More Feminist Than You

Republicans love a Work-A-Holic! Great for the bottom line. That's really why Palin was chosen.....and her Girl Parts really sticks it to Hillary...this is the Repubs big FU...to her.
What's more hard-working than a Mother with a Job outside the home? A migrant worker? A prisoner on the chain gang?

When you have children you have a choice, mostly. Stay home, mostly, and actually raise your own children. Or, work part-time and farm out the parenting to a (you hope) lovely and wonderful person who can be as good as you are at least for the time you are working or whatever. Or, work full-time and farm out 75% of parenting.
Let's complicate the matter even more. A special needs child. OK. 2 special needs children.
One infant with Downs and one pregnant teenager.
Say what you will, and it will all be said, one child is hard enough, 5 is a small baseball team.

So.....Repubs love to seduce you and guilt you with the image of the Perfect Mother....Stay At Home and raise children.....OH WAIT !!!!
That may or may not be the Repubs current image of the Perfect Mother anymore. The Perfect Mother works ! It's good for the economy because a working mother needs pantyhose, a working wardrobe, Starbucks, lunches out, and lots and lots of Guilt purchases for the children a working mother never gets to see often enough.
I have 3 kids. I know a lot about working and juggling.
I also worked all my life.....I'm working class. I only finished my degree at age 51 !

So...as a working mother, I put my family's needs before my own. I did not think about my own self-interest much, I certainly didn't think my employers needs came before my kids. Employers hate that!
I breast-fed. Oh sure you can pump and juggle, but at the end of the day, working full time with a breast-feeding infant is just short of crazy.
What she gonna do? Stump and Pump?

I became self-employed mostly because it was best for my family.
What choices does Sarah Palin have? Surely she isn't really raising her own children. Someone else is doing that. And that may be alright. But, it is a physical fact. She isn't doing much mothering.
Oh sure, I've heard it all. Quality over quantity is the buzz phrase right?
Deep down, most mothers know that's a lie.
There's a reason why women have these dilemmas. Estrogen. The Human Condition. We are made this way by selection, because the children who receive the most attention from their parents are the children who do best in life.
We don't ask how will Obama parent and run the country.....He's already got his priorities in order. He has a parent who will step in for all the essential parenting needed while he is saving the world from hard-working Repubs. Sarah Palin has a husband who clearly hasn't been around much. And doing what kind of parenting? He seems great at making the babies....not so much on actually raising the babies.

Money can "buy" a lot of things. They can make working mothers feel better about the fact they aren't raising their children. Someone else is. Maybe this is best for the kids....after all.

So, Sarah Palin is the New Perfect Mother. She has a lot of Kids. She has works full time. She is a pro-life Repub. She works at least 2 jobs. She's a she. She's Perfect....and now you will be held to this higher standard.
It isn't good enough anymore to be a mom. Now it's "normal" to have a job too. Another job, too.
Hurrah!!! Feminists Win!!! the social revolution.

And it's pretty funny now to see the Repubs go All Feminist after years of Ms.-Hating....Phyllis Schlafly anyone? Hardly anyone told women to get barefoot and pregnant more often than Phyllis, while she had 6 children and a law degree and a full-time career!! Talk about hypocrisy!!

But let's chat about a Pregnant Teenager.
Surely, Palin is a failure there! It is never a good idea for a teenager to get pregnant. Please click here and read an article that I'd have written, but for the fact I really do Have to work.....and I have no time to do all the research that backs up my/her argument.
And my position is that if you really care about your daughters and sons, you will not let them get pregnant too soon. A pregnant teenager is an admission of failure in the parenting department. It sentences a girl and often a young man to a lifetime of poverty and diminished dreams. And that hurts us all.
Someone who can't even pull off great parenting with money to play with, is a terrible example of parenting. It's not Ooopps!
But even this will "play" to those families that have had to endure a pregnant teenager. Kinda sad and funny, how such a human failure is now somehow magically qualified to be the Leader of the Free World!
The messiest part of the Palin family saga is that the poor teenager will have to play out her life in the public arena.
Even if Bristol wanted to get an abortion, how could she now? If she wanted to give the baby up for adoption, how can she? She is her mother's pawn. Bristol has to do what's best for her mother. Bristol doesn't get to make her own decision. What does Bristol want? We'll never really know.

Here in Pierce County, pregnancy rates for 15-17 yr. olds is on a downward trend.
It simply is a fact that, "...unintended pregnancy is associated with a number of detrimental risks and poor health outcomes......greater risk of infant mortality, and increased risk of the child being abused or neglected....."
If Palin was a competent mother and a competent manager she would decline the offer of Veep.
She already has a job or 5 or 6 or 7 !
Enough! Why is stretching a family past its limits a Good Thing? Is it good for the economy? A cancer cell and a pro-development capitalist have the same ideology. Growth for growth's sake.
But like I said, Repubs love a hard worker. Even if we all have to suffer for it.