This should be a discussion point, I agree. I am not so sure that I agree with the outcome. This election has certainly raised my feminist quotient. As a black woman, I never believed that the feminist movement included me. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe I just never joined, and made the movement reflective of my needs and point of view. As black women, I think this is an excellent time for us to reflect on what black feminism is, and ought to be.

When I see Sarah Palin, I see a woman who acknowledges that she stands on the shoulders of the women who went before her. Not that she shares their politics, but she knows that their accomplishments created the way for her. I think that is really important. The movement wasn’t supposed to make us clones, but to empower us each to be the best woman that we could be.

I don’t share Sarah Palin’s politics, but I do want any woman to be able to enter the political arena and bring the talents that she has. I also don’t agree that fathers can’t be loving caretakers and primary caretaker parents. I have seen many many examples of that. And as black women, many of us made the choice of believing we raise our children without fathers. How tragic has that been for our community? The point should be that the Palin children have two loving parents. Not that their mother is their primary caretaker. As women, we owe it to ourselves to stop the forcing of that false choice.

As to Bristol Palin, we have all been a 17 year woman/child. We all know that we did things that our parents told us, indeed forbade us to do. Most of us were lucky enough not to get caught. Bristol Palin was not so lucky. It is not necessarily a reflection of the parenting in the Palin home. We don’t know this child, and how we got to where she is, and frankly it is none of our business.

Barack has two daughters and he is trying to protect their future privacy. He is right. Children should be off limits. None of the Palin, McCain, Biden or Obama children chose for their parents to be in the places that they are. They do deserve to have the best and most normal childhood that they can have. The press needs to give them space. The adult children are fair game. But the minors should be left alone in my view. I think that the Bush twins are a prime example. They were doing some pretty stupid stuff as 18 year olds. But the press backed off, let them grow up, and they now seem to be past that phase.

Perhaps Sarah Palin believes like you did that she has the family/support structure that allows her to commit to something that she believes is very important, and that she can balance that out with the needs of her children. We owe it to each other as women to trust the judgments that we make as being the best for our families. We owe it each other to trust that the person making the judgment has more information than any outsider looking in. And if she is wrong, God help her, that there will be women who will step in to help her get it right.

I may not be right, but I always have something to say.

Ce

I’m feeling you all the way. My son practically grew up in newsrooms around the country because, as a single parent, my childcare arrangements didn’t always work and my hours didn’t always accommodate motherhood, but I made a bunch of choices that I never would have if I hadn’t been a mom. That’s just how it goes.

Palin and the GOP are trying to have it both ways, too. They want to hold up Palin’s family as the symbol of what many “average” Americans have to wrestle with — children with special needs, a teenager having and paying the challenging consequences — but they don’t want anyone to ask questions or make comments about the family.

Sorry, but if you throw your kids under the bus, you can’t turn around and say “hands off.” It didn’t work with Dick Cheney, when he tried to show he wasn’t in lockstep with George Bush by ntoing he and the president disagreed on whether there should be an anti-gay marriage amendment. Cheney said he had a different position on the issue because it hit close to home – his daughter was a lesbian. But when others mentioned that, candidates, the media, the Republicans then tried to create a backdraft against the Dems and reporters by saying a family was sacred and hands off.

As Bill Cosby would say, “C’mon, people!”

Politicians, like most celebrities, want media attention when they want it and they want it turned off when they don’t want to bother. But, as you say, Sid, that’s not how we roll.

As my late father used to say: “The same thing that makes you laugh, makes you cry.”