I was going to make that "Would a President Michelle Obama Still Have to Cook the Turkey?" since I was going to write this yesterday but got busy (and, frankly, too content to write about such contentious issues).
The inspiration comes from this post by Echidne of the Snakes.
To pretend that it can be done only tells us that women can be a little more than the ever-hovering but silent and undemanding female angels traditionally assumed to take care of every successful man: they can also be the junior assistant office managers in the families of famous men.
Women can balance their own work, their partners' work, the children, the parents and grandparents, the Thanksgiving turkey, the birthday cards, the care of the sick, the need to look young and sexy, the dustbunnies under the beds, the school menus, the parental chauffeuring services. They can balance all that, somehow, while walking on the tightrope of cultural femininity, the demands of a labor market which still assumes that every worker has a little lady at home to give succor and psychological counseling and cleaning services. And then the woman-haters write how women don't have the same genius as men do, how no woman has ever invented something like the automobile or designed a great church, how women therefore are obviously biologically incapable of anything but -- well --- playing the role of Girl Fridays for famous men.
So I'm angry. How very awkward for me. But really, why can't we keep the limelight on the real question Ruth Marcus asked, for longer than one fleeting second: What can be done to make the sexual division of labor within families more egalitarian? And if we don't want to make those changes, how do we provide women with equal opportunities in other spheres of life? The answer must not focus on all the ways that women alone could somehow achieve that. Days are still only twenty-four hours long, even for us of the girly persuasion.
To my knowledge, women have always been expected to take charge of the home and the children. I've always assumed this is in part because women give birth to children and, therefore, spend a lot of time caring for them first. So, the tasks women have traditionally worked on were things that could be done with children in tow. Men, OTOH, have had the freedom--and responsibility--to go out and do the dangerous, tough things, which spurred them to greater skill and innovation in those pursuits. After agriculture was invented and animals were domesticated, men had more time to spare, and thus began inventing and philosophizing. But women still had to do the things they'd always done as far as taking care of the house and children.
So, what does all this have to do with musing about a President Michelle Obama still having to cook dinner and wash the pricey uniforms that her children will wear to their over-priced private school (can't have them attend public school. Oh, no!)? Echidne referenced this Ruth Marcus column, she noted that Michelle is "Mommy in Chief," and that she is still faced with the age-old problems women face in this life: balancing your individual needs with the rest of the family and why women must do this and men don't have to.
When Michelle Obama took to describing her new role as mom in chief, my first reaction was to wince at her words. My second reaction was to identify with them.
I was okay, actually, with what Obama said. But I worried: Did she have to say it out loud, quite so explicitly? Is it really good for the team -- the team here being working women -- to have the "mommy" stamp so firmly imprinted on her identity?
And most of all: What does it say about the condition of modern women that Obama, catapulted by her husband's election into the ranks of the most prominent, sounded so strangely retro -- more Jackie Kennedy than Hillary Clinton?
She is, after all -- by résumé, anyway -- more Hillary than Jackie. But the painful paradox of campaign 2008 is that it came tantalizingly close to giving us an Ivy League-educated female lawyer in the Oval Office but yielded an Ivy League-educated female lawyer sketching out a supremely traditional first lady role.
I'm not really sure what Marcus would have Michelle do; it's not like First Lady is a governmental role voted on by the American people or an administration post nominated by the president. She's just the president's wife. That we've decided being First Lady means something doesn't make it something.
And so, Michelle Obama, executive and attorney, is reduced to Mommy in Chief, whose biggest decision will be whether Malia gets waffles and Sasha gets the Cocoa Puffs of if it's the other way around. Ok, maybe she'll have to figure out which dress designer to use and how to conduct the First Lady teas or something, too. But we don't expect her to sit in on cabinet meetings or anything.
That trivializing of her life and accomplishments brings us back to my musing. If Michelle Obama were president, would Barack be expected to be Daddy in Chief, making sure the girls' socks matched and the homework was done? Or would he be allowed to be Something More than Mr. Michelle?
This was a question asked quite a bit during the election when the Left was constantly bashing Sarah Palin. One of the accusations hurled early on was that she wasn't vice presidential material because she wasn't a Good Mother. And how do we know she wasn't a Good Mother? Because she was a governor, which meant she had so many duties to concentrate on that she wasn't home to make the cheese dogs and discuss Alaskan energy policy on a regular basis.
So, would a President Michelle Obama be expected to discuss foreign policy while making Christmas cookies with her kidlets? I have mixed feelings about this one.
First, the Left is much more forgiving of liberal women when they don't live up to traditional expectations for women. Like my British mom told me about the Royals, "They are not people like you and me. They're better." That's the way liberals view liberal women.
But on the other hand, as this past election cycle showed, being a woman--liberal or conservative--holds you to an entirely different set of standards from those expected of men. So, in that sense, President Michelle Obama would be expected to prepare the Thanksgiving stuffing just like her great-grandmother had done it back in 1910, even as she dealt with foreign policy crises and economic questions.
In short, we are not so advanced that women are allowed not to be Mommy in Chief, regardless of what other roles in life we have.
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