Ruth Teichl is NUTS

RantWoman was listening in passing to an interview this morning on KUOW with Gourmet Magazine editor Ruth Teichl. Teichl is flakking her new book "On Not Becoming Your Mother." The book is based on her reading of a long trail of letters written by her mother. RantWoman is disinclined to summarize: the book is about the disappointments of her very bright mother's life, her efforts to send the clear message to her daughter not to be like her, and associated emotional minefields. The book sounds like fascinating reading, if only for the letters themselves.



What caught RantWoman's attention, though, was a comment in passing during the chatter part of the interview, after the reading was basically done about how Teichl is disappointed that First Lady Michelle Obama has seemingly retreated from her role as a successful lawyer to be "Mommy in Chief."



Is Teichl nuts? Does she know nothing of the sandwich generation, women of a certain age who have both children and aging parents to care for? The First Lady is not just Mommy in Chief, she is a symbol to millions that one can be smart, have a smart husband, and also juggle kids and aging parents. Michelle Obama has her mom taking care of her kids. Equally important, she is PROVIDING for her Mom. She is Claire Huxtable with a grandmother in the picture.

It's not just that Michelle Obama is handling her sandwich generation with aplomb Ruth Teichl seems not to have grasped that women more than men somehow get to shift into and out of different roles over their lifetimes. This is the definite upside of the double burden: everyone with any sense, everyone who does any kind of reality check already knows that women do this out of necessity. Their paths are different from men's. This totals up in different ways in terms of money, but in terms of status and effectiveness, Mommy-in-Chief is likely to be only one of Michelle Obama's roles. It's entirely appropriate now. We can all be very glad right now that works for her even as we are poking and prodding at considerably more burdensome realities for millions of other women.