Emma Gilbey Keller on Motherhood, Careers and Sarah Palin

Editor’s Note: Emma Gilbey Keller is the author of Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela. She has written for The London Sunday Times, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair, among others. She grew up in England and now lives in New York City with her husband Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, and their two children. Emma’s latest book, The Comeback: Seven Stories of Women Who Went from Career to Family and Back Again, came out earlier this year.

Like the rest of you, I find myself constantly talking about Sarah Palin. I’ve just published a book about women who return to work after taking time off to raise their children, and everywhere I go women ask me what I think of Gov. Palin’s domestic juggling act. Do I approve?

It’s ironic because a few years ago, when I first started looking for women to include in my book, I wanted to find a mother in politics. Politics seems a natural new destination for someone who has been active at her kids’ school or volunteered in her community. The domestic entries on her resume serve her well — as Gov. Palin has proved — when it comes to running for office.

I didn’t know about Sarah Palin at the time, and in fact even if I had, she wouldn’t have been the right candidate for The Comeback. From the sketchy biographical detail that’s emerging, it seems that she went pretty directly into motherhood without establishing herself in a profession first. She worked briefly as a sportscaster and helped out a bit in her husband’s business, but from a career point of view she hasn’t so much come back as come in.

Because of this trajectory Gov. Palin has presented her maternal credentials before us — “I’m just a hockey mom” — and asked us to take them into consideration when we judge her fitness for the vice presidency. And so motherhood has become a campaign issue. We are encouraged to measure candidates or their wives by their maternal qualities. Sometimes even their mothers and their mothers-in-law get held up for us to examine too.

Sarah Palin has asked us to judge her as a mother and because she is currently in an intense family situation we find ourselves also asking whether or not she can balance the demands of high office with the demands she has at home. 

Many have said that it is unfair to Palin — and to women — to ask these questions of her. But she’s put us in a difficult position. On the one hand the act of voting is an exercise in judgment. On the other, "judge" when it comes to mothering can often mean "criticize." And so all of this makes me a little queasy, because around the time my first child was born I made a silent pact with every other mother on the planet not to judge them if they please, please, please didn’t judge or criticize me back.

One of the things I’ve found in the time I’ve been working on my book is that there is a whole host of ways to be a mother these days. And certainly if we take a quick look at the women on the political stage, we can see that besides the mother of the pregnant teen and the special-needs child who is currently in the spotlight, there are a couple of stepmothers (Jill Biden and Cindy McCain), the mother of an adopted child (Cindy McCain again), the child of a single mother (Barack Obama), a grandma who moves in and takes care of her daughter’s kids for days at a time (Michelle Obama’s mother), a mother with cancer (Elizabeth Edwards), mothers who have been all about working for a salary (Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Jill Biden) and mothers who volunteer — Cindy McCain now — Sarah Palin then.