Complex issues of gender, values

<p>It's the kind of issue that seems to make many women -- Republican, Democrat or Independent -- cringe.</p><p>Ask about Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's credentials to be first in line for the most demanding job in the world and they feel free to expound, no holds barred.</p><p>But ask about Palin's decision as a candidate of the "family values" party to enter the public meat grinder of a national campaign with four children under 17, including a developmentally disabled newborn and an unwed pregnant 17-year-old, and some North Coast women are slow to cast stones.</p><p>"If she were a man, I don't think it would be an issue. Nobody ever questions a man having a full-time job, a family, being in politics and having extra-curricular activities," said Lynn Morehouse, a mother of two teenagers who for 12 years was on the Windsor Town Council.</p><p>Morehouse, a Republican, personally would not have made the choice to hold public office if she also had a full-time job. But there are men who choose to stay home, added Morehouse, noting it is still unknown how the Palins will handle their child-care issues if the 44-year-old Alaska governor is elected along with Sen. John McCain in November.</p><p>"I suppose I have a little empathy for her even though I won't be voting Republican," allowed Democrat Vanessa Dodge, a Petaluma mother of two who quit her job as a grant writer when her second child was born five years ago. She said it was just too difficult emotionally and practically to try to be there for her first child when he got sick or needed attention.</p><p>"I found it impossible," Dodge said. "But (Palin) might have a good support system and have good child care that she's comfortable with. I don't think any of us can make that decision for another person."</p><p>In disclosing the pregnancy, Palin said her daughter, Bristol, and her boyfriend would get married and planned to keep the baby, although the boyfriend, Levi Johnston, 18, said in a MySpace posting that he was in a relationship but "doesn't want kids."</p><p>As governor of Alaska, Palin supported funding abstinence-only education in schools. McCain also has a record of opposing funding for sex education that includes contraceptives as a choice for teenagers.</p><p>Democratic candidate Barack Obama distanced himself from the chatter, saying "people's families" and "especially children" are off limits.</p><p>But others disagree: They see the Republican Party playing politics with family values and Palin sending mixed signals as a candidate who opposes sex education yet has a pregnant teenage daughter.</p><p>"I don't think it's off the table," said Electra de Peyster, a former IBM worker and Santa Rosa mother of two who just delivered her youngest to George Washington University.</p><p>"I've got to say young girls do sometimes find themselves in the position where they're pregnant and not married.... But it's hard for me not to take this as something significant because of the values the Republicans espouse," de Peyster said. "It leaves me a little breathless. From what I understand they don't look too kindly on out-of-wedlock births."</p><p>The unfolding Palin family drama has generated charges of hyprocrisy from both ends of the political spectrum.</p><p>Francine Rivers, a Santa Rosa-based writer of popular Christian fiction for women, said the debate over whether Palin carries too much family freight underscores how "women are frequently tougher on other women" than men when it comes to judging personal choice around career and family.</p><p>"I guess I have more faith in women's abilities than feminists do," said Rivers, a mother and grandmother.</p><p>As someone who went through an abortion herself and has been publicly outspoken on the anti-abortion front, Rivers noted the Palins, on that score, are practicing what they preach: Palin chose to carry to term her infant son born with Down syndrome.</p><p>Ellen Boneparth, a Santa Rosa women's advocate who formerly headed the women's studies department at San Jose State, worked in the State Department and served as director of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said feminists support women's choices in all family and work matters, but they have never claimed those choices "are cost free."</p><p>"When you're making choices, it means you're deciding among your options and we all know it means you can't have it all," she said. "Sarah Palin may be very nice and innocent and think she can have it all. But that's the scary part, that she doesn't know better."</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.</p>