Sarah Palin's Children: What Choice Do They Have?

Children of Male and Female Politicians Pay a High Price

As the daughter of a politician, I remember everyone telling me what a great man my father was. He increased public services, saved taxpayers money, planted trees, forged racial harmony; in short, he was the political version of sliced bread. What these people didn't know was that I would have traded in all of my father's lofty accomplishment for the chance to have him play a game with me, see one of my school plays or tuck me in at night with a bedtime story.

When politicians like Sarah Palin tout anti-choice views, have multiple children and then proceed to spend relatively little time with them, one wonders why one person in the family gets to make all of the choices. Unless she is short-changing the people of Alaska, it is mathematically impossible for Sarah Palin to provide her children with as much parenting time as they need and crave.

The Myth of Quality Time

Even if Sarah Palin is a hybrid of Mary Poppins, Donna Reed and Sponge Bob when she is with her children, the sheer lack of time she has to spend with them trumps the quality of that time. In fact, the very concept of quality time is overrated. Children need lots of mediocre time with both of their parents, some of which will serendipitously turn out to be high quality. The chemistry between parent and child has to be just right for quality time to occur; large quantities of ordinary time going to the store, cooking dinner, walking the dog and performing other seemingly mundane activities must be spent together for magic moments to happen.

Is Sarah Palin the poster child for conservative family values women?

I've had to chuckle over conservative pundits tripping over themselves with delight when they name Sarah Palin as the poster child for conservative women with family values. True heroines of conservative women, such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger, assert that parents, especially mothers, need to spend large quantities of time with their children and arrange their working hours so that one parent is always available to care for the children. In this framework, the concept of a feminist pro-life woman is oxymoronic; the life the woman is concerned about is her own.