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Sarah Palin, Show Working Parents Your Juggling Act!
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I wonder how Sarah Palin does it all.
Or more accurately, I wonder how Sarah and Todd Palin do it all.
Let's face it: You don't get where Sarah Palin has without a dependable and flexible spouse manning the home front—either that or a really good nanny. So I’m curious about the logistics of the daily work-life-family juggle in the household of Sarah and Todd Palin. But they aren't talking about it, and that bugs me.
I’m part of a generation that sees infinite options and flexibility for following life’s pursuits, especially when a household has two income-producing adults. You can have kids or not. You can have two high-powered careers, two low-key careers or one of each. Or, like most of us, your careers can fall somewhere in the middle.
For those of us in that vast middle, when kids come into the picture, there's usually a lot of ratcheting up and cutting back, taking turns and trading off.
One parent (often but not always the mom) stays home for a while, or one or both cut back on their commitments and ambitions temporarily. If a once-in-a-career opportunity comes along for one, the other says go for it and picks up the domestic slack. When the other has a too-good-to-resist offer somewhere down the road, they swap roles.
But in writing about and observing all kinds of careers for several years now, I have to say that the more high profile and all-consuming one career is, the more likely it is that the other partner plays a largely supporting role. When one has a really high-powered job, such as a CEO or CFO, governor or a national politician, there typically is either a stay-at-home or work-from-home spouse (or no kids).
And it works both ways. Fortune magazine ran a feature a few years ago about accomplished women and the stay-at-home hubbies who make their careers possible.
As one half of a couple who are in the midst of figuring out their own work-family juggle and as someone who writes about these things, all kinds of practical questions flew through my mind this week as I watched Palin moonshot her political career onto the national stage.
Does she nurse and how does she plan to manage that on the campaign trail? Will the baby travel with her or stay home in Alaska? Either way, who’s going to be the primary caregiver while she stumps? How will they manage all those first-year doctor visits? With a special needs baby there must be more than the usual handful.
Will her husband travel with her? Will the kids? Will they all go back to Alaska or move to the lower 48 so she can easily fly in for visits (but not on a private jet, of course) between whistle stops? Does her husband work full-time, or part-time or is he a stay-at-home dad? If he was working will he continue to? Is there a beloved, indispensable nanny? How much do the older kids pitch in and how often do they rely on the grandparents to pinch hit?
And most important, why in the world did she give up the chef that came with the governor’s job? if she really didn't need someone to cook, couldn’t she have farmed him or her out to other working moms around the state who dread the nightly 6:00 dinner dash? (That would have been a tremendous public service.)
I really want to know. I see it as a sort-of mom-to-mom sharing of best practices. But a search of official and media websites, blogs and newspaper stories yesterday yielded few answers.
The Wall Street Journal mentioned that she pumps while sending e-mails on her Blackberry and keeps a playard in the governor’s office. That’s something, but hardly a complete picture.
Her Husband seems to have two careers, in oil and fishing, and has an avocation as well, training for his yearly run at the Iron Dog, a grueling 2,000-mile snow mobile race. I’ve read alternately that he works full-time and part-time, that he’s taken leaves of absence from his oil job, and the he often plays the role of hockey dad, shuttling the kids between school and activities.(I suspect that the latter is actually the case, but that they aren't talking about it because old-school GOPers don't want to picture Alaska's First Dude warming bottles and pushing a vaccuum.)
I’ve also read that Sarah fired all the domestic staff at the governor’s house, not just the cook. If true, this doesn’t make her seem down-to-earth to me so much as it makes her seem crazy; real working moms take all the help they can get on the domestic front no matter where it comes from, so they have more time to spend with their kids.
I want to hear Palin talk about how she and Todd do it and to draw high-profile national attention to the reality that dad-works-mom-stays-home is not the only family dynamic that works. I want them to hold themselves out as proof that real families all over the country are finding success and happiness with all kinds of creative work and parenting combinations.
By keeping quiet about how they manage, by avoiding giving Todd credit as the support spouse I think he probably is, Sarah comes across as some 1980s-era superwoman who feels compelled to bring home the caribou bacon and fry it up in a pan.
But we all know that that doesn’t work.
I know is that women like myself and my working-parent friends need high-profile role models to show us that our messy, creative, six-balls-in-the-air-everyday lives can work—and to show us the best possible outcome from trying it.
Palin could be one of those role models, but only if she brings her juggling act—and the guy who stands in the wings tossing her the balls—onto the public stage.
