take care of his kids and pay for all their expenses. In an emotional moment, he choked up recalling the fatal accident that took the lives of his first wife and his daughter, and sent his two sons to the hospital. The Wall Street Journal’s The Juggle blogused Biden’s moment as a jumping off point to discuss whether single dads get enough credit for their parenting.

Meanwhile, both candidates, as well as Senator John McCain, have sons serving in Iraq, making the discussion of the war in Iraq a very personal one as well as a policy-oriented exercise.

My favorite moment:The post-debate photo op, where the Palin and Biden families converged on stage. It was the most genuine, real moment of the whole event. However as I watched Palin’s daughter Piper, 7, walk around holding her infant brother Trig, I was holding my breath because it didn’t look like she had a solid hold on him. Just like when Mama Palin gave her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, I was sure Piper was going to drop her brother.

Get my take on the overall debate performances in my Suburban Mom’s Political Fix.

Image credit: New York Times/James Estrin.

It’s not often that I read a story in the sports pages of the newspaper that involve parenting. At least not in a positive way. But when I read a New York Times piece on the Arizona Cardinals’ quarterback Kurt Warner, father of seven (ages 2-16), and how he and his wife raise their kids, I was touched and inspired. Among the things about the Warner family that moved me:

When the family goes out to dinner, the children vote on for which other table they should foot the bill. Anonymously. The diners never find out that the QB and his family singled them out for their generosity.

The family has a set of eight rules for their children. Among the Warner family rules: Share your favorite part of your day with one another at dinner, spend one hour at an art museum while on the road with Dad at a game or traveling, notice the eye color of your waiter or waitress and hold hands with a sibling for 10 minutes if you can’t get along.

That last item, while I can’t see it working in my particular household (at least not without bloodshed, separate corners seems to work best for us, actually, separate counties) I think it’s sweet. In fact, the whole Warner family sounds so sweet that my teeth hurt. But in a good way.

Image credit: Andrew Grant/New York Times.

Soccer mom.

Security mom.

Alpha mom.

NASCAR dad. (One of the few father-oriented voting bloc monikers)

Mortgage mom.

Military mom.

Hockey mom.

Now, in today’s New York Times, I stumbled upon yet another entry in the let’s-define-moms-who-vote-in-some-quirky-way that I’d never seen before: Wal-Mart mom.

Why the attempt to label mom voting blocs? “Married women and women with children vote in higher proportions than single women,” an expert on women and politics told NBC this spring. “. . . Whatever affects their families, whether [it] is their children or their spouses or their own aging parents, family issues are of central importance.”

I don’t necessarily agree. Not every mom I know votes on the same issues. Not every mother votes on family issues. Or on education policy.

Believe it or not, it’s been my experience that women base their votes on all kinds of different issues, reflecting their individual values and priorities. And, like dads, they don’t vote in lockstep. Not all the soccer moms I know, for example, vote for the same people.

I’m with blogger and mom of three Erika Jurney who told NBC: “The people who place value on labels like ’security moms’ are pollsters and politicians, but in real life people are multi-dimensional and these tight labels are meaningless.”

Item #1: School Supply Woes in NYC

When it comes to crazy-long school supply lists, apparently my kids’ public schools aren’t the only ones doling them out. The New York Times ran a page one piece about schools in the New York area and elsewhere which are asking parents to shell out big bucks for supplies, including one mom who had ”10 boxes of baby wipes” on her kindergartener’s list.

“. . . [A]ccording to the New York State School Boards Association, supplies run an average of $100 for high school students and $60 for middle schoolers,” the paper reported. In some school districts, the school supply lists have grown so large that school boards have stepped in and placed caps on how much families should be asked to spend:

“In the suburbs of Rochester, the Gates Chilli Central School District last year capped the amount that parents were expected to spend on supplies at $10 a child, adding $100,000 to the budget to make up the difference. The sprawling Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Ky., set the limit this fall of $120 a child for the year, including field trips.”

Item #2: How Palin Does It

Answer (according to press reports): Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has a husband named Todd. Who’s the father of their five kids. Who works part-time. And takes care of the children (all but the baby and the eldest – who’s deploying to Iraq this month – are in school all day). The Palin family, you see, works together. Just like the Obama family, only no one’s asking Barack Obama how he’s managing to parent his two school-aged daughters while he’s on the campaign trail. So let’s back off the Palin-is-a-bad-mom garbage, why don’t we. It’s an unbecomingly sexist attack. ‘Nuf said.

Item #3: ‘Hockey Mom’ Humor

The line of the night, as Sarah Palin accepted the Republican’s VP nomination: “You know [what] they say [is] the difference between a hockey mom and a pit-bull? [*pause*] Lipstick.”

Palin’s speech — including the lipstick comment, at 8:50 – can be found here.

At 44, she’s the first female governor of Alaska.

She used to be a TV sports reporter.

She played girls basketball and is into outdoorsy kinds of things, like hunting.

She has five kids, including a 4-month-old with Down Syndrome.

She calls herself a “hockey mom.”

And today, GOP presidential nominee John McCain picked her, Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential running mate.

It will be interesting to see how much her motherhood and her baby play into the media coverage of her selection. Barack Obama has two little girls — ages 7 and 10 — but his wife and his mother-in-law are taking care of them while he’s out on the campaign trail. Will Palin’s husband garner the type of coverage Michelle Obama gets when it comes to issues of balancing work and family? This, my friends, is going to be very, very interesting.

Image credit: Daylife/AP/Al Grillo.

Anyone catch the Obama girls during Monday night’s Democratic convention? Seven-year-old Sasha and 10-year-old Malia were adorable and a bit precocious. As they came onto the stage to hug their mother Michelle after she told a national audience that the Obama family is just like anyone else’s, the girls turned toward a creepy Orwellian TV screen with their father’s face on it. They offered Barack their high-pitched greetings and awkwardly interrupted his own political pitch.

I always love it when kids drag their politician parents off-message when the media’s watching. In those moments we get to see a glimpse of the pols’ authentic selves, the part that remains unpolished by political consultants. Meanwhile we mere mortal parents are interrupted and pulled off-message on a daily basis — on the phone, during attempts to discuss something at the dinner table – although not while we’re in front of a television audience.

Fans of AMC’s critically acclaimed early 1960s drama Mad Men have no doubt noticed that folks tended to raise their children a tad bit differently when John F. Kennedy was the president than people do now. Not has a child on Mad Men repeatedly been shown fixing drinks for adults, but parents’ friends have slapped misbehaving youth and a pregnant woman openly drank, smoked and consumed caffeinated coffee, all considered no-no’s for today’s gestating ladies.

The most recent Mad Men episode was chock-full of examples of how much parenting has changed:

By watching the exploits of lead characters Don and Betty Draper and their grade-school-aged kids, Sally and Bobby, viewers saw Betty demand that Don spank their son in order to teach the boy right from wrong, particularly after he’d repeatedly lied to his mother. When Don refused to do so — instead disciplined Bobby by saying, “Mommy says you broke the hi-fi. I believe her. Don’t do it again.” and then telling him to go bed – Betty challenged Don, asking him if he thought he’d be the man he is if his father hadn’t spanked him.

Later in the episode, Don had to take Sally to work with him, where the girl received . . . an education. (See video here.)

But, ironically, the recent Mad Men show also dramatized examples of how parenting hasn’t changed completely, despite the passage of 40 years:

Bobby and Sally walked in on Don and Betty when they were in bed one morning as the parents were at the very beginning of gettin’ busy (Don was on top of Betty, but under the sheets). Don ordered the kids out of the room as they asked what was going on. ”We’re . . . (*pause*) sleeping,” Don said gruffly.

During another fight about Don’s “style” of discipline, Betty told her husband that she was tired of being trapped at home all day, “outnumbered” by the kids, only to have him come home and be “the hero.” (The “hero” thing happens at our house all the time.)

FYI: If you’re a Mad Men fan, please join me every Monday on my Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum blog where I discuss the latest episode and all things Draper.

Apparently when a mom and a dad share the child-rearing workload, it’s a major news story. At least according to the New York Times.

The cover story of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine – entitled, “Will Dad Ever Do His Share” (not a very nice topic for Father’s Day weekend) – was downright depressing. While the piece did feature couples who participate in “the equal-parenting movement” (we need a movement, with an official name and, I suppose, name tags and literature, to get parents to do their jobs?), it also included some dire statistics, . . . dire if you’re a mother raising young kids that is.

Among the upsetting stats: Women handle more child care duties in their households than men by a margin of nearly five to one. Even if you remove the whole employment factor and look at two-income families, women still spend 11 hours a week caring for the couple’s children, to men’s three hours. Sampson Lee Blair, a professor of sociology specializing in families, told the Times, “The most striking part is that none of this is all that different, in terms of ratio, from 90 years ago.”

 So, I guess it IS news when mothers and fathers share the burdens (and yes, of course, the JOYS, but no one complains about the joys) of child-rearing.

In my household, because I work from home, I bear the brunt of the responsibility for doctors’ appointments and trucking kids to activities, although The Spouse has coached several of the kids’ teams and makes it to the practices and games. When The Spouse is home (and not commuting during dinner time as he usually does) he will make or help make dinner, particularly if he’s trying to butter me up so he can go play basketball with the guys. He does the laundry and has almost always been in charge of making sure the kids have been bathed at night. If he hasn’t left for work before the kids have gone to school in the mornings, we tag-team breakfast duty and school lunch-making. I have precious little about which to complain regarding the ratio of child-rearing work The Spouse does, except when he has a string of really late nights, misses a bunch of meals and I get cranky about it.

What about in your household? Do both parents share the work or is Mom responsible for a disproportionate amount of the work? And if Mom does most of the child-rearing is it because she wants to or because she thinks she does it “better” than Dad?