Palin: Should the vice president be a mom?

last updated 8 January 2015

The “mommy wars” have come roaring back, said Michelle Cottle in The New Republic Online. The GOP’s selection of Sarah Palin, the “supermom of five,” as its nominee for vice president has rekindled a heated debate about “how, and whether one should even try, to balance career and family.” This time, it’s liberals and feminists who are asking the judgmental questions: How can a mother with small children, a special-needs infant, and a pregnant and unwed 17-year-old possibly think she has the time to serve as vice president? You don’t have to be a member of the old boys’ network, said Sally Quinn in Washingtonpost.com, to wonder which of Palin’s two jobs would be neglected. I had a special-needs child myself, and even as a working mother, “he always had to be my first priority.” Sure, career women can be good mothers, but let’s face it: “A mother’s role is different from a father’s.”

So the Left has suddenly decided that “motherhood—well, at least too much motherhood or too complicated motherhood—is incompatible with executive responsibility,” said Barbara Curtis in The Christian Science Monitor. What a bunch of hypocrites. “What happened to choice? To having it all?” Apparently, all that only applies to women who make choices feminists approve of. The shame of it is that Palin’s selection could have ended the mommy wars, said Rich Lowry in National Review Online. Traditionalists admire her, and, through her example, are coming around to the idea that good moms can have ambitious careers outside the home. But since Palin is pro-life, pro-gun, and authentically conservative, liberal women reject her “with the kind of fury always directed at apostates.”

We’re furious, all right, said Katherine Marsh in The New Republic, because ideology matters. By celebrating “Palin’s brand of up-by-your-bootstraps feminism,” the McCain campaign pretends to support working moms. Yet McCain and the GOP oppose any policy that would help mothers in the workplace. Palin and McCain offer no solutions for women earning 77 cents for every dollar earned by men or struggling to find safe, affordable child care. Palin’s own juggling act is made possible by “a six-figure salary and an incredible support system” that includes a husband with flexible jobs and taxpayer-paid assistants—support most women have to do without. Still, Palin’s candidacy is an important reminder that feminism isn’t just about doing it all. “It’s also about having the support to do as much as you can.”