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.)

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: No ‘Bliss’ for Real Moms

Galt Niederhoffer wants all of you mommies to knock it off with your mommy propaganda, saying stuff like “motherhood is bliss” because, as she says on The Huffington Post, it’s not. In her post entitled, “The Bliss Myth: Cut the Crap Mommies,” Niederhoffer wrote:

“Why not acknowledge that frustration, boredom, guilt and ambivalence are universal, unavoidable facets of motherhood? Sharing will make us better and happier mothers, affording women the comfort of community and the benefit of shared information — the very tools we need to transcend motherhood’s challenges.”

Well, if Niederhoffer had been reading the Picket Fence Post, she would’ve never gotten the misguided notion that parenthood is bliss. Maybe I should e-mail her a few links to places where she can get a reality check on what real, non-blissed-out parenting is like here on Planet Earth.

Item #2: Family Meals Good for Parents Too

Speaking of real parenting . . . Slate’s Emily Bazelton tells us that while we’ve all heard about how absolutely fantastic and grounding it is for children to sit down with their parents for family meals each night — family-meal-eating kids are less likely to get into trouble, are more likely to feel closer to their family, get higher grades, become rocket scientists, etc. – it’s also good for parents too. Bazelton wrote:

“The research by lead author Jenet Jacob of Brigham Young University found that among 1,580 parents who worked at IBM, those who said their jobs interfered less with being home for dinner tended to feel greater personal success, and success in relationships with their spouses and their children. The working parents — both mothers and fathers — had all of these buoyant feelings if they made it home for dinner more regularly, even if they still worked long hours. They also felt more kindly toward their workplace.”

I know I’d certainly feel better if The Spouse were home more often for family meals, then I wouldn’t be the only one to develop a migraine when the kids say they utterly loathe what I’ve made for dinner (there’s always at least one protester per meal), then watch them sulk and, in at least the case of one child, literally throw up all over the kitchen table in order to avoid eating the baked chicken. Good times.

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Item #1: Cindy McCain’s Strength

While some in the media portray her harshly — depict her as talking Barbie doll — Cindy McCain has an inspiring life story. Profiled in a cover story in Newsweek, she addresses how difficult it has been to be married to someone who spent a large chunk of their marriage either deployed with the Navy someplace or serving in Washington, D.C. while she was home with four kids in Arizona, working at her father’s beer distributorship and running her charity for children.

An excerpt:

“Cindy has sometimes likened herself to a single mother; now 54, she has often been far away from her husband during difficult moments, including two of three miscarriages she suffered in the 1980s. Years later, her husband did not notice when she became addicted to painkillers, a habit, she says, brought on in part by the stress of politics. In 2004, he was on the other side of the country when she suffered a stroke that left her partly debilitated. On her own, she learned to walk again. Cindy says she doesn’t resent the time she spent without her husband. It was her choice to stay in Arizona while he rose in Washington, and she says she knew when she married him that he was always going to ‘put country first.’”

She also said she tries not to discuss that she had a son serving in Iraq during the presidential primaries because she was afraid it would put him in danger, while her husband’s statements on the Iraq war were being parsed by the media. Newsweeksaid that when her son was in Iraq (he’s back now and it’s unclear if he could be redeployed), McCain slept with her BlackBerry in her hand so she wouldn’t miss his call if he phoned.

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When I was ready to push and give birth to my third child, I was still in my bathroom, miles away from the hospital. I asked The Spouse to call 911 for an ambulance, but he insisted, Speed Racer he, that he could get me to the hospital faster than an ambulance could make it to our house. (Had I not been howling like an animal and doubled over at this point, I would’ve argued with him.)

While writhing around the passenger seat, I could feel the in-tact amniotic sac starting to protrude from my body. The wild-eyed Spouse urged me to hold the baby in and not push. (I would’ve laughed at that if I didn’t feel as though I was being impaled internally.) The ER staff eventually dragged me out of the car, cut off my maternity shorts in the parking lot and wheeled me into the ER where I frightened everyone in the waiting room with my shrieking. If anything, I thought afterwards, I had a fairly dramatic birth story on my hands.

But Francine Alfontent has me beat by a country mile.

Alfontent and her husband were on a New York City subway train Monday heading for the hospital when her daughter decided she wasn’t going to wait for any stinkin’ hospital to make her entrance into the world. So Alfontent, with the help of strangers, gave birth right there on the subway platform while trains were coming and going, and a crowd had gathered.

A guy who witnessed the birth told MSNBC: “Guys were coming up and they were saying, ‘Congratulations, Mom. You’re a very strong woman,’ and guys were giving the father high fives. It’s not every day that a woman has a baby on the subway.”

How about you, Picket Fence Post readers, any of you have an interesting childbirth story? It doesn’t have to be of the subway platform caliber. Feel free to share.

Image credit: MSNBC/Wendy Brown.

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?

Anyone who loves politics and journalism is in mourning today after hearing about the loss of Tim Russert, the moderator of the gold standard in political talk shows, Meet the Press.

I used Russert not only as a shining example to my journalism students of how to conduct well researched and balanced interviews (many students will attest that I was fond of having them watch Russert excerpts and told them, at length, about his use of white boards during the 2000 presidential election), but also used his show as a way to introduce my children to politics and how exciting it can be. I wrote about the loss on my other blog, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum.

Sunday morning talk shows — and political journalism — will never be the same.

UPDATE: I wrote in greater length about what we’ve lost with the passing of Tim Russert in this column.

Image credit: NBC News/Getty Images.

Item #1: ‘Mommy Porn’

That is not a typo. You have not inadvertently stumbled into one of THOSE sites, the ones that would get you fired if a supervisor happened to walk by and see it on your screen.

This item is entitled “Mommy Porn” because that’s the term Boston Globe columnist Penelope Trunk used in her blog, the Brazen Careerist, to describe the media’s fawning coverage of celebrity parents when they talk about how wonderful it is to balance work and parenthood. She says the media do not tell the truth about parenting and that the celebs who are interviewed likewise are tellers of tall tales.

An excerpt:

“So look, in the interest of truth-telling, I’m telling you this: people are not being honest about what it’s like to be with kids. People are scared to admit that they would rather be at work than with their kids, because work is easier than parenting . . . If I have to read about how much someone loves their kids one more time, I’m gonna puke. Because we all know that parents love their kids. It’s not interesting. It’s not helpful. It’s not even very relevant. For anyone.

. . . So with all the [celebrity] mommy porn, the media does a lot to make us think that work life balance is possible, in the same way anorexic bodies without treatment for anorexia is possible.

So there’s real damage from mommy porn. Everyone begins thinking that every woman should be parenting gracefully while working full time. This gives people the temerity to ask me, nearly every day: Who takes care of your kids?”

It’s a button-pushing post that is sparking debate around them there Internets.

Item #2: Obamas’ Canine Debate

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife Michelle debated on national television whether and under what conditions the Illinois senator would keep his promise to his two young daughters to get a dog at the end of his campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported.

While speaking on Good Morning America, Michelle Obama said she thinks their 9-year-old is responsible enough to walk a dog. The senator, however, was not convinced, saying, “But whether they’re going to be responsible . . . in the middle of the winter to go walk that dog . . .” His wife jumped in, saying, “We’re getting a dog.”

Sounds like an average, American couple to me, arguing over who’s going to be getting up on those bitterly cold nights to walk the dog. Of course if Obama wins the race, he’ll have staff who can walk the dog, so he and his two daughters would be off the hook.

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A large article — accompanied by, count ‘em, three color photos — in the New York Times makes the argument that walking around with dramatically, noticeably chipped nail polish is now in. But only if you’re under 35 years old. And only if you’re wearing over-priced designer clothing and toting stupidly expensive purses which hold your now much-lighter wallet.

What reasons does one of the nation’s largest newspapers give for making this declaration?

“Over the last few years . . . having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness,” wrote Melena Ryzik. “Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it’s now part of a deliberate look . . . It has been spotted uptown, in professional settings and gala parties, behind department store sales counters and even (gasp!) on beauty and fashion industry insiders.”

If letting your deep red nail polish chip to the point that it looks like you were splattered by blood is now chic — except for oldsters such as myself (the late 30+ crowd) — I’m throwing down the gauntlet. If the Times thinks it can declare something like this a bonafide fashion trend, then I, your intrepid blogger, have decided to jump into the deep end of the pool and declare some fashion trends of my own. . . starting with pony tails, sleekly done, 24/7. Not that pulling all your hair back into a pony tail says that you don’t care, it just tells the world that you have better things to do than spend 77 minutes on your hair every morning.

PJs at the school drop-off or school bus stop. Barely camouflaging your pajamas with a sweater or jacket and casually slipped-on sandals when seeing your children off to school indicates to the world that you were in bed too long.  What better way to get your neighbors to start wondering about whatever could have kept you in bed so late . . . other than garden variety sleep deprivation induced by living with small children.

Root beer or chocolate chip cookie dough lip balm as moisturizer. Who among us hasn’t used our children’s fun, flavorful lip balm on a dry patch or two? Why not make it a full-fledged trend and start regularly smoothing it on our elbows, knees and other parched areas so not only will they be soft and supple, but they’ll smell good too?

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