A Post to Ann Romney

I am not being critical of you as a mother however, being a stay-at-home mom necessarily requires work!

If you were to live in a garage, with or without an elevator, it would not make you a car any more than staying at home made you a stay-at-home mom.

While you are clearly a mother, and stayed at home while your husband Mitt “I’ll-say-anything-to-get-elected" Romney brought home the bacon, you are by no means a stay-at-home mom. To list my wife Vickie’s responsibilities and duties as a manager, how she took care of our finances and raised our children without any volunteer or hired help while not necessarily defining motherhood does define her character as a woman, a mother and necessarily defines the work of a stay-at-home mom.

While I missed out on changing several dirty diapers, Vickie didn’t miss one. Vickie cleaned the house, cooked the meals and did the laundry. As they grew, she got the kids up for school, fed them breakfast, made their lunch and saw them to the bus. When they got home, Vickie made them a snack, helped with their homework and gave advice about relationships. She prepared and served dinner, gave them baths and saw them to bed each night. When they were sick Vickie stayed with them, took temperatures, read storybooks, made chicken soup, gave medicine and took accurate notes about temperatures, doses and times given. Were these the things you did for/with your children?

Vickie and I did most of the grocery shopping together. We did this because it was the only time we could get out of the house alone together. She called them, “grocery shopping dates.” We would hold hands as we walked down the isles and once a month take turns picking a half-gallon of Breyer’s. Did you do the shopping for your family’s meals?

This is not about your income, or our lack thereof rather on the quality and quantity of ‘work’ done as a stay-at-home mom. If you supervised the nanny(s) as they changed diapers/bathed/dressed your children; if you approved the weekly menu proposed by your chef, if you instructed the maid(s) about the acceptable amount of starch to add to your laundry while definitely work, does not quantify or qualify as the work of a stay-at-home mom.

Hillary Rosen wasn’t exactly right, I would bet however, she was most definitely not wrong.