Sarah Palin and the Double Standard

[Valerie Molinski]

Sarah Palin and the Double Standard
Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Should a mother with five children, one of them a pregnant teen and another an infant with special needs, be running for vice president?

The question is being much debated, in newspaper stories and columns, on blogs and Web sites, and, yes, around kitchen tables across the country.

No would be asking these questions if she were a man.

No one asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger should run for governor because he has four children. They looked at Maria, his wonderful wife, and said, what a beautiful family.

A mother doesn’t get the same treatment. This is how the double standard works.

A father is not a mother,â€

[dl meckes]

Every time we have these discussions, what we are really saying is that fathers have no value.

I understand that Dr. Phil has a catch-phrase of "How's that working out for you?"

[Stephen Calhoun]

Interestingly, on Washington Journal (C-SPAN) this week, the only callers I heard who have questioned Palin's choice about work/family balance have been women.

Is the double standard resolved by dissolving the biological difference between the mother and the father?

[dl meckes]

You can't make biology disappear.

You can make fathers disappear.

Fathers are merely donors or bread winners.

Biden's choice was noble and heroic. Ask anyone.

Palin's choice is horrible. Ask anyone.

And the GOP had to have a couple of men remind us of that because their spokeswomen were getting dolled up for the convention. And I mean that literally.

.

[Jerry Ritcey]

I don't think it makes a whit of difference how many kids one has as a qualification for office, or a disqualification. What I find worrisome is that as mayor of Wasilla, she brought up the idea of banning books she didn't like, then fired the town librarian. She later had to backpedal that idea when he town objected to it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Pali ... s090208-18)

[Ryan Salo]

"Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,â€

[sharon kinsella]

No - Farenheit 451.

Read it and weep.

[Valerie Molinski]

[quote="Ryan Salo"]"Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,â€

[Lynn Farris]

I think the thing that hit me was who is taking care of the kids. We have Obama saying that his wife couldn't have hit the campaign trail if it hadn't been for his in-laws watching the children.

Palin's husband is a commercial fisherman. They are normally gone long periods at a stretch. She has also said he works on the North Slope in the oil fields. They are gone for long periods. So he doesn't appear to be taking care of the children. They chose to have 5 children. The last one is special needs which takes even more work than normal children. We hear she took 3 days off when she had the baby which is amazingly fast return to work. Even more amazing was we hear after her water broke, she delivered a speech to the Govenor's convention then boarded a plane for Alaska to have her baby. It was my impression that babies come faster and faster each time - so that seems incredible.

It doesn't appear that grandparents are helping. They had trouble finding her parents when she got the VP nod. We haven't heard about Nannygate (ala Bill Clinton's problems with Attorney Generals). So I think one legitimately wonders about the kids.

BTW, I don't think this is a double standard. I think if Chelsea Clinton would have gotten pregnant, all we would have heard from the Far Right would have been what bad parents Bill and Hillary were. JMHO. Thank God Chelsea turned out fine.

I feel very bad for the daughter. This is tough enough without editorials being written in the USA today and people talking about it. I also question if she is being pushed into making a second bad decision, getting married at 17 now that she has the baby. I question how her mother could have put her in this spotlight.

[Danielle Masters]

I had an interesting discussion with my son while driving him to soccer tonight. I asked him if they were discussing the convention speeches from last night and/or if they were discussing the presidential race. He said that one of his friends who likes McCain doesn't like his running mate because "he doesn't think she sounds like a very good mom". And I asked my son what he thought about that and he said that he thinks that he wouldn't want either me or my husband to be a politician because it's hard to have either your mom or dad gone so much. And he should know my husband used to commute to and from Arizona a couple weeks at a time. So he said he feels bad for Obama's daughters and Palin's children. I just thought it was an interesting conversation, it's nice to hear how kids perceive things.

[Ivor Karabatkovic]

The double standard gets airtime

[Danielle Masters]

Thanks Ivor, I just love the hypocrisy, it's very entertaining.

[Colleen Wing]

I guess not being surprised and being disappointed are not mutually exclusive.

As a mother and a woman involved in politics, I have lived with this double standard for years.

Bottle or breast, cloth or disposible, stay at home or outside employment, cook or order in, stay fit, bake, clean house, perfect discipline, excellent student, well rounded, the list and the guilt are endless.

I never had the self doubt as a boss that I have as a mother.

I am excited to have a candidate that I can relate to...a mother, who makes mistakes but is not afraid to stand up for what she believes in, not afraid to rock the boat and can look good doing it. State Auditor, Mary Taylor is another one. The first CPA to ever be Auditor in Ohio. She sacrifices time with her family for the better good of the community. I am proud of Hillary Clinton's drive and determination. I often defended her.

I went to culinary school. Cooking is supposed to be a "female" skill. Except that at the time 85% of chefs were men. I guess it is only masculine when you get paid for it. I only had Julia Child to look up to, all be it a great example, not necessary someone who I could relate to nor strived to be like.

Women are not a block vote but we are 54% of the population in Ohio. We aren't just Stepford Wives or Bitches. We choose to live life from the buffet. That is what I learned from my mother.

One thing is for sure, we could get a lot more done if we didn't have to spend our time explaining every decisions to people who would never like us anyway.

[Stephen Eisel]

I don't think it makes a whit of difference how many kids one has as a qualification for office, or a disqualification. What I find worrisome is that as mayor of Wasilla, she brought up the idea of banning books she didn't like, then fired the town librarian. She later had to backpedal that idea when he town objected to it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Pali ... s090208-18)

Palin Derangement Syndrome strikes again.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/06/th ... ooks-list/

[Will Brown]

I think much of this argument relies on the belief that all people are identical. I think that there is a lot of variety among us, but that in general there are talents unique to most women, and other talents that are unique to most men. I say most because there are individuals that don't fit the model, but at the same time I think most men are less social and intuitive than most women, while most women are less muscular than most men. The idea that there is something wrong with the way we teach math because generally boys achieve more in this field than girls relies on the belief that all of us are identical, and ignores the recognized differences between the sexes that actually exist. You can certainly disagree with this, but anyone who has the misfortune to pass through a grocery checkout where a man is running the register and a woman doing the bagging will recognize that there is something to it.

In our traditional family model, the father worked, while the mother raised the children and ran the home. Ideally, the father was also involved in raising the kids and keeping the home, but this was not always the case. Ideally, the income brought in by the father was considered family income, and the mother was involved in using it.

In my mind, the most important of the activities is raising the children. You can make all the widgets in the world, or drive a truck all over, but that doesn't match raising good kids in importance to our society. Unfortunately, we too often failed to recognize the importance of the homemaker, and this led many people to think it was less important than working outside the home. The fact that the homemaker was technically unpaid also led some to conclude that it was a less important function.

The conservatives that I know generally recognize the value of a woman who chooses to be a homemaker; the liberals that I know are surprisingly vicious in condemning that belief. I think a lot of the criticism of Palin comes from liberals who don't value her work as a homemaker, and more comes from women who feel a little bad about working rather than raising their children, and are jealous that she seems able to do both.

My concern is that we have largely bought into the idea that a woman who chooses to be a homemaker is a failure, and the economic pressure of two-earner couples makes it very hard for the traditional family. For example, if a house is for sale, the two-earner family has a clear edge over the traditional family in buying the house. Further, I think we don't yet know the affect of having our children raised by other people (low wage people, no doubt, since we will have demonstrated that as a society we don't value child care, or by people who have opted to study education in college). In this context, I would offer the example of home-schooled kids, who apparently do quite well academically, even though they are, for the most part, educated by mothers who lack the educational credentials of the professional school teacher.