Ann Romney has Never Worked a Day in Her Life. Question mark.

I never write political posts. Ever. It’s just not my bag. (Unlike my friend, Amy, whose bag it totally is, since she’s currently authoring the Dem-leaning blog at BabyCenter. Yay, Amy!)

But this morning as I went to check my email, I saw a Yahoo! News story that I couldn’t help clicking on, and then writing about.

“Ann Romney responds to claim she hasn’t ‘worked a day in her life’.”

I don’t know squat about Ann Romney, except that she’s a Republican, she’s married to Mitt, and she’s a mother.

(I don’t presume to understand any of her or her husband’s views on religion, healthcare, education, politics, or whether they drive a domestic or imported car or prefer Burger King over McDonald’s. I, frankly, don’t care. I won’t be voting the Republican ticket in November, no matter who wins the nom. So, there's that.)

There is only one reason I clicked on that article: she is a mother. 

This fact alone nullifies the statement that she “hasn’t  worked a day in her life.” Upon reading the headline, I instinctively knew Ann was of the stay-at-home variety of mothers, and somebody had used that against her. 

This is where I’ve deleted great rambling paragraphs about Ann Romney’s being white, and rich, and fay-un-cee and not being circumstantially forced to choose between being with her children and working in a factory or at a temp service or in a high-rise office building. The why and the how of her life choices have no bearings on this post.

found here

When I saw that the person who made the statement is a Democrat, I was disappointed. When I saw that the Democrat who made the statement is a woman, I was saddened. When I saw that the woman who made the statement is a mother, I was outraged.

According to Wikipedia, the woman who made the statement is Hilary Rosen;  “a partner in the political communications firm, SKDKnickerbocker with offices in DC and New York and LGBT activist.” Also, according to Wikipedia, she has a son and a daughter (twins) with her former partner.

She’s a Democrat.
She’s a woman.
She’s a mother.

I am embarrassed for her, for the statement she made.

Women have to keep constant vigil, we have to fight, we have to earn, we have to wage war against a world that says we are not smart enough or strong enough to be on par with men. We should not have to do battle within the XX-chromosomed arena to prove our worth. We, as mothers, should not ever ever accuse another mother of not working a day in her life.

I have friends who prefer to work full-time outside of their homes. I have friends who don’t have a choice and, in order to feed their children, work full-time. I have friends who work part time.
Who have nannies.
Who employ their own mothers.
Who take parenting shifts with their spouses.
Who are single.
Who have the luxury (and yes, it is absolutely a luxury- if you choose to see it that way) of staying home full-time with their children. All of them, every single one in every single situation, work.

I have walked in almost all of those particular shoes:
Single mother working full time.
Married with my husband working during the day and myself working a graveyard shift.
Full-on stay-at-home-mom earning no income.

This is where I’ve deleted great rambling paragraphs about how maybe that was the intent of Ms. Rosen’s statement- that since Mrs. Romney never held a paying position, never contributed income to the Romney family’s already-sizable bank account, that what she did as a mother and wife (and daughter and friend, and breast cancer survivor and…) did not count as real work. That you don’t work in this society unless you are earning money.

found here

Currently, I stay at home with my kids during the day and wait tables two or three nights a week. 

Every family’s circumstances, struggles, finances, values... are different. Not one family dynamic is the same as another’s.  It is not up to the public, to strangers, to someone from the opposite sex or the opposite political party or the opposite end of the socio-economical spectrum to say whether what we do, the choices we make for our families, works or not. 

The faster we learn to support each other- as mothers, as women, as actual human beings all running the same actual race- the better our country will be. 

No matter which side of the fence you hang your political hat.

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