trying to grok

LUCK AND CHOICES

You know, I used to think people were exaggerating when they wrote that liberalism has broken the modern family by allowing the government to replace the father. I see where they're coming from, but I always thought it was a bit much.

Until it got explicitly spelled out:

In the Boston Globe on Friday, columnist Ellen Goodman frets that Mrs. Palin is a "supermom" whose supporters "think a woman can have it all as long as she can do it all . . . by herself." In fact, Sarah Palin is doing it with the help of her husband Todd, who is currently on leave from his job as an oil worker. But Ms. Goodman's problem is that "she doesn't need anything from anyone outside the family. She isn't lobbying for, say, maternity leave, equal pay, or universal pre-K."

This also galls Katherine Marsh, writing in the latest issue of The New Republic. Mrs. Palin admits to having "an incredible support system -- a husband with flexible jobs rather than a competing career . . . and a host of nearby grandparents, aunts, and uncles." Yet, Ms. Marsh charges, she does not endorse government policies to help less-advantaged working mothers -- for instance, by promoting day-care centers.

When I read the Marsh article, all I could think of is why on earth the government needs to step in and help people fix their luck or choices. Because that's what life boils down to: sometimes you get back luck, and you get cancer or your husband runs away with the maid, and sometimes you make choices in life, like to get divorced or have multiple kids with multiple dads. And sometimes luck and choice blur, like when you get knocked up at 17.

There's nothing we can do about the luck. Luck can hit any of us regardless of whether we're white, black, rich, poor, successful, or downtrodden. It was bad luck that Christopher Reeve was paralyzed, but he had his own resources for extensive rehabilitation and technology. Paralyzed poor people don't have that.

So is it the government's role to step in and save them?

I'm the wrong person to ask: I don't even want to take my government's prenatal vitamins.

A hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, your luck and your choices were your business. Got your arm cut off in the mill? There was no workman's comp or anyone to sue. Got a disease? If you were rich, you could buy some medicines to help prolong your life. If you were poor, you died. I don't think people went shouting to the government to give them free meds. Got pregnant out of wedlock? Your problem. Here's your scarlet A, have a nice life.

I didn't live back then, but I get the sense that people had a more healthy view of luck and choices than we do.

There is bad luck in the world. I can't seem to have a baby: bad luck. Especially since we made choices that would put us in an ideal spot to raise children. You know how people always say that you shouldn't wait to have kids for financial reasons because you'll never have enough money? Yeah, well, we have enough. I specifically didn't get a job when we moved into town so I could stay home and take care of a baby. We made all kinds of choices and now have been tripped up by luck. It sucks.

And I would feel the same way if one of us got cancer. That's bad luck, and you just have to deal with it. And if one of us died from a disease because we ran out of money to prevent it, that's life. It's harsh, but that's the way I see it. I don't want there to be a governmental guarantee that everyone gets to live to be 90.

I have a problem with the government stepping in to fix either luck or choices.

In the Marsh article, I kept thinking about luck and choices. When she said,

Palin is staunchly pro-life, but, beyond this very public position, she has a slender record on issues that affect working moms. She is a member of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group that also advocates for equal pay for women, for part-time and telecommuting situations for working moms, and against domestic violence. (The group supported Biden's Violence Against Women Act.) Presumably Palin shares these views. But, despite all her emphasis on being a working mom and breaking the glass ceiling, in her debut and acceptance speeches Palin never once mentioned her support for any of these issues or the legislation designed to address them. And she said nary a word about affordable child care.

Affordable child care is something the market should take care of, not the government. So is "part-time and telecommuting situations for working moms." I don't want Palin to promise to start legislating things specific to single moms.

Remember that blogger who wrote about why she's not a Republican? She's partially right, at least in my case, about the "'I got mine' attitude." I did make good choices in my life: I married the perfect person, scrimped and saved every dollar we made, waited to have children, etc. So I do kinda get mad at the thought of our tax dollars going to "funding for a vocational residential facility that included a child care center for students, as well as the funds for breast-feeding pumps, among other supplies, for a Women, Infants, and Children program for poor women." I'm a little happy Palin line-item vetoed that one.

And I realize that saying all of this probably makes me look like a mean person, but I'm tired of being made to feel mean for being squared away. My husband and I have our shit together, and I get a little tired of putting single moms on a pedestal and saying the government should square life away for them.

And I am really sick of folks ripping down Sarah Palin because she too has her shit together.

Marsh wrote about Palin like it was some giant stroke of luck that she "has a six-figure salary and an incredible support system--a husband with flexible jobs rather than a competing career, a close-knit community, and a host of nearby grandparents, aunts, and uncles to lend a hand on the domestic front." That one ain't luck, it's choices.

But I bet Sarah Palin, like my husband and I, wouldn't start singing a different tune if she all of a sudden were struck with bad luck. Or, say, her daughter's bad choices. I bet Sarah Palin sat her daughter down and said, "This is your lot in life; now you have to deal with it and deal with it well." Somehow I don't see her giving her daughter a list of entitlements she's now eligible for and promising that she'll legislate day care for students.

The title of Marsh's article is "Whine Not," in a sarcastic way. People went berserk when Phil Gramm said we've become a "nation of whiners." But I completely understand what he meant, especially since he prefaced it with, "We've never had more natural advantages than we have today." Because even with all our advantages, we expect more and more from the government. We expect them to save for our retirement, pay for our health care, and lower our price of gas. We expect the government to provide all the basics of life, apparently; they provide the meat and potatoes while it's up to us to work on the gravy.

I reject that entirely. It's the government's role to provide you with the plate; what you put on it is up to you. Some people will have a whole meal with gravy, while others may barely have rice. That's life. Government was never intended to make sure we all get the same stuff in the end.

Marsh ends with this explanation of why feminists reject Sarah Palin:

Feminism is not just about having the opportunity to do it all. It's also about having the support to do as much as you can. This is why, in the end, feminism needs to be tied to not just an identity, but to an ideology that encourages that support. Sarah Palin's free-market feminism fails that mission on almost every count, diminishing the trade-offs and sacrifices that haunt working moms.

And that is why feminists and Democrats will always be intertwined: it's not about the opportunity, it's about having the government provide the means to equalize everyone's lives. It's not enough that everyone can succeed if they make good choices; the government has to guarantee that, despite luck or choices, everyone will end up on equal ground. If you can't come up with the support on your own, as Sarah Palin did, then the government has to provide it for you...out of Sarah Palin's tax dollars, of course.

And as for that last line, how dare you think that Sarah Palin hasn't made trade-offs? You don't think it's a trade-off to make good choices? Think of all the fun my husband and I could've had instead of saving 50% of our income towards retirement and savings.

Listen, Marsh: Everyone makes trade-offs, even successful, rich people. Even people who seem to have it all and make it work. How dare you diminish what Sarah Palin has accomplished because she doesn't need to hold a palm out to the government asking for free breast pumps and WIC food. If more families were like the Palins, we'd be a lot better off in this world.

Because regardless of what luck and choices come their way, they are upbeat, hardworking, and self-sufficient.

It's too bad feminists can't see Sarah Palin for the inspiration she truly is.

Posted by Sarah at September 16, 2008 11:07 AM | TrackBack