The Mommy Brain Blog

I do realize Judith Warner probably wasn't referring to my humble blog today when she made fun of women who, considering Sarah Palin, are so eager to know about her childcare situation.
But I thought I'd answer anyway.
Granted, we're at war. The economy stinks. Terrorists lurk. Our natural environment is collapsing. These are obviously priority issues. But that doesn't mean that any future U.S. leader should diss childcare, just because government after government has done so. It's not a luxury item.
After leaving my job as a foreign correspondent eight years ago, with two babes then under 4 years old, I chose -- because I'd worked long enough in a good enough job to have the choice -- to stay home but keep working. And I could write a book -- some day I may -- about my childcare nightmares. All the while, I'm always painfully aware that what I've had to go through is cotton candy compared to what millions of U.S. women who haul themselves to fulltime jobs each day because they have no economic alternative must endure. Including paying small fortunes for the privilege of knowing their babies are not quite safe, or perhaps spending the day staring at a TV screen.
This isn't "just a women's issue," as so many early feminists have disparaged it. It's one of the most basic human issues, directly effecting the emotional, mental, and physical health of the next generation.
Childcare belongs high up on our list of priorities, which is why it's not just okay but really mandatory that we talk to Sarah Palin -- and of course Barack Obama, too -- about policy ideas and personal examples.

When I was making the rounds of radio stations promoting "The Mommy Brain," I used to get calls, quite a few of them from Utah, asking, "So do you get smarter the more kids you have?"

That was a tough one.

And frankly, I doubt it.

There's a limit, isn't there, to what one person can do, the responsibilities she can take on without dropping a ball? I'm talking, of course, about Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin, the presumptive Republican vice-prez. nominee.

To be absolutely clear, I whole-heartedly support a woman's right to choose whether to become a mother. Whatever benefits accrue to a mother from having children depend enormously on whether she's on board in the first place about the life-changing commitment, and whether she has even the minimum means to support her child without intolerable stress. It is stressful enough to be a parent in the best of times. Not to mention the stress for an unwanted child.

That aside, Sarah Palin's predicament brings up the knotty question about just how much a working mother can handle before sacrificing her children's best interests.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen any coverage to date about just how she does it. Is her husband caring for the five kids, including the infant? Does she have a grandma ready and able, like Michelle Obama? Sure, these questions wouldn't be asked of a man. But let's get real. It is the woman who gets pregnant, breastfeeds (if possible) and most often notices the runny nose, untied shoe, the sadness after school. You can out-source these jobs, but there's a price. And so much more if a child has any handicap, such as Palin's 4-month-old infant's Downs' syndrome.


"A learning disabled child is a career-killer," an editor recently told me. I've been thinking a lot about her comment in the days since the Palin announcement. It implies that a mother who has the resources to do so will sacrifice professional ambitions, because, to be blunt, the buck stops here. This isn't Palin's choice. And it throws light on a difficult and fascinating question unanswered so far in both feminist and anti-abortion debates. Does being "pro-life" stop at birth? Or is it a life-long commitment?

p.s., here's something funthat just came in over the transom....

What with taking on far too many projects this summer, I haven't had nearly enough time to read, but there are two books I must recommend in the few days before school starts.

One is Foreskin's Lament, by the genius memoirist Shalom Auslander . I zipped through this in one night and one Boston-New York train ride. Auslander writes of being "raised like a veal" in an orthodox Jewish family in New York.

The other, which I've barely begun, but which is almost unbearably gripping, is "Love You to Pieces," a collection of essays by mothers raising "special needs" children.

What most of all unites both books is a breathtaking honesty. I can't get enough of it...

Serendipity? Or a sign from the universe?

Each year for the past decade or so, I've been taking my mother to a wondrously offbeat spa in Mexico called Rancho la Puerta, where I talk about books or writing to help pay our bills.(This year I've introduced a three-day workshop called "Cardiac Writing" which has been the most fun of all.) Together, we indulge in a unique combination of food that somehow manages to be both decadent and vegetarian, hikes on the purportedly sacred Mount Kuchumaa, the kinds of mother-daughter talks you can only have when you're sharing a room together for a week, and, increasingly, meditation. This year, our visit completely accidentally coincided with an unprecedented program involving a Hindu meditation group called the Himalayan Yoga Tradition, one gift of which is that I just, this morning, witnessed my 81-year-old mother sit through an hour-long meditation followed by an inspiring lecture based on the Upanishads, one of the main points of which was that we may think we are parts of individual rivers, but we all flow into the same ocean. You get the idea... "He's got such a sweet face," my mom said later of our teacher, Swami Veda Bharati. "He looks a lot like my brother-in-law."
As I work on my current project this year, a memoir of raising a child with ADD, all roads uncannily seem to be leading toward the ashram, or if not that, the kind of insight that might help me, finally, tone down my lifelong hotheadedness. Little did I know I'd be taking not only my son along but my mother....

...for finally treating oil companies like the spoiled, naughty children they are. Objecting to George Bush's effort to open offshore drilling, the NY congressman pointed out that they have 68 million acres of onshore permits that they haven't used. "It's just like I tell my kids," Emanuel said, with wonderful wisdom, "You're not going to get dessert until you finish what's on your plate."

I found the time last night -- not sure how -- to watch "Distracted" author Maggie Jackson being interviewed by a Business Week editor. She was terrific! I went back to the book, on my overloaded nightstand, and read it with new focus. Jackson offers some very important reflections on the nutty, fractured way most of us are living our lives, and particularly the way most of us relate to our friends. Our chronic split focus has become a cliche: the two dear friends meeting for lunch and talking to other people on their cellphones, or the teenager talking to two people at a time with a split screen and instant messaging. And as Jackson rightly points out, it is robbing us all of emotional nourishment. And we need to work to cultivate awareness to stop.
Earlier this year I made a pledge: with the exceptions of my siblings and a few longtime friends I adore who all live far away, I'm not conducting my emotional life by email. I figure if I have time to message someone local several times a week, I have time to meet them for a hike or coffee once a month -- that is, if they're worth the investment to begin with. It was hard at first to be tough about it, but it was soon liberating. I think we tend to fool ourselves about just how much of our lives can be "virtual" without doing damage that we only realize down the line...

CNN today broadcast a list of the top issues on Americans' minds. The economy, Iraq, health care, and education were all high on the list, and, to an extent, rightly so. But quite unfortunately, there was no mention at all of energy or the environment, which eventually, if ignored, will surely trump the rest. In my inbox today is a message from a new organization called 1Sky, which is bravely moving ahead to draw more attention to this issue. The email says that now that the "Climate Security Act" -- deeply flawed, primarily because it doesn't move nearly fast enough -- has failed in Congress, it's time to focus on a truly science-based approach. For our kids' sakes, I hope that sometime soon Americans start connecting the dots between, say, the disastrous recent weather in the midwest, the skyrocketing gas prices, and the need to rapidly overhaul our increasingly dangerous energy habits....