The XX Factor: What women really think.

Juneau

This whole weekend has felt like a marathon of Lifetime television. All anyone wants to talk about all of a sudden is the intimate family choices of stressed-out working mothers. Every woman I know is consumed by Sarah Palin’s larger-than-life life: Was it irresponsible for her to continue on as governor, having given birth to a special needs baby? Was it reckless of her to accept a vice presidential tap on top of that? Should she really have been flying in the eighth month of her high-risk pregnancy? Is she doing the right thing by supporting her unmarried teenage daughter whose pregnancy she revealed a few hours ago? Should she have inserted herself into her sister’s messy marriage? Feminist or otherwise, everyone has an opinion on Sarah Palin’s life and family and choices. We’ve all been here before, in our own lives. It’s almost a palpable relief to be able to talk about all this stuff at cocktail parties.

This is the Pandora’s box John McCain opened up when he picked Palin as his running mate—a woman whose family life is vastly more interesting than her very brief political career. Is it sexist that everyone is judging Palin on the former rather than the latter? Yes. But I suspect that all this frenzied close-reading of Sarah Palin’s uterine life was unavoidable. What are the "mommy wars" if not broad female judgments about other women’s private decisions? The truth is, whether or not John McCain wanted to have that big, brutal public conversation about the reality of abstinence and teen pregnancy and contraception and teenage mothers without the means to support their children, Sarah Palin is pushing it all onto the front pages. I don’t think the GOP intended to have this conversation at all, and definitely not on these terms. McCain could easily have named a Margaret Thatcher type whose work/family balance wasn’t quite so riveting. But Palin reflects the reality of women’s lives in America. Come on in, John McCain. It’s messy in here, but we’ve been waiting decades to show you the place.

Read the rest of the XX Factor conversation about Bristol Palin's pregnancy.