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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAnn Romney, an Unrepresentative Woman
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/14/michael-tomasky-on-ann-romney-an-unrepresentative-woman.htmlMichael Tomasky on Ann Romney, an Unrepresentative Woman
by Michael Tomasky Apr 14, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Republicans would love to think that Ann Romney will rally stay-at-home moms to the GOP, but shes is far too rich and out of touch to relate to American women.
Youd have to be a monster to deny that Ann Romney has had a rough time of it these last few years. Breast cancer and multiple sclerosis? We should obviously sympathize and send her well wishes. But nothing about that should prevent us from also looking honestly at her background and asking how representative a symbol of twenty-first century American womanhood she is. Liberals shouldnt sneer at the fact that she never held a job outside the home (if only Hilary Rosen had phrased it in the clinical, social science-y way I just did, this controversy probably never would have erupted!). But conservatives have no business pretending that she represents anything beyond what she in fact is, which is a woman who was born to fantastic privilege and who married into even more fantastic privilege, and who simply hasnt had to make the hard choices that many women have to make. She turns out not even to represent stay-at-home moms very well at all, and if Republicans think this little fracas is rallying stay-at-home moms to their reactionary cause, theyre deluding themselves.
snip//
Im plenty aware that I am going to be accused in the comment thread of class envy, but Im just laying out facts. They shouldnt be held against her: For all I know Ann Romney is the most generous, empathetic, and self-abnegating woman in the United States. But its simply a fact that shes never had to worry about how she was going to feed her kids, or what she might do if tragedy befell. And lo and behold, tragedy, or something very close to it, did befall. She received two devastating diagnoses. She undoubtedly had excellent insurance coverage and undoubtedly received the best possible care. And since conservatives are so obsessed with pillorying the people they think of as the undeserving in society, I say its not unreasonable of me to point that out she earned her excellent insurance and care by marrying well.
But what of the millions of women who share her bad luck health-wise but dont share her good luck wealth-wise? We dont know what she thinks, and maybe since shes not the candidate she is under no obligation to tell us, interesting as it might be to find out. But we do know what her husband, her own presumed insurance provider, thinks. He thinks the hell with them. He used to care about them, when he passed a law giving them a fair shot at buying affordable coverage, but now he wants to repeal the law that does the same thing nationally, and the only reason is political calculation and cowardice. Thats his, not hers. But I do wonder whether she agrees with him that these women should be left on their own because to help them would be to hand a political victory to the enemy.
The interesting thing about all this is that your typical, if there is such a thing, stay-at-home mom bears not the remotest resemblance to Ann Romney. The Census Bureau studied this question for the first time (?!) in 2007, and the results were, to me, totally surprising and fascinating. Stay-at-home mothers, you probably think, are more likely to be white, well-off, proper, all-around June Cleaver-ish. Uh, June Cleaver was around 50 years ago and lived on TV. In todays actual America, stay-at-home moms are more likely to be: younger; Hispanic (Latina, if you prefer); foreign-born; less well educated. About one-quarter of married mothers of children under 15 didnt work outside the home, the bureau found; and fully 19 percent of that one-quarter had less than a high-school degree, while that was true of just 8 percent of working mothers. This suggests pretty clearly that a significant number of women who stay at home dont do so by choice, but because they dont have marketable skillsor because they cant get jobs that pay enough to cover the cost of childcare.
The study found 5.6 million stay-at-home moms in all. The above numbers suggest that maybe half of them or thereabouts are there by total choicehave decided to stay home and raise multiple children. The rest are probably there because of crappy educationstheir fault in some cases, no doubt, the systems in others. Whichever the case, these women are not staying home by choice, and they tend to be the women society really forgets about and pays no attention to. I doubt pretty strongly that they identify much with Ann Romney or are rallying to her husbands cause.
This whole fracas happened simply because conservatives saw an opportunity to accuse liberals of being elitist. There was a whiff of that in Rosens wording, but at least Rosen is affiliated with the side in American politics that wants women who didnt grow up in Bloomfield Hills and marry well to have a chance to receive excellent health care if they ever find themselves in Ann Romneys position.
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Ann Romney, an Unrepresentative Woman (Original Post)
babylonsister
Apr 2012
OP
I say the perfect job for Lady Ann Romney would be working at the local recyling center for a month.
Peregrine Took
Apr 2012
#2
enough
(13,259 posts)1. Of the many issues here, I think the disparity in the fates of rich and poor
when devastating illness strikes is probably the most compelling. We live in a society that seems to believe a
rich woman with MS or cancer deserves to have a different fate from a poor woman with the same diagnosis. That is our society. Do the Romney's believe in this, or not?
A stark division.
Great article. Thanks for posting.
Peregrine Took
(7,413 posts)2. I say the perfect job for Lady Ann Romney would be working at the local recyling center for a month.
I hear they make $10.00 per hour. They wear gloves and work along an assembly line sorting out refuse for recycling.
That would be a good experience for "m'lady."