Picket Fence Post

Seven-year-old Piper Palin — who’s the same age as Sasha Obama — provided one of those moments last night at the Republican convention that makes parents like me, the mother of a 7-year-old boy, simultaneously laugh and cringe.

While Sasha Obama stole some of her mother Michelle’s thunder at the Democratic convention last week when she took the microphone and bellowed greetings to her dad via satellite TV, Piper Palin was sitting in the audience near her dad Todd last night and was holding her baby brother during her mom’s speech. Then Piper “groomed” her little bro in a moment only a parent of another little kid could love. ( Video clip here.)

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.”

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As I continued to marvel at the surprising GOP vice presidential selection, I fired off a column about my impressions of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s first national speech to the folks at Mommy Track’d in a piece entitled, “McCain & The Working Mom.”

Additionally, I wrote an essay about the difficulties working women have when they are asked to speak at national political conventions when their spouses are running for president, called, “Michelle As First Lady: General Election Edition.”

Image credit: Associated Press/Kiichiro Sato.

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.

Item #1: HS ‘Pregnancy Pact’

I must admit, a question mark lingers over my head in a cartoonish balloon when it comes to this story. I’m sure you’ve heard about it if you listen to talk radio or watch cable chattering head shows (which I’ll be watching tonight while The Girl commandeers the “good” TV to watch Camp Rock on the Disney Channel). A large group of teens, all ages 16 and under, from Gloucester, Mass. made a pact to all get pregnant at around the same time so they’d all become moms at the same time. And 17 are pregnant. The story was featured in Time Magazine and makes my heart sick on so many different levels. Why would girls be focused on procreating instead of going to college or pursuing a career? (Don’t blame Juno as they made the pact before the charming, independent film about the teen who got pregnant by accident and gave her baby up for adoption, was released.)

The magazine reports:

“The girls who made the pregnancy pact — some of whom, according to [Gloucester High School Principal Joseph] Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers — declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. ‘They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,’ Ireland says. ‘I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.’”

Item #2: Michelle Obama, Target Customer

US Weekly, which usually trafficks in sensational celeb-related garbage reporting, features Barack and Michelle Obama on its cover this week bearing the headline, “Why Barack Loves Her.” The story is largely a pro-Obama puff piece but has a number of interesting mom-related tidbits of info. “. . . [W]hen not on the road, the mom [Michelle Obama] can be seen in her Chicago neighborhood driving to Target for toilet paper and buying clothing for her girls at The Gap and Limited Too.”

The Obamas had difficulty getting pregnant, according to Us, and now are hands-on parents, when they’re home with the 6- and 10-year-old girls, a challenge these days for their presidential nominee father who’s on the road most of the time. Us said: “With the help of a housekeeper but no nanny, Michelle certainly has found her smart-mom shortcuts: She relies on headbands for bad-hair days, claims dessert at school potlucks so she can buy a pie and, until recently, packed Oscar Mayer Lunchables and juice boxes into her kids’ lunches. (She has now cut out processed food, after her pediatrician worried her oldest daughter ‘was tipping the scale,’ as she puts it.)”

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