Cookie contest stirs debate about Michelle Obama’s ‘mom-in-chief’ role

Another round of that perennial question — “Can women have it all?” — was cranking into a full-throttled debate recently, just as Michelle Obama and Ann Romney submitted their entries for a cookie-recipe contest.

It didn’t take long before the critique began, drawing a flurry of online comments reflecting on whether Obama had sacrificed too much by focusing on her children and her husband’s career, or had offered a model for working mothers.

Once again, she was at the center of the open-ended conversation about working mothers that she entered in 2008, when she declared herself mom-in-chief and made clear her young daughters would be her top priority.

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The “first mom, gardener thing” is “silly,” said Linda Hirshman, an author, lawyer and feminist. “I do admire the discipline and grit to see that this is the role that you have to play and play it. I could not do it.”

Obama is not the only well-educated, professional woman to have occupied the office of first lady, nor is she the first to come with young children amid the so-called mommy wars. Chelsea Clinton was in middle school in 1992 when her father was running for president and her mother declared on behalf of her generation of liberal women that they had not “stayed home and baked cookies and had teas” but chose instead to fulfill their professions.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cookie-contest-stirs-debate-about-michelle-obamas-mom-in-chief-role/2012/07/06/gJQApnCpRW_singlePage.html