I enjoy reading other people’s blogs, and came across this one here.  The blogger writes a very interesting post on Sarah Palin and parenting, and to be honest, I had never really thought of it this way.

Here it is (thanks girlgriot for the post):

And then there’s Sarah Palin. As if she’s the first or only woman who’s had to put down her Blackberry and pick up her breast pump. Please. She’s eating up this whole supermom thing, and that offends me. If she was interested in breaking the glass ceiling for any woman but herself, she might call people on that shit, but no, she seems to like it, to think it strengthens her bid.

I just can’t see how any parent could do to a child what Sarah Palin has done to her daughter. Your ambition is more important than your child’s life? And how she’s spinning it as a way to showcase her ‘family values’ is, as my students would say, grimy. To use your child as a political tool is so ugly I can’t quite process it. Maybe the subtitle of this post should be “Beyond the Pale … but not the Palin.”

I have no problem with a mother of five deciding to accept her party’s nomination to be Vice President. None. In Sarah Palin’s shoes, would I have accepted? No. And part of that refusal would surely have been because I had a special-needs infant at home. And part of it would have been because I had an unwed-and-pregnant 17-year-old. Not because I was the mother of either of those children but because I was a parent of those children. I’d figure that the baby would surely need more of both parents’ time and attention (and I’d probably think that about a baby who didn’t have special needs, too). I’d also be selfish about my time with that baby. Wouldn’t being Vice President mean I’d miss far too much of his growing up? First step, first word, first … maybe everything. That seems like a lot to give up, but that might just be me.

Maybe I would have accepted if Trig had been my only special-needs child. I’d have enough money to arrange for excellent care — even excellent care that could and would travel with me wherever I needed to be, excellent care that would be live-in once I moved to DC to take office. Ok, scratch my first answer. I’m on the fence now on the Trig question.

I’m not anywhere near the fence, though, when it comes to Bristol. There’s no way I would have accepted the offer. I would have thought about the fact that my acceptance would be to turn my child over to the rabid frenzy of the media, open her to scrutiny, judgment and commentary that she would be much happier and healthier without. I would do that as a mother or a father. It seems reasonable to assume that Bristol Palin would rather have had the personal story of her pregnancy and motherhood play out in the spotlight of Alaska politics rather than in the international press. I also choose to assume that she might have preferred not to be forced to marry the man-boy she’d been messing with (but that might just be me, too). If her mother had declined McCain’s offer, most of us would never have heard of the Palins, would never have had to see a single photo of Levi Johnston’s I-was-cool-in-high-school face. Bristol might actually have been able to make some choices, and maybe those choices would have been different from the ones that have been made for her in the last couple of weeks.