Palin and the issues--finally

In the wake of that painful ABC News interview, I'm glad to see feminists are shifting the discussion of Sarah Palin from the political-is-only-personal question of whether it's okay for a mother with an infant to pursue a high-powered job. Answer: Sure, although that's hardly a choice facing most mothers. For most of us, it's a question of exactly when the rent money is due and will my no-power job cover it once I send the baby to daycare.

Let's move on to the real issue: whether our society properly supports mothers so they can freely choose whether and when to take a paid job after giving birth. Oh yeah, and then there's the matter of whether to give birth, and Palin's cruel support for subjecting victims of incest or rape to forced childbirth.

That's just the shift Women Against Sarah Palin are pushing. And of course the trusty Katha Pollitt.

The shards of the glass ceiling still cut

Judith Warner’s New York Times column gets it dead-on about Sarah Palin and the utterly condescending way that women politicians have been talked about lately. As she said, ”Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?... Having Sarah Palin put forth as the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate is just about as respectful a gesture toward women as was John McCain’s suggestion, last month, that his wife participate in a topless beauty contest.”

I think they find her acceptably 'real' because Palin’s not intimidating, and makes it clear that she’s subordinate to a great man. That’s the worst thing a woman can be in this world, isn’t it? Intimidating, which appears to be synonymous with competent. It’s the kiss of death, personally and politically.
But shouldn’t a woman who is prepared to be commander in chief be intimidating?

Warner goes wrong in only one place: ”Her presence inspires national commentary on breast-pumping and babysitting rather than health care reform and social security,” Warner writes, as if breast-pumping and babysitting were fluff with nothing to do with issues of national importance. But speaking of serious national policy issues like Social Security, who does Warner think will pay for the benefits of the next generation of retirees? The children being cared for by breast-pumpers like Palin.

The assumption that the need to breast-pump and find babysitters (or bring your kids to work with you) inherently make you an unintimidating lightweight is just the kind of sexist condescension Warner is inveighing against. Why can’t you be a highly effective worker or even a powerful, intimidating power broker and pump breast milk? (Once upon a time, millennia ago, the ability to bring forth life and nurture it at the breast was the very model of intimidating power.)

Isn’t it time we had a conversation about these assumptions? And about the need to revise our workplaces to accommodate powerful, intimidating—or ordinary and not so intimidating—people who breast-pump? And to realize that these people are not obscure exceptions to the norm, but, potentially, half the workforce?

In fairness, what Warner’s getting at is presumably not breast-pumping and childcare per se, but the stupid way they’re being discussed, as purely private matters (and thus titillating), rather than as aspects of fundamental issues—namely how we support the primary caregivers of our next generation—that our society needs to come to terms with institutionally.

The stupidity of the discussion of Palin’s family situation is a symptom of what Warner calls the “dogged allegiance to up-by-your-bootstraps individualism—an individualism exemplified by Palin, the frontierswoman who somehow has managed to 'balance' five children and her political career with no need for support.” As Warner says, this individualism “is leading to a culture-wide crack-up.” Perhaps that’s because it was always a hypocritical individualism, dependent on the unpaid, nonindividualistic caregiving of women. Here’s to its rapid demise.

Blackberries, Breast pumps, and Oval Offices

As different as Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin are from each other—one tough, smart, cosmopolitan, and centrist, the other naïve, shallow (in the words of a high school classmate), provincial (only once has she left the country), and far-right, their candidacies provoke similar emotions in me. A moment of elation that a woman has come so far, followed quickly by dismay. Not this woman.

I was delighted to read that Palin regularly brings her children to work, has a stay-at-home husband (at least at the moment), has “discreetly” nursed her infant in meetings, and answered a question about whether she’s a night or morning person by mentioning putting down her Blackberry to pump breastmilk.

Of course she can get away with all this because she also hunts animals from airplanes. So it always is—the first woman allowed in the door has to out-man the guys to get in the door (call it the Maggie Thatcher syndrome). And it doesn’t hurt that she plays the religion card while enacting her Madonna and child tableau.

I’m ready to defend her against critics who cluck their tongues at her for returning to work a few days after having given birth. A woman has to do what she has to do to make it in this unforgiving work world, and no one would think twice if a father went back to work a few days after his wife gave birth (indeed, that’s the norm). Certainly, after having done the tremendous labor of giving birth a woman is exhausted and depleted in a unique way, and she shouldn’t have to do anything but lie in bed and nurse. But doing otherwise harms no one but herself. I’m sure Palin had terrific care for her infant.

Indeed, it appears she brought her child with her. And it’s here that Palin’s story gives glimpses of a different world and a different conversation. We shouldn’t just be having a conversation about whether and when a mother should return to “work.” We should be redefining work itself. If mothers had the right and the financial supports to not return to paid jobs for a reasonable time after giving birth, workplaces and work hours were far more flexible, and parents had the right to part-time work, perhaps the occasional mother who loved her job might choose to return to work shortly after giving birth, bringing her infant with her and working as many or as few hours as she felt able. In short, work should be redefined so that it no longer is incompatible with caregiving, and the normal worker should be redefined as someone who likely is the primary caregiver to someone.

For all that Palin’s story offers a glimpse of these possibilities if we look for them, in truth she is a single, privileged exception that only proves the rule. What we need is a movement to demand these privileges as rights and commonplace necessities.