Looks Like the Special Needs Mommy Wars Aren’t Over
November 13, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
So, now that “a certain event last week has come and gone,” a question courtesy of Tina Brown in The Daily Beast (and thanks to Working Dad by Paul Nyhan):
Is Sarah Palin a potential leader for working moms?
And, more particularly and pertaining more to this blog, is she a leader—a model—for special needs mothers?
According to Brown:
…..[Palin] could play a valuable leadership role—right now—by being honest about and sharing what she really does know about: combining healthy ambition with mothering five kids. Confronting the pain she must have felt—and, even I dare to suggest, the guilt she won’t allow is there—at her own parental oversight when her teenage daughter got pregnant. Struggling with that other decision she has also blown off as an easy call: to continue with her own late-in-life pregnancy when she found she would give birth to a Down syndrome baby. (And it was a decision, “pro-life” platitudes notwithstanding.)
Looks like they’ll be some more skirmishes ahead in the Special Needs Mommy Wars. Prior to the election, Palin said that she’d be an advocate for “families who have special needs and children with special needs”—–I guess we shall see.
Can she not at least take a week off in between 2008 and 2012 please? It seems like being on camera is her primary concern.
I agree. But at least she will and can use her power for the greater good and help advocate for special needs kids and their parents.
I really don’t get the impression that she is much of an expert on this topic. Maybe she could be if she did something other than campaign.
I’m sorry. I really wanted to like her, but right now I just wish she would go away.
I second Fielding.
Fearless, she’s shown me know reason to have faith in her advocating for special needs kids and their parents. Maybe if she took some more tips from her sister, who’s been a special needs parent for much longer than she has.
er, ‘no reason’
Just saw her on MSNBC talking very proudly about Trig and the special needs families she’s met over the last few months. I wish her the best!
Let’s face it, no one is the perfect advocate for all mothers of special needs children. I’ll tell you this, I’d take her over Jenny any day!
Navi:
No an expert yet, but soon she will very much be in the thick of things with her son. And it she wants, needs, and is good at being in the spotlight, then she could be very effective.
I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt …
Lots of information on the subject of Palin and special needs:
http://specialneeds08.blogspot.com/
LBC,
Nice blog.
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‘Probably none of my business, but I hope that Gov. Palin settles down back in Alaska and takes some advantage of the extra possibility of 1:1 time with her son before jumping with both feet into the advocacy fray. Whatever choices they make, as one family to another–I wish the Palins, and esp. young Trig, the best on the road they will travel.
As far as what she will do–right now it’s mostly words and speculation, but I expect that if she does do something that it will be seen and reported on.
I guess things are just going to keep getting interesting-er.
getting interesting-er.
Either that or she burns up her currency before 2012…politics is fickle and overexposure does not always work in one’s favor.
I guess at the very least there’ll be more attention on her governing of Alaska.
From the Juneau Empire (5 Dec)—-Palin proposes “spending $250,000 toward better access and screening and diagnosis of disorders such as autism.”