(special needs) mommy wars

Forgive me for writing another post about Governor Sarah Palin and her family. Her selection as Senator John McCain’s running mate, and the recent reporting of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol Palin, being pregnant, have cast her thoroughly into the public eye and, one suspects, in more than unexpected ways. What first piqued my interest about Sarah Palin was that she’s the mother of a (very young) special needs child and, too, a working mother.
The September 1st New York Times describes the uproar over Palin as “Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition”:
With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.
It’s the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition. But this time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her, while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.
“How is this really going to work?” said Karen Shopoff Rooff, an independent voter, personal trainer and mother of two in Austin, Tex. “I don’t care whether she’s the mother or the father; it’s a lot to handle,” she said, adding that Ms. Palin’s lack of national experience would only make her road more difficult.
“When I first heard about Palin, I was impressed,” said Pamela Moore, a mother of two from Birmingham, Ala. But upon reading that Ms. Palin’s special-needs child was three days old when she went back to work, Ms. Moore began questioning the governor’s judgment. Partly as a result, she plans to vote for Senator Barack Obama.
Other mothers are cheering Palin on for her pro-life stance. In the words of “conservative organizer” Phyllis Schafly, who has six children and ran for Congress:
“People who don’t have children or who have only one or two are kind of overwhelmed at the notion of five children…….I think a hard-working, well-organized C.E.O. type can handle it very well.”
I guess it could also be pointed out that people get overwhelmed at the thought of raising a special needs child. As the New York Times notes, “Infants with Down syndrome often need special care in the first years of life: extra tests, physical therapy, even surgery.” (Michael Bérubé’s Life As We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child contains a harrowing account of the medical needs of the infant Jamie, who has Down Syndrome, and who required round-the-clock care.)
Charlie still requires 1:1 teaching at school with highly trained staff; I can’t just ask a neighbor to watch him. Much of Charlie’s early childhood involved one appointment after another, and hours of mental energy and attention devoted to learning about autism, learning about and accessing treatments, studying ABA and verbal behavior and oral-motor therapy, making up picture schedules and flashcards (and going through at least two laminators). I was working full-time when Charlie was diagnosed at the age of 2; we were able to do a full year of intensive ABA at home for Charlie because Jim was on sabbatical and was home all the time. I soon resigned from my job when Jim’s sabbatical ended and worked part-time for awhile, then (after we came back to New Jersey) full-time, as a writing instructor at a largish northern New Jersey university. This job involved reading and grading piles of papers every week; I think I spent almost every night for four years surrounded by papers.
In 2005, I started my current job as a professor of Classics at a small Jesuit college in Jersey City. Almost immediately, I was given administrative and academic advising duties. These (along with my enrollments—a good thing) have grown steadily. And then, I also started blogging in June of 2005 and, after about a year, was writing regularly here on Autism Vox.
Am I, as Schafly says, a “hard-working, well-organized C.E.O. type”? Certainly, I’ve some advantages with my job as I set my own teaching schedule and can take some work home, plus my college has always been very understanding about Charlie. Jim has been constantly involved, putting Charlie on the bus, coming home early for bike rides, taking Charlie on adventures on the bikes and in the black car on the weekends. I’m not as organized, though, as I could wish; once upon a time writing things in a notebook seemed to work but then I have to remember to check the notebook…. As for being a “C.E.O. type”: I like doing academic administrative work—helping students figure out how they can double-major in Economics and Mathematics and minor in History and keeping my eyes open to academic politicking, such as it is—-but am not for being an executive type.
Sarah Palin is just a few years older than me—-I’ll be 40 in a few months. As a special needs mom, I very often feel that all eyes are watching Charlie and me, and judging, and I tend to often (I suspect) convey an air of “I can handle it all, just watch.” In practice this is not true. Sure I can carry the bags and make sure Charlie carries his share and walk him out to the parking lot; sure I can teach several courses and teach Charlie cello and piano (until we get new teachers!). One thing I’ve been reminding myself (especially after a very hectic summer) is that it’s not possible to do it all. You can want to, but something has to give, and the many hours Charlie and I have spent together in playgrounds, the aisles of Target, doctors’ waiting rooms, and the pool have resulted in us having a solid relationship. We’re friends and of course he relies on me; more and more, I’m relying on Charlie.
So I’ll be watching Sarah Palin’s story unfolr with extra interest. It’s about (as another mother recently blogged) letting go. It’s not necessarily about having it all. Indeed bieing a mother, a working mother, a special needs mother, has taught me that there’s different ways of “having it all,” of working, and of mothering, too.
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