I know that people are talking about how much they admire Gov. Palin on a personal level and I’m not talking about just evangelicals agog that she’s “walking the talk” about abortion. I hear people talking about her being a supermom that balances a big family with a big job.
I call BS.
I don’t admire her choices at all. Not in the least.
And, I don’t think I’m being sexist because I wouldn’t admire such choices in a man.
It’s one thing to have a high powered job and a big family if one of the parents is a “stay at home” parent. That’s not this situation. Gov. Palin’s husband has a full time job as a steelworker and then does commercial fishing in the summers.
Even if he’s the one who stays with the kids more than she does, how great a parent is she really? From my teaching days at a private school, I knew many kids who had a parent with high power and income jobs, mostly fathers.
Sure, those fathers provided for the kids in every way, including private school and cars and wardrobes.
But being a parent isn’t about money and power and glamour. It’s about time. Time spent with the kids is critical and workaholic parents don’t have the time to be super-parents.
Yes, I admire women who try to “have it all,” women who work and nuture run through our society nowadays, but most of those “have it all” women aren’t making that choice — they are forced into that precarious balancing act because they are single mothers.
I’m not talking about Gov. Palin’s youngest child, Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome. Making the choice to get pregnant at age 44 when you already have four kids is, to me, nuts. Just crazy. I can’t imagine it. But, I’m no judge of that and having a fifth child was Gov. Palin’s choice to make and not mine. Deciding to have a fifth child while trying to be the governor of a state, I think is a place where I can start to make a judgment because it’s a public choice when the parent is in the public eye by the parent’s choice. I think it’s crazy. Deciding to carry to term a special needs fifth child while trying to run a state is to me getting into the territory of very questionable judgment.
Gov. Palin has really tried hard to be a good mom. She brings her youngest two to the office with her. Good for her. That, I admire.
But, something’s gotta give. And, it did. What “gave” was Bristol. A 17 year old that had unprotected sex with the local high school jock who did not want children or marriage. I know how that goes. My parents, both working, had four children. My girlfriend and I married after she became pregnant. I know all about young marriages and being a child raising children. I don’t think my ex-wife and I did too badly, even though we both had to work. However, neither of us tried to do all this in the public eye of Washington, D.C., while Mom ran for vice president of the U.S.
At some point, it’s only being a grown up to recognize that you really can’t have it all. Compromises have to be made. The more children you have and the higher profile the parents’ jobs and the more compromises have to be made until you don’t have it all after all. Even the most brilliant and energetic have some limits.
Not only do I think Gov. Palin made a foolhardy choice, I also don’t admire her blaming it all on God. My own take is that hormones and unthinking irresponsibility had much more to do with the situation than God, unless you’ve reduced the notion of the Almighty Creator to mere random luck.
Something about the abstinence only, take the kids to church as much as possible parenting choice made by Gov. Palin didn’t work the way it was supposed to. Yes, I can relate, but that doesn’t make it a good choice.
Something about the decision making of the Gov. in her own life doesn’t add up for me when she decided to have Trig and the fact that she kept it a secret from even her own children for so long tells me that she’s not so sure about the “rightness” of the decision even within her own family.
And so, seriously, Sarah, if your appeal is your biography, I’ve got serious questions about your ability to lead the country and the United States Senate. I wonder what kind of ambassador you’ll make to countries like India and China and some African nations where birth rates are a big problem. Seriously, Sarah, it must be fun to come from out of nowhere to the pinnacle of fame and get to play in the big leagues and be sarcastic to wild applause, but is this really the best choice you could make for your family, for your party and for your country? Seriously, Sarah, you ambitious little slut puppy, you should have just said “NO!”.
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As a woman and a mother, I can say with absolute surety and without equivocation that while you develop mad skills, yo, as a mother, that it doesn’t qualify you for the presidency.
Being 35 years of age, a natural born citizen or a citizen at the time of the constitutional writing (and that would be one old hag), and having lived in the country for the last 14 years – THAT qualifies you.
That’s right dude! I read the constitution. Just today I read it to a bunch of 8 YOs. They said the language was too hard, so I broke it down for them Founding Father style. They loved the parts about pardoning offensive behavior and throwing parties for visiting dignitaries.
DOH! You see there? Mommy brain. We were talking about the VEEP. But it stands to reason that those minimum qualifications are still in place. Plus, you can’t have been president for more than two terms and therefore ineligible, though I can’t imagine that you’d go from Prez to Veep. And now I digress.
(Also, the PTA/O is overrated and I only joined just this year so that I could get a discounted school t-shirt after I spilled coffee on myself at registration.)
The big news now, of course, is that she owns the word ‘lipstick,’ and no one else can use it anymore.
Same old story, though. The conservatives complain about how liberals are all just ‘professional victims,’ then just make shit up so they can complain how they’re being mistreated.