Kinds of Feminists

Nothing makes me more determined to accomplish something than someone saying I can't do it. For example, I'm no breastfeeding nazi, but when the lactation consultant at the hospital responded to my crys of help with "Maybe this just isn't for you." I responded with a "What the hell do you know lady!" and I made sure I breastfed my daughter for close to a year. I might have given up had it not been for that.
So, as I'm driving down the road to get to our library story time, I was listening to NPR. They had some woman on who had written a book about religion and politics, taking questions. One caller asked why the left, who is supposed to be all about women who can do anything, was saying Sara Palin couldn't raise her family and be VP. And the woman said "Well, she can't. She has to make a choice because there is no way for her to raise her 5 children, one with special needs and one about to have a child of her own." And then she said she wasn't judging, but she had made that choice to properly raise her children, one that has special needs. And then she said John McCain was an absentee father and that Cindy was raising the children alone, and Barack Obama's wife had her priorities right also, and that we don't question this of men, because that's just the way it is.
Well, why is this the way it is? When I worked full time and my husband stayed home 4 days a week he was the biggest whiner and I was really angry about it. Didn't he know how important it was? He slowly whittled it down to 1 day a week, but to this day he tries to comisserate with me on the trials of being a SAH. He in not so many words has implied that it is not his place to be home with the children. It's much better now that I'm home and all is right in the world that he is finally the bread winner.
I have to say, I'm conflicted like so many other moms. I think that just comes with the hormones. We are genetically bred to want to put our children first, and I don't think men have that gene. Maybe some of them do. But that is why God gave us the ability to multi-task. I can breastfeed, color with my two year old, talk on the phone and pee at the same time... I'm not kidding, I've done it. I can cook dinner, pretend to be a dancing princess, and pay bills, all while my newborn is hoovering my finger. And I can work up until I have a baby, during the terrible twos, breastfeed though 2 bouts of mastitis, pack up all our belongings, buy a house we've never seen, move halfway across the country with a newborn, toddler, 2 cats and a husband, and unpack, all within 2 months.
And a mother can't be VP?!?! Like hell she can't. She is actually like us! For once there is someone close to the highest office in the nation that didn't go to an ivy league school, didn't come from millions, isn't a balding old white guy, and has actually been through what many women have been through. I love it! And to all those feminists out there that say she can't do it, I say to them let the husband stay home with the kids. Break out the lipstick girls, our heroine has finally arrived!