Michelle Obama and "just a mom"

I heard one more comment today about Michelle Obama and her "mom in chief" statement - her plans to be focused more on the girls than anything else right now. So many people - democrats! - are talking about her either selling out, Barack's "poor" view of women for making her take this role, the bad example she's showing young girls by giving up her own practice to "just be a mom", the sexism that is still "clearly" given in this.

Really?

I thought we could move beyond all that. At least that's what I try and tell myself when I see my friends defending their decisions to "just be a mom" and not have to "work." When did it become mandatory for a mom to go outside her own home to find an outside job? Like child-rearing isn't the hardest job on earth? ESPECIALLY if you're doing it right.

Yes, Michelle is an accomplished woman with more than a small ability to go do good works and make a statement in the business, medical and/or political world. But to villify her as backwards or not enough of a feminist in making the decision to focus on her children for the time being?

I wonder if these will be the same people to villify her if she chose to start up a practice and then "ignored" her kids.

It is arrogance to think we can choose the best way for another family to raise their children, and the people who think Barack is making his wife stay home should say that to Michelle's face, and see whether she thinks Barack is "making" her do anything.

I didn't really like the movie "Mona Lisa Smile" except for one big point they made in it. Through the whole movie, Julia Roberts is challenging these smart young women to become more than just a trophy wife. For the most part, she succeeds in making several of them choose careers, not settle for a husband who treats them bad, etc. But one woman, who gets into law school, chooses to start a family and stay home with them. When Roberts tries to talk her into going one last time, thinking she's throwing her life away, the girl reminds her that she taught them they could be anything they wanted to be. This should include "just being a mom."

I worked in child care with low-income families for several years. Many, many of the parents - mom or dad - would give their right arm to not have to get an outside job, and instead focus on their children. Study after study comes out that says the child is best off if at least one parent can stay home with them. So why is it such a horrible, anti-feminist thing for Michelle to focus on being "Mom-in-Chief", as she says?

I think between being "just" a mom, and being a lawyer, she chose the more difficult one. I want to send her a congratulations for choosing her children. I would love it if more families chose this route, and would love it even more if more families were able to choose this route. Hopefully, we will soon live in a society where both parents don't have to get outside jobs. They can choose to get an outside job, or choose to stay home, but aren't forced into either.

And though this goes into the realm of judging another family's child rearing choices, can you imagine what those two girls are going to have to deal with for the next four to eight years? I moved a lot when I was little, and that is life changing for a child in itself. But to move into the biggest, brightest spotlight in the world, where you better do good in school lest your "F" on a spelling test be plastered on the Internet, where the choice of your family pet is front page news around the world, and you have a bunch of new black-suited "friends" whose job it is to keep you from neo-Nazis and KKK who want to kill you and your family? I commend Michelle for wanting to see them a bit settled in.

For that matter, I commend both Barack and Michelle - my guess is neither of them makes all the decisions, and it is unfair to think Michelle got "told" what to do. I just needed to hear one interview of hers to know this is not a woman who gets told to do anything.

Picture from the Daily Mail.

McCain/Palin hypocrisy and Why doesn't he support childhood abuse prevention?

Can the McCain camp's hypocrisy get any worse?

Obama referenced McCain's new claim to change Washington, and called it "putting lipstick on a pig."

"That's not change. That's just calling something that's the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig," Obama went on, and the crowd erupted in cheers. "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink, after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing."

McCain reaction: It's a "sexist" comment against Palin.

McCain a year ago about Hillary Clinton's health care plan:

"I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," McCain said of the plan last October as Clinton was running for the Democratic nomination.

Either both candidates made sexist remarks, or both candidates used an extremely common analogy. Please at least pick one.

The funnier part is that Obama says "pig" and the McCain camp assumed he's talking about Palin. He's certainly made the lipstick analogy many times before Palin came on the boat. I would more quickly reexamine the McCain camp's attitude about their VP candidate.

They are trying really, really hard to make Obama out to be a sexist, no matter how much they have to ignore pretty much an entire lifetime of McCain's antics and comments to do it. Need we be reminded of his opposition to a bill in support of equal pay for women? That American women, instead of the ability to demand equal pay, need "education and training."

Yes, someone in this campaign could be accused of sexism, but certainly not my candidate.

McCain's "a little less than totally truthful" ad attacks continue with the truly disgusting one released about "Education." Despite being endorsed by the NEA, and an incredibly strong record with education, the McCain campaign is trying to discredit that just by saying enough times "Obama" and "poor record on education" as many times as possible.

This latest attack takes Obama's support of preventing sexual abuse of children as "teaching sex ed to kindergartners."

I worked with young children (before they reached kindergarten!) for five years, and one of the things that was very important to teach them the difference about was "good touch, bad touch" and how to recognize predators.

McCain's assertion that they would know "sex ed" before reading, is somewhat true, but not because Obama is in support of abuse prevention. In actuality, there are far, far too many children who will be sexually abused before they learn to read, and they will know far too much, far too early. Children who know the basics of recognizing a predator are more likely to speak up, and prevent the abuse in the first place, or report an offender to prevent him from further abuse.

The abuse of children is a cause to act upon, not a cause to turn into political sliminess. What's more, in Alaska, the abuse rate is off the charts, and the abuse rate for Alaska Native children is even worse. It's reported that 1 in 3 Alaska Native women will be abused in their lifetime, but I think if you have worked at all with abused Alaska Native people, you could only imagine that was low-balling the real number. It is prevalent, it is decimating to our cultures, and we need every help available to get it to stop.

I'm sorry McCain disagrees with one of the options we have open to us for prevention. If we cannot agree on anything else this election, can we agree that anything and everything should be done to prevent the sexual abuse of children?

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