Now, it's not that this set of characteristics doesn't have a certain appeal (and, not to cast too many partisan stones, a particularly Republican one at that), but in light of last week's events, they also have a stark downside. Because she did the thinking and the babies, now she's a very tough, very smart woman with a killer oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe who is best known, personally and professionally, for having a husband who likes to "spark" on women other than her. Turns out doing it all amounted to doing everything for everyone but herself. And that may be admirable, but, in light of her husband's behavior and Mrs. Sanford's seemingly real and impressive talents, it's some seriously misdirected energy.I wonder about this. I think to buy into the idea that Jenny Sanford's energy was "misdirected," you have to believe she'd spent her years selflessly slaving on behalf of her family. I guess that would be an apt description, but people are complicated--and altruism almost always is. I'm a nice guy. But I've never done anything kind, for anyone, that I didn't get anything out of. Usually, it's just piece of mind, but it's still something.
My question is why would a woman so willingly throw herself into her husband's life work? There must have been some sort of light there, something that she got out of it. I don't say that to be caustic, or mean. But the narrative of put-upon housewife always leaves me unsatisfied, because while it says a lot about the husband, his proclivities, and his selfishness, it really says nothing about the wife. Who is she? Why would she enter into such an arrangement? What is the trade-off? Where is her agency in it all?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
In South Carolina she is not known as the put upon women. No one believes that what Governor Sanford did is right by her but in the end though it wasn't as much his ambition to become governor and president as her's. She is the driving force behind his career and has both aided and directed it for years. I sometimes wonder if his adultery wasn't at least partly motivated by an attempt to get out of politics. He's not charismatic. To anyone who watched his speech and came away impressed because it seemed so raw and unscripted, that is how all of his speeches are. Imagine hearing a speech about budget policy that rambles like that. It happens all the time.
if that's the case, then maybe *she* should have run while *he* supported her. it's not so radical anymore for a woman to do that, is it?
That probably would have been better but I'm that may not have played out as one of the options she thought she had.
It's South Carolina. Only 15 out of 124 House members are women (lowest percentage of female representation in the nation) and ZERO, count them, zero of the state's Senators are female.
Frankly, even with Mrs. Sanford's accomplishments and smarts, she was much more likely to get within sniffing distance of the Governor's mansion by managing her husband, not by running herself.
Frankly, as a woman from SC, I sometimes joke that I shouldn't be required to pay taxes. After all, taxation without representation...
My gf suggests that women do this due to economies of specialization. Sometimes one can do more by supporting someone else than to striking off on their own. She suggested Vikram Pandit's wife (who was very helpful to his career) as an example of this.
For another example of this, consider the Clinton's. On her own, Hillary was a moderately successful lawyer but had no great prospects. She failed the bar exam, is not particularly charismatic, etc. By supporting Bill, she got put onto many corporate boards (walmart, TCBY, etc), became Senator and almost the Dem presidential candidate.
Seems like a big win for her.
It's definitely all about the economies of specialization. Not only can you often get a better deal spending time supporting your husband's career than you would spending equal amounts of time working on your own, but you often get more out of it than your husband does. Ask yourself seriously: who do you think is having more fun this minute, Barack or Michelle? (Hint: it's probably the one who hasn't aged 15 years since November).
Was just talking to Kenyatta about precisely this point. It needs to be said that some being Firs Lady isn't a bad job. Surely we work for a world where there are more First Dudes. But First Lady, ain't small potatoes.
You only get a better deal if the marriage lasts - non-gainfully-employed (note I don't say non-working) spouses, usually women, typically end up much poorer than the employed spouse if the couple divorces, and poorer than he or she would if she or he had been earning. This regardless of the amount of effort that s/he contributed to the support of the spouse/family.
I'm sorry, but this silly. The simple truth is that one's good name can be reduced to mud for a whole host of reasons in any line of work. This blogger acts as if opting for this path made it a foregone conclusion that her husband would cheat on her, or that she would inevitably be tarred because of the choice she made, and that had she just stayed with her high-flying Wall Street job nothing EVER would have happened to discredit or tarnish her good name. But in this case I would say the collateral damage to her had more to do with the political/social standing of her husband than it did with her career choice. Plenty of high-powered career women are partnered with irresponsible men, and having a wonderful, successful career outside of the home is a wonderful thing, but it is hardly the way to immunize yourself from disgrace.
Once when I was a kid my mom took me to someone's house to sign me up to play AYSO soccer. I noticed that the woman who signed the form before my mom wrote her name as "Mrs. Bob Jones". Later, when I asked my mom why a woman would be named "Bob", she explained that Bob was the woman's husband's name.
I am older than Coates but younger than Mrs. Sanford. I have lived through a tremendous transformation in the lives and roles of women in our society. Women were once sent to college to get MRS degrees and taught to live vicariously through the lives of their husbands. Thankfully, we no longer raise girls this way.
TNC, this kind of questioning is where much of your abundant brilliance lies, in my opinion. I think the narrative Paskin is operating from is kind of old fashioned. It's as though since Jenny Sanford if tough and smart she ought not have chosen family-making as her major activity. This, despite the array of skills and talent that buiilding a flourishing and successful family requires. It seems to me this "smart, tough woman" built the life she wanted to build, she just didn't have the partner she deserved to have. As I grow older, I've become very wary of the kind of Feminist argument that assumes that a woman could never regard her family as her life's work. It's a frame of mind that devalues family-making and maintenance as base and low prestige. And why is it low prestige? It's not because it has a low value to society, it's not because it's unproductive, it's not because family-making requires a lack of toughness or smarts, but just because women do now and always have done the bulk of it.
Family duties is what the second wavers wanted to be 'liberated from,' at least to the same extent that men are, but it turns out that many of the daughters of second wavers, myself included, want to be 'liberated to.' I don't think it's feminist to have to decide that you will sacrifice every kind of personal fulfilment that does not take place in the professional world in order to be 'as liberated as a man.'
I personally don't think that's very liberating for humans. At least not most of us.
I have no idea what Jenny Sanford's situation was/is, but the idea that a woman who spends her life building her family (including managing and contributing to the success of her husband, the flourishing of her children and estate) is wasting her time, is pretty silly. A flourishing, healthy, rich, powerful family is quite a legacy to leave. Not many people achieve that. It is as rare and difficult as success in any other chosen field.
The real question is: what are the circumstances that constrain the choices women are able to make about what their life's work will be and are those constraints systematically and disproportionately greater than the ones that typically effect men. I think the answer to that question is unequivocally: yes. That's the problem. Not that Jenny Sanford dedicated her life to creating the kind of family she wanted, but got hosed in the end.
Right on, deva.
I agree with everything you said and would second that "right on" as long as a woman has some financial security. Jenny Sanford does not have to worry. But what about women who dedicate their lives to husband and family and are completely financially dependent on their husbands? I look at women like that and think they are taking a big risk. The same thing could happen to them that happened to Jenny, and then where will they be? If/when they separate from their spouse, they will be living a life of drastically reduced circumstances, even if they are lucky enough to get regular support from their exes. While I understand the value of home and family life, until mothers and wives started getting paid a salary (never) then those women should understand that there is a risk in the choice they are taking not to be financially independent.
This is an important point. It certainly is a gamble. Heck, I think marriage period is a gamble. I'm not a starry-eyed idealist on this topic. You throw in your chips.
I also must say that I would personally feel really uncomfortable relying on my husband to be the sole financial support of our family. At least that's what I say now, not yet being a mother. In any case, I was railing more against the tendency to argue from a place that says 'no thinking woman could ever prioritize her family over her career or find adequate fulfillment in caretaking.'
And I also think this old-fashioned frame actually can prevent feminists with grappling with the work-family balance issues that would help many women live the kind of lives that they desire.
It comes down to this: I personally don't want to be free to be as uninvolved in my family as a typical 1970s husband. Does not appeal. Rather, I'd like to be free to find a balance between developing and nurturing a family and developing and nurturing a career, having the structural and social support options that might make finding that balance easier. Things like affordable, workplace-based childcare, full day pre-school programs, paid or partially paid family leave, flexible hours at work, stopping the clock on promotion considerations for a number of months or a year in the advent of the birth of a child, etc. You know, the practical framework that can make caretaking more manageable and less putative in the world outside the home.
Sigh. Yes, that would be nice, wouldn't it? It seems to me like it is taking us forever to get there. Anyway, I'm right with you on women being able to find that balance and choose the lives they desire.
Deva: Excellent comment. I love the distinction between "liberated from" and "liberated to" - many women of my mother's generation still seem not to understand the difference.
I have a doctorate in engineering, and I'm caring for my three-soon-to-be-four children, educating them at home, and generally making it a lot easier for my husband (also an engineer) to succeed at work. Every day I'm thankful that he heads off to a job, which he enjoys more than I would, to support our family so that I can direct my energies to my children's education, my own thinking and writing, the relationships that support and nourish us, and keep us all fed and clothed. Occasionally I am able to support my husband's career directly, as a high-value technical consultant over the dinner table; most of the time my support is of the kind that means he can say yes to this or that project or business trip, knowing that the home fires will keep burning.
I am sure that if the high school kid I was could see the 35-year-old woman I have become, she would run away shrieking. And yet, the older I get the more conscious I am of the real value, economic and otherwise, of the kind of work I do and the kind of presence I have. I am confident in it and pleased with the work I do. The economies of specialization: It makes sense for our family.
I trust my husband. And yet... and yet... The truth is it is an economic gamble. Can any woman, no matter how much she trusts and loves her husband, not be aware of the gamble, the number of eggs we put in one basket? This is why no-fault divorce is such a bad idea, why we need laws that provide for alimony. The point is to remove constraints that allow people to take the plunge to make this gamble when it's best for their family. Sometimes that's legal structures.
Don't underestimate the power of stigma and social pressure. I see how much my husband loves and respects his parents, for example, and I have a feeling they'd let him know what they thought of him if he ever ran out on us. Frankly, I would expect this to have a much more chilling effect on any possible straying than any alimony law ever could. :-)
(By the way: "Are the constraints [on women's choices] systematically and disproportionately greater than the ones that typically effect men?" Yes, but is that inherently a problem? Biology we will always have with us -- it is hard to get around things like pregnancy and breastfeeding. I think of those things as features, not bugs. I'm not sure it would be just to create artificial constraints on men that would counterbalance them so that the total constraints would be systematically equal. But surely we can eliminate constraints that are not directly dependent on those.)
I am sure that if the high school kid I was could see the 35-year-old woman I have become, she would run away shrieking.
The same is true for me, I must say.
But on your parenthetical point, I wanted to say this: biology is biology, but social structures are social structures. We choose to arrange the working world the way it is arranged, there's no particular necessity in the way we've written family responsibility and caretaking out of our professional structures. Many societies have written these activities into the way they think about maximizing productivity in their workforce. America is particularly bad on this issue (among peer countries), we have loads of room to do better before we run up against any kind of biological roadblocks to distribution of labor in caregiving, should they exist.
'Who is she?' As usual Coates you zero in on the interesting and important questions; problematic narratives are often the ones which leave them out, or assume certain stock answers for them.
Women are taught not to insist on our own needs and desires, but to help other people, more than men are. I think, therefore, that the negative effect on us when we put ourselves first is probably bigger than for men. There have been times when I helped other people when it probably did me more harm than good -- it was more than I could or should have given at that point. It did have social rewards: people thought I was nice, not mean or selfish. In that sense I got something out of it, but it was not freely given, and it did come with a cost. Whether or not that applies to Jenny Sanford and her choices, I have no idea. Just noting that there might be a slightly different dynamic.
Perhaps more related: until not so long ago the (somewhat feminist) saying was that "behind every great man is a great woman." Would a woman of Sandford's age, particularly a Republican woman, have thought she had much chance of making an impact on her own? Or would she have felt that the best way to use her own talents was to help her husband be elected and then work as a team?
And finally, it's one thing to make a lot of choices and do things to help others when you feel that you are loved and appreciated, and that those things contribute to your own happiness, welfare and success. To find out that choices and compromises (sacrifices?) you've been making for years did not end up getting you love, respect and success would make the emotional calculus very different.
She attracted this man into her life as much as he attracted her to his life. Why? Who knows? But it was for some reason that she wanted to marry a man who was very likely going to cheat on her. People have these patterns recur with different partners almost without fail (i.e. guys who constantly date girls that are unfaithful and vice versa, or abusive partners , or controlling partners, or whatever).
And who knows who got the best of the deal here -- only time will tell. Clearly Sanford wasn't happy.
I believe people are attracted to certain people because their souls or fate or life demands that they learn certain lessons. Until they learn them, they get into these relationship patterns. Pain is the teacher. But some people endure quite a bit of pain before they learn what they need to learn. Some never learn.
Unless someone already has a history of straying, how can any woman (or man) know when they go into a relationship that their partner might one day stray? If you have any evidence that Jenny Sanford had previous relationships with unfaithful men, or that Mark Sanford had any affairs before this one, then you might have a point. But otherwise, you really can't make that judgment.
Daughter, I don't know how they "know." I don't believe it is a conscious thing.
In my experience (you'll have to reflect on whether your own experience in life is similar) people tend to have patterns to their romantic relationships (and all their relationships actually). It can be very frustrating when you see it happening over and over again with someone you care about. But once a person becomes aware of a pattern or habit in relationships, they overcome it. As long as they remain unaware (i.e. see themselves as blameless and/or powerless in the situation ... "it just happened to me") the patterns persist.
Publicly, she's left with the reputation of a wronged wife (which as someone pointed out upthread, has its own rewards, but is still kinda lame). But we're forgetting what she's getting out of it privately, which is (presuambly) the kids' affections and support and hopefully their future successes, affection, and support.
That's no small thing. It won't pay the bills, necessarily, but in terms of day-to-day happiness, it's worth a lot.
Interesting post and good comment. I wrote about Jenny's decision on my blog this morning.
Kind of a digression, but it's relevant. I read Twilight, the hot new vampire romance novel. The thing that bugged me the most about it is that Bella, the heroine was a bright, capable 16 year old with absolutely no thoughts whatsoever for her future and with absolutely no desires other than Edward. Frankly, this creeped me out.
I like people who are giving, but when they think the object is to make themselves disappear, it bugs me. From comments, etc, I don't think that's what Jenny Sanford did, but it does beg the question why she didn't try to do it for herself.
My sister, in her seventies now, has had a long happy marriage. She was a woman with an MA before she got married--ten years before feminism was a much of a word, and along with a long period voluntarily producing children's theatre, for which she was academically trained, when she her children were of that age, she has written novels daily for about the last 20 years, which never get published alas.
However, her great work has been managing the home life of her family, supporting her husband's career, and providing the default family dinner celebration spot for her extended family. When she and her husband built their house, she supervised over every single item purchased to build it, from faucets to doors.
Her children and grandchildren call her daily; her marriage as I noted is about as successful as any I have ever witnessed. She is independent minded (the only liberal in a household of conservatives), funny, and vital. She is the most successful person I know, and has no qualms about saying that she has given the better part of her life to her family. Her husband, her sons, her granddaughters, and as you can see, her brother love her to bits.
What a nice tribute! Thanks for that- excellent reading before bed.
Policy wonks exist to develop clear thinking in the heads of political players. Wonks don't, in general, want to be shoved into the spotlight in front of the roaring crowd. They aren't mainly interested in the winning soundbite. They're interested in making the substance work, and making sure the soundbites don't interfere with that. Given a choice between six more rubber chicken banquets and six more memos on trade policy, they'll take the memo-writing every time.
For wonks, getting the guys on the stage to understand the issues is their craft, or more honestly, OUR craft.
I read Jenny Sanford as a wonk who has been doing her kind of political work, in her own right, all along. If the current governor hadn't been her husband, she would have found another way. when another guy becomes governor, or the current one quits being a good connection, she'll find another way again.
Meanwhile, she's almost certainly done LESS wonk work in recent years than she would have if her sons were grown or not yet born. But that's not a choice only moms make. In a good life, there's a time for dragon-slaying glory and a time for "Meh, I've got kids. Time to work at a library."
Lost in all this "Jenny Sanford is a heroine", "Jenny Sanford is standing up for her family", "Jenny Sanford is a lioness" stuff is the fact that Jenny and Mark Sanford have plenty of money, and thus Jenny Sanford was able to make the choice to devote the greater part of her time and energies to shaping and caring for her children. I think that fact gets lost in debates about whether or not Jenny Sanford's energy was misdirected.
I think that the claim that her energy was misdirected is not meant as an indictment of choosing to be in a supporting role, but rather in choosing to be in a supporting role only to have the security that was supposed to come from that ripped out from under one. (Although I do not discount res ipsa loquitur's point that her having plenty of money could undercut how much this is the case).
I think the analogy here would be to someone who devoted their career to a company only to find out that the boss was engqaging in fraud that destroyed the company and the pension one was depending on doesn't exist, and for some reason ones skills are not transferable and noone is likely to want to retrain someone of ones age.
It is quite possible that ones decisions could work out well if the people one is dealing with are not frauds, but that ones efforts were misdirected if it turns out that they were.