MIA: Alaska's "First Dude"

Year ago Nation columnist Katha Politt made astute observation regarding social conservatives and Republican Party public policy. They decried feminism’s influence on the family, arguing that it caused women to leave their homes for work and neglected child rearing; however when lower-income women did so, stayed home, especially on AFDC, those women were decried as lazy and shiftless.

The current edition of the “mommy wars,” the “campaign edition,” underscores this same double-standard thinking that’s become a hallmark of conservative thinking. This all has to do with Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination as Sen. John McCain’s vice president, and the fact that she has five children.

Conservatives who have touted stay-at-home moms now revel in the fact that she is a working mother and one who has decided not to abort her recent child, a son with Downs Syndrome. Even more interesting is listening to and reading how conservatives find compassion for Palin’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol, who is five-months pregnant. For years conservatives have railed against out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy when it happened to lower-income families of colored.

And let’s be clear about this point. If this had happened to, say, Obama's 17 year-old daughter, this would have been been proof-positive that Obama was unfit for office. That if he couldn't control his own daughter, how could he be steward of the nation? When you read how Republicans spin this, it really truly underscores the GOP's sense of "traditional family values."

Those people are always having children out of wedlock. However, when the right sort of people have children out of wedlock, it's just a "personal family problem." But now that it has happened to one of their own? Republicans collectively shrug their shoulders as if saying, “Shit happens.”

However, what makes this even more interesting is that upon reading the Times’ article by Jodi Kantor, “A New Twist in the Debate on Mothers .” One pivotal actor wasn’t even mentioned in the Palin family drama: Todd Palin, Alaska’s “First Dude,” the governor's husband. As a matter of fact when the Today Show did its sophomoric take on the “mommy wars,” Todd Palin was seen but wasn’t even mentioned as possible helpmate in child rearing.

The basic, generic assumption, once again, is that real men don't engage in child rearing. They are not seen as doing their 50 percent. In the Times article and the Today Show segment, fathers were missing in action. All the responsibility of child rearing is solely in the realm of women, who are no longer respected or exalted as MOTHERS but have been reduced to being mere "moms" or "mommies, " the latest metric of domestic consumption. "Five out of ten moms like Momex because..."

Once again, the obliviousness to society's double standard goes by the way side. When Obama gave a speech on fathers being missing in their children's lives on Father's Day, he was upbraided by some, especially Jesse Jackson, for talking down to black people, but other saw it as a message that applied to all fathers.

In his Democratic Party convention acceptance speech, he said this about fathers: Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents, that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework, that fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children.

However, when reading and listening to the tracts of the so-called mommy wars, Todd Palin seems to be missing in action while in plain and obvious sight.