The Mommy Wars

Interviewed on NPR today, David Brooks responded to questions about Gov. Palin by saying "Oh, I thought we were over the mommy wars."

Once again progressives, and feminists in particular, get to choke till we vomit on the hypocrisy of the Republican right. It appears that all the Christian wingnuts are rallying around Gov. Palin, and suggesting that anyone who criticizes her, her choices, or her qualifications, is sexist. This is a logical extension of the enormous outcry on the part of Christian Conservatives at the media treatment of Hillary Clinton.

Or did you miss that?

So we have Phyllis Shafley, founder of the Eagle Forum, “Patton” in the mommy wars, the woman who led an entire battalion of preachers and pundits and psychologists in the second-wave assault against any woman who had the audacity to suggest that women were equal to men, making a statement for the NY Times today defending Palin’s ability to juggle her particular family’s need with her skyrocketing career.

“It changes your life and gives you a different perspective on the world,” said Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative organizer who helped defeat the equal rights amendment nearly three decades ago.

“People who don’t have children or who have only one or two are kind of overwhelmed at the notion of five children,” Ms. Schlafly continued, mentioning that she had raised six children and run for Congress as well. “I think a hard- working,well-organized C.E.O. type can handle it very well.”

But Phyllis, for years (and YEARS) you told any woman wanting to have a career (like yours, perhaps?) that they should wait until after their children were grown, just like you did. You charged any of us who lacked the freedom or inclination to be stay-at-home moms with the utmost selfishness – putting our careers ahead of our family.

And you claimed great backup: Teen pregnancy, the divorce rate, and any number of other social ills were laid at our feet – all the fault of those uppity women – by countless Dobsons, Fallwells and Reeds. And these are not the judgments of three decades ago, they are the same judgments levied today. Remember the reaction when Jamie Lynn Spears became pregnant? If women learned to take responsibility for every stupid decision made on the part of a teenage child, it’s because the Christian conservative right spent the last 25 years telling us it was so.

So I know that we are all progressive feminists, and have evolved beyond using the weapons of the right against them as is their due.

But I would like to figure out how to make them choke as much on their own words as I choke hearing them.