Ann Romney and the Mommy Wars

If you were living under a rock yesterday you may have missed the infamous incident in which a Democratic Strategist Hilary Rosen said the words “Ann Romney hasn’t worked a day in her life.” And the mommy war blew up into full scale mommy armegeddon!

Now I’ve been home “not working a day” for a good ten years (by golly this not-work is difficult, tiresome and full of unpleasant bodily fluids) and so on some level I understand the almost berserk giddiness of the Republican defensiveness. Look! Look! they point at Rosen in glee, She’s a mommy hater! Ha! Liberals/Feminists hate mothers! See! Surprised you didn’t know that! Dude, did they need that bone or what? They may be holding notorious mantastic panels to discuss my lady bits, calling a lovely articulate lady potential-panelist “a prostitute” (or saying “I wouldn’t put it that way”, as though the strong word choice is the only problem with that sentiment) but by gum! They will defend the validity of my mommy work! Right! Right?

Errrrr. Now does “defending” me involve anything more than being publicity outraged on my behalf? Because I could do with smidge less outrage and a smidge more actual substance. Anyone? Anyone?

Now despite Rosen’s massive foot-in-mouth disease, as a dirty liberal myself, I understand that her point was actually not about Romney’s lack of work ethic, but rather her lack of economic risk, her massive enormous hugetastic richy rich privilege, she never had to worry about how to put food on the table, pay the mortgage, and clean the toilets with her own two mommy hands. I don’t know Ann Romney but I say it’s a fair critique that she may not have her finger on the pulse of the average struggling-to-make-ends-meet mothers of the USA.

I think we can all agree (despite the giddy fist-flying draw of the mommy armegeddon), that good mothering is real and important work (even if one has a nanny, a cook, and two Cadillacs). Raising children (even with massive wealth and loads of advantages) takes time and dedication and wisdom. Rosen herself has said so (see below). We all love mothers, hallelujah, and amen.

Now I don’t want to feed into the Republican we-love-mom-more-than-thou self-righteousness histrionics. But regardless of what Rosen’s intentions were, her words themselves were very telling. In her apology she said: “Let’s put the faux ‘war against stay at home moms’ to rest once and for all. As a mom I know that raising children is the hardest job there is. As a pundit, I know my words on CNN last night were poorly chosen”

Poorly chosen. Yup. But not surprising. Her words, her words, her words. They mean something. Something very real and very powerful.

They mean: Exactly the Truth.

WHAT! WHAT! WHAT!

Did I just say what I think I said? Did I really go there? You have to be freakin’ fetchin’ fracken’ kidding me!

Okay, take a breath, calm down, now answer me this question, how do we treat things that we value? I mean really value? As a community, as a society, how do we locate and measure and view and invest in the things we value?

We take care of things we value. Correct? That’s sorta the very definition of “value”.

Do take our most valuable things and put them in the most insecure and vulnerable place we can find?

Do we refuse to count things with value, just simply not keep track of it in any way shape or form? Ignore it like it doesn’t exist?

Do we pay nothing to, do nothing for, invest nothing in, the most valuable of all our valuable things?

Do we make sure the things we value have fewer opportunities, fewer choices, less of every imaginable advantageous financial resource?

Now do you take things you value and throw them out in the world and say, “I sure hope it does okay out there!”?

Because people, that is EXACTLY how we treat motherhood.

Motherhood is the number one risk factor for poverty in America. That’s right, the number one risk factor, more than education level, more than race, or sex, or socioeconomic status. Do you want to ensure that your life will be full of economic turmoil and insecurity! Well I have a proposition for you!

And all that work that mothers do, all the vomit-cleaning, discipline, van-pooling, and sex-education, it’s not counted as “real work” by anyone, anywhere. Other non-paid work is regularly calculated into GNP, all other valuable contributions to the american economy are quantified and codified and annotated. The (MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL) work of mothering, totally utterly completely ignored. Because what we do doesn’t help the economy, what we do isn’t valuable, and we ‘didn’t work a day in our lives’. Apparently.

We invest time and money and energy and resources into things we truly value. We build museums to house valuable works of art. We build giant sports complexes to house our valuable entertainment opportunities. We build giant road systems to transport our valuable consumer items from coast to coast. We invest almost nothing in making sure that mothers are secure and have the time energy and education they need to do the (MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL) work of mothering.

I do realize that this is an incredibly complex and difficult problem, not so simple as building a museum or a functioning sewer system. But it’s a dirty darn lie that “we” collectively value mothering. It’s a lie if you’re a Democrat and it’s a lie if you’re a Republican. Mothering is all about individual sacrifice, individual risk, individual success or failure. Society benefits greatly for that individual success. Society suffers greatly from that individual failure. In return society gives us: “your work is the MOST valuable”, which is hard to make soup with.

Rosen *was* wrong to say Ann Romney hasn’t worked a day in her life (and she admitted as much), but she reflected more deeply the reality of how we truly view the work of mothering/fathering/parenting/homemaking/nurturing/caretaking. And that “we” very much includes the outraged Republicans jumping in to defend my “choices”, the Republicans whose only investment in my life is in defending my choice to raise my children from home, but not in making it secure or feasible to do so (should my husband get hit by a bus on the way home from work today)(or leave me for a younger prettier woman)(or go insane and try to kill me)(or crush his leg and lose his job and need me to take care of him 24/7) where will the Republicans be then? Or the darn Democrats for that matter.

No one wants to hurt mothers, there are no cadres of evil liberals bent on proving that my mothering isn’t real work, there are no greedy conservatives plotting the destruction of single mothers through glorious capitalist greed, we actually do all care about mothering, and I think we all really mean it when we say it’s hard important work. Except we don’t. Not enough to do any single darn diggety thing about it. Darnit it all to heck!

Nobody wins in this mommy war. We are all losing. Mommy Armageddon Hooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!