The US News and World Report cover story the other week was about father figures. The caption read, “From Mitt Romney to Barack Obama, how six leading candidates’ ideals and ambitions were shaped by their dads.”

My first reaction was - so, their mothers had nothing to do with shaping their children’s ambitions?

I read the article (written by a man). The first sentence stated, “Call it the father factor. To a remarkable degree, the top-tier presidential hopefuls for 2008, Democrats and Republicans alike, had fathers who played powerful roles in shaping their lives, values, and even their approaches to politics.” Now, the article wasn’t saying that all of these fathers were perfect or very successful. In fact, Barack Obama’s dad wasn’t even part of his life. But, the message still seemed to be that it was the father who shaped these candidate’s destiny. The man was somehow the powerful role model, be that positive or negative.

Is the rationale here that the candidates are baby-boomers or older who grew up in a time where the father was probably the main breadwinner, “head of the household” and hence the person to look up to? And, the mother generally stayed at home or if she did work, it was as a secretary or in some other low-paying, low prestige occupation. The mother might wield some power or influence but this didn’t seem to be a necessary ingredient to career success because she wasn’t in charge; meaning she didn’t make the bulk of the money.

 

The Mother Factor?

 

But surely, the candidate’s mothers must have helped to shape their ambitions? I certainly hope that I would help shape my daughter’s aspirations. My mother helped to shape my goals.

• Hillary Clinton - Clinton credited the women’s movement and said her mother is her inspiration in her decision to run for president. Senator Clinton said her mother told her she could do whatever she set her mind to do. Now her mother is on the campaign trail with her! Of course, Senator Clinton is a woman, so maybe she doesn’t count.
• Barack Obama – His mother was shy and awkward
• Mitt Romney – He apparently grew up idolizing his father.
• Rudy Guiliani – When his mother died in 2002, he said that she gave him a love of history, reading and geography
• John Edwards – His mother was a Catholic who was into the paranormal
• John McCain - His father was his “hero” and “earning …respect has been the most lasting ambition of my life.”

So, with the exception of Senator Clinton, either these mothers didn’t really influence their children in any major way, or if they did the press doesn’t feel that there is a story there - perhaps because the mothers weren’t interesting enough. They didn’t run for president (Romney), weren’t criminals (Guiliani), or naval commanders (Edwards). I can’t claim to have read each of these candidate’s biographies, so maybe there is something that I’ve overlooked.

There’s obviously a paper to be written here. Some research I’ve looked at suggests that both parents play a role in the career decisions of their children. The research is hard to find (or I haven’t looked in the right place), but I’ll keep looking………

 

I was on a phone call today, talking to an executive from a software company. The company has some nice software that is easy to use. All of a sudden I heard the dreaded phrase, “It’s so easy my mother could use/do it”. Whenever I hear this, or the similar phrase, “It’s so easy a grandmother could use/do it”, I have to say something. Typically, it is something like, “Is it so easy that your grandfather could use it too?” Today, I held back, while cringing, partly because my brain was fried from an intense session about another software product, and also because I was interested to see if my partner, a man, would say anything. He didn’t.

So, later that day I asked him if he had noticed what the guy had said. He hadn’t. I told him that the guy had said it more than once. My colleague (a really good fellow) suggested that maybe this guy had a problem with his own mother.

I then asked my fifteen year old daughter her opinion. She was surprised that someone had actually said that. I asked her what she thought the guy was implying. She responded that it sounded like the guy thought all mothers were stupid.

BINGO

So, my fifteen year old daughter hit the nail on the head. Where did this expression – the idea that even my mother or grandmother could do it come from? Are mothers that stupid? Has cooking and cleaning and taking care of their kids made them brain dead? Perhaps it is some sort of generational stereotype that men are more mechanically inclined than women because they were the ones fixing cars and such. And that somehow this translates into men being more technically inclined, as well.

This is of course, nonsense.

Always curious, I did an Internet search on this phrase and similar phrases and got more hits than I care to report. If expressions like this continue to be used and continue to enter the collective psyche, then they become self-perpetuating. The executive I mentioned above probably didn’t even realize what he was saying. My partner didn’t even notice that the guy had said it. He probably didn’t even realize that I might take offense, because hey, women are not technically inclined. It doesn’t matter that I’m a technology expert or maybe he didn’t consider that I am a mother too.

And what about the current generation?

Here’s a story that suggests that change is slow. I remember a few years back, I was helping a friend of mine out at her daughter’s birthday party. The kids were waiting on line to get some coins for the arcade machines. One boy shouted out to the person handing out the coins, “Move it, you’re as slow as a grandma!” I was shocked. I couldn’t help myself and asked him why he used grandma instead of grandpa. He had no explanation although the explanation was clear – he had heard some derogatory expression similar to this one- such as “you throw like a girl’ - and assumed that females are inferior.

So much for progress.

 

I was born the year Betty Friedan began to write the Feminine Mystique. Granted, it wasn’t published until the early 1960s but my view is that I’ve experienced fifty years of the women’s movement. Having lived it, I have a lot of opinions about issues relating to women, working women, working mothers, girls, and how our society views females. These are my views. I welcome your views!