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Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.
 SALT LAKE CITY, UT- JUNE 24: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann Romney talk to several small business leaders at the Hires Big H hamburger restaurant on June 24, 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Romney made the campaign stop in order to talk to small business owners in the Salt Lake area. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) |
| SALT LAKE CITY, UT- JUNE 24: (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) |
Of course they do! The ‘controversy’ stems from one woman (Hilary Rosen, who I’d never heard of before this incident) saying that Ann Romney had ‘never worked a day in her life’. It may in fact be true that Ann Romney has never earned a wage in the marketplace in her life. It is even more likely that she has never had to rely on working for a wage to support her or her children.
Yes, Ann Romney works. She raised five children and she is a political wife, which is a career in and of itself. However, the choice she made, to stay at home and devote her life to her children and her husband’s career is one that is difficult or impossible for many women.
Please note. Staying at home with your family is not a bad choice. It’s a pretty incredible choice, actually, for those who have the personality and resources to do so. That is why feminists and liberals so often work to make that choice available for more women.
- Liberals and feminists support paid sick leave and paid maternity and paternity leaves for parents who must work to make it easier to balance parenting and working.
- Liberals and feminists support programs that allow impoverished women to stay home with their children and raise them with dignity and safety, through enforcement of child support laws, food stamp programs, parenting programs, housing programs, and cash benefits that support the ability of women to take care of their children when left without a parenting partner.
- Liberals and feminists support modernizing Social Security to honor the unpaid labor of stay at home moms so that their retirements are equivalent to those of people who work in the marketplace.
The Republican cries of horror at what’s-her-name’s criticism of Ann Romney are disingenuous at best. Republicans do not support providing institutional supports to make parenting easier. They do not support honoring the unpaid work of women as equivalent to the paid work of those in the marketplace. What they do support is restricting the choices of women even more than currently, including restricting choices in health care procedures and providers.
There are legitimate criticisms to make about Ann Romney. She has not demonstrated that she supports the sort of policies that would make her choice more available to women not born with silver spoons. She has not demonstrated that she supports health care policies that would enable more women to survive the serious medical conditions her economic privilege has allowed her to survive.
But there is no bandwagon to jump on to criticize Ann Romney for staying home with her children, try as Republicans might to find one. It’s a good choice, an important choice, that many women make with their lives. And liberals and feminists want to make that choice more available to more parents.
If you want more women (or men) to have the choice to stay home with their children, the way to achieve that goal is to vote Democratic, not Republican, this fall. That’s the choice at the root of the choice.
