| Giftie Etcetera

Sunday, September 7, 2008

One of the bloggers that I read regularly wrote an article about Palin, the GOP VP nominee, having here family pass around her 4-month-old among family members at an evening speech in a stadium full of people. (I am including a link to the whole article, for those interested, but I don't necessarily agree with the author. I just thought she brought up an interesting question.)

WorkItMom Blog

I'm a working mom. Generally, I do not bring Ander to work events, including any presentations that I make. On the other hand, running for vice-president is historical, exciting, and children are expected at the events. I try not to judge other parents, although I must admit that bad parenting is a reason I won't respect someone. But what Palin did - bringing a baby to a political event - is not what I would consider bad parenting; it's just a choice that some think she shouldn't have made. I wonder, though, would I have made the same choice?

Except for being liberal (which is the reason I won't be voting for her), Sarah Palin reminds me of myself. She is articulate and comfortable with public speaking. She takes her kid with her to work sometimes. (I like that, even if I'm unsure of whether I would have taken my own baby to the stadium. But I must admit, at four months, Ander would have slept through anything. So if only family would have held him, I probably would have.) She values giving back to society (even if what she gives back is a conservative agenda that I mostly disagree with). She even looks sort of like me.

As a working mom, I often wonder if others judge me when I drop off Ander at daycare. What would that be like if I were a VP candidate? Will a working mother candidate result in more understanding of working moms? Or will watching her make more people, including the blogger above who is a working mother herself, more critical?

I hope that, if anything comes of this VP run, it's that Sarah Palin shows the world that you can work and be a good mother. But if people are judging her for bringing the kids to work, and if we assume that others a judging her for leaving the kids at home in childcare, can she really succeed at showing how healthy and happy kids can be if you balance both choices?

Etcetera.

4 comments:

Frog said...

I don't fault her for bringing her 4 month old. I agree that this is an important time for her and can understand what she did. I'm not sure if I would have brought my 4 month old, but it is possible that I might have.

My problem with her was the constant Obama bashing. I'm not an Obama supporter and I thought she did it too much!

Anonymous said...

Palin says she values giving back to families/society, but her actions tell a different story. This is a woman that was interested in banning books at her library. Who does not support equal rights for gays/lesbians. Who wants to drill in ANWAR and does not believe human actions contribute to global warming. So the society she wants to give us is uninformed, discriminatory, full of pollution and free of wildlife protection. As far as I'm concerned, she can keep those values to herself.

As for her kid being at the stadium, who cares. It's her choice as a parent and really no one else's business. Shockingly predictable that no one ever raises this question about the male candidates. Last time I recall these types of comments regarding a parent/child's behavior during a campaign it was in reference to Theresa Heinz Kerry pulling Edward's kid's thumb out of his mouth prior to a photo. Give me a break! - D

Anonymous said...

I don't understand how anyone could vote for Obama (liberal or not) given his stance on full-term abortions and botched abortions. It is pure EVIL!

Beorn said...

The willful ignorance of anti-abortion zealots never ceases to be astounding to me. As I once pointed out in another comment here, no sane person thinks that abortion is desirable, and that includes abortion rights advocates. But if anti-abortion rights advocates actually cared as much for human life as they claim to, they'd be fighting tooth-and-nail to reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancies by methods other than pie-in-the-sky abstinence advocacy and promise ring scams. And they'd also be just as vehemently anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-environment, pro-third-world-development, and anti-child-exploitation.

The fact that few, if any, of these issues resonate with folks who call Obama "pure evil" because of his pro-abortion rights stance, really puts the lie to their little saint act. These folks care about human life about as deeply as they care about all of the people that they are willing to trample on in their crazy stampede to insure that everyone lives a life that they approve of--which is to say, they don't care about it a whit.

Not to worry though. As long as you're an anonymous authoritarian, you can avoid the social repercussions of advocating that your personal beliefs be forced on all others. Right?