Grandma-in-Chief - Democratic Underground

babylonsister

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Sat Nov-29-08 10:00 AM
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Grandma-in-Chief

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/grandma-in-chief/

Grandma-in-Chief

by Patricia J. Williams

Marian Robinson

Joe Raedle/Getty

snip//

The timing seems right for an iconic American family that depends on a granny rather than a nanny. In the last few years of exhaustion and economic downturn, there has been a shift away from thinking that floors will mop themselves or that moms can really effortlessly whip up 30-minute gourmet meals after a long day at the office.

It is hard to be a parent. It is hard to earn a living in the modern workplace. It is very hard to do both, and it’s damn near impossible to do both without a whole lot of help from other people. The promise that fathers would be parenting partners and that women might “have it all” seems to have migrated away from questions of open doors and equal pay, and collapsed into the burdensome lie that any individual woman should be able to do “it” all by herself and all at the same time.

Thus we have the dizzying and hilarious spectacle of Sarah Palin trying to negotiate her last spate of interviews in the kitchen, juggling questions about energy policy, double standards, and handmade potholders. What calculated imagery of tight-rope walking: There she was in a jeweled necklace and black Oscar de la Renta suit, stirring stew and serving hot dogs, expressing her intention to “call Hillary tomorrow” to express her gratitude for cracking that glass ceiling.

That image is why I resist thinking of Michelle Obama as “mom-ified,” as some have called her. She’s doing one thing at a time. She works, she shops, she mothers, but she remains sane. She relies on her mother, her brother, her co-workers, her friends to make things work. Her husband has done the same. Their dependence on a close network of others is a fact. As a result, their life seems balanced: They’re consistently calm and collected; neither makes work look irrelevant or parenting look like a dead end; and their children shine with that reflected intelligence and their own good manners.

As our culture becomes more varied and diasporic—and as our economy continues its awful downward spiral—I suspect we will engineer new or hybrid models of both work and family. Like the Obamas, we will learn how to depend on one another in cycles of sharing and independence, foregrounding certain talents at one point, and others at another. The role of primary breadwinner may go back and forth between partners over the course of a career. In a globalized world, the education of children can no longer be considered an entirely domestic affair, or derogated as lesser, or “merely” women’s work. And ultimately, the American workplace—as soon to be modeled by the incoming occupants of the White House—cannot, must not, remain so enduringly hostile to the needs of family life.