politics

Would you be willing to give up your Decaf LowFat Caramel Macchiato with Extra Foam for a week?

This morning I nearly ran my mini van off the road when I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of me: “Don’t vote for Hillary or she will make us all clean up our rooms.” This is the straw that broke this mother’s back.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Hillary Clinton’s public embrace of motherhood has sparked a flurry of attacks on the work of mothers. Obviously, it is Pelosi and Clinton’s impressive professional skills, not their motherhood, that qualified them to break through the marble ceiling. Still, the devaluing of mothers’ work that has quickly become fodder for countless bloggers and journalists is infuriating. As a leadership consultant, I work with business leaders every day. I’m always struck by just how much their work corresponds to the daily work of a mother. Who else but a mother fosters compassion, negotiates conflicts, and teaches communication skills, cooperation, empathy, and decision making? Who else builds human capital for this country? Leadership skills cross over from home to work and work to home. Motherhood and leadership are not antithetical. In fact, a mother of three who is juggling schedules, managing a home, and keeping her children happy and cooperative has a lot in common with a CEO who puts out daily fires while fostering a work environment where each person feels motivated and valued. And yet somehow, even in the era of political correctness, it is still acceptable to reduce mothers to mere nose wipers.

Back a long time ago at Playground Revolution I blogged about my friend Liz. Liz runs the PA Housing Alliance, an organization in Pennsylvania devoted to finding more and better housing for people with low incomes. Liz is very smart and very serious about her work. One night when a bunch of us were doing our usual political rants over dinner, she excused herself to go hang out with the kids. When she returned, she simply announced that she has little truck for political rants that go nowhere. She named a powerful local politician in our city, a man known both for hardball tactics and getting the job done. “Vince Fumo plays to win,” she said. “We need to play to win, too.”