Michelle Obama lets down the team

Well... I tried to re-start blogging, then found myself with nothing to say. So, the blog went dormant again. But yesterday I had a news-reading day, induced by the cold that's keeping me inside and resting rather than out w/ friends. And that gave me something to post... hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave your comments!


Recently I read this post on Michelle Obama letting down the team by choosing to be a mom (she calls herself mom-in-chief), rather than choosing to be another Nancy Reagan or Barbara Bush (who incidentally didn't have children at home). Just two thoughts I wanted to share.

(This assumes you've read the post or listened to the podcast.)
The first is, USA Today gave a list of tips for parents who want to help monitor and in some ways (good ways, we hope) control their children's media intake. I thought the list was good and helpful, but in the same breath as giving us these parenting tips that take _time_ and _energy_ to carry out, the media tells us that women should be working 40 hour weeks, not staying home to raise those little people that live in their houses. So that begs the question, who is going to watch the children and monitor their media intake if not the parents? And how are the parents going to have enough time to help their children develop discernment, avoid teenage pregnancy, develop a healthy view of sex and sexuality, understand what using drugs really does to a body, etc. if they are both working forty hour weeks _outside_ the home? Please understand, I believe a stay-at-home-mom works a 168-hour work week. They work hard. But if both parents are outside the home because the culture is pressuring them to be there, and both are coming home tired, and neither is home when the children come home from school (meaning the children are unsupervised for hours), who is going to take care of these kids?

Of course, in today's culture more ane more parents are raising their children alone, and that creates an entirely different dynamic. A single mom must work or she won't have children to raise because they will be given to someone else. A single father must have a job outside the home to provide for those for whome he's responsible. This is where the Body comes in. This is where we must be willing to express our own needs to one another as well as to reach out and help one another. As our media intake becomes more individualized, so do our lives. We go home after a day of building no relationships beyond talking about the weekend's big events in politics, entertainment and sports, and we watch television or surf the internet, trolling about for world news, sports statistics, pornography, podcasts, or whatever helps us feel connected to other people, since we have systematically stopped reaching out to other people when they are in front of us. We don't seek the help of our friends and family when we're in trouble, and we don't seek to help them, either. In fact, we often don't know when those around us are in trouble because we don't have deep enough relationships with them. America has been statistically shown to be _the most_ individualistic society on earth, and our individualism will be our downfall if we do not find a way to begin reconnecting with real people instead of playing spades and euchre on Yahoo! for hours each evening.

Number two was this: you quoted one feminist writer (was it Linda Hirshman?) as saying that staying at home raising children was no place for an intelligent, well-educated woman to be. I would just like to ask-- where do you think the intelligent and well-educated among us come from, both male and female? Do you think they spring up out of the ground or a well somewhere, and are immediately brilliant and ready to share that brilliance with the world? Unfortunately, they aren't. In fact, the "intelligent and well-educated" among us are generally those that have had their abilities fostered by postive role models-- real people that are in their lives, helping them to understand the world around them, see their own potential, and believe that they truly are capable of great things. It is rare for the children whose parents have always been too busy, have been discouraging, or have simply not taken the time to help them to truly succeed, even though all of America's "super teacher" movies (_Freedom Writers_, _October sky_, and _Dead Poets' Society_ for example) would have us believe otherwise. Children need their potential to be encouraged, fostered, and developed by the intelligent and well-educated among us. We say with one side of our mouths that to educate the next generation is the greatest responsibility a person can have, and out of the other side of our mouths we say that well-educated women shouldn't do that job by staying home with their children. It is beneath them. So I say to these women, which is it? Make a decision and stick with it, please. Do you want the next generation to be nurtured and their abilities developed by one of the people who perhaps love them most on this earth, their mothers, or do you want them left to fend for themselves while their mothers make the most of the short fifty good working years they have on this earth? Are we looking to fill the needs of this generation, or to teach each generation how to consistently keep their needs filled? Choose one, and stop telling women to do both, and then criticising them for making a choice.