Барак Обама: The Audacity of Hope

Tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance. When I launched my ill-fated congressional run, Michelle put up no pretense of being happy with the decision. My failure to clean up the kitchen suddenly became less endearing. Leaning down to kiss Michelle good-bye in the morning, all I would get was a peck on the cheek. By the time Sasha was born — just as beautiful, and almost as calm as her sister — my wife’s anger toward me seemed barely contained.

“You only think about yourself,” she would tell me. “I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone.”

I was stung by such accusations; I thought she was being unfair. After all, it wasn’t as if I went carousing with the boys every night. I made few demands of Michelle — I didn’t expect her to darn my socks or have dinner waiting for me when I got home. Whenever I could, I pitched in with the kids. All I asked for in return was a little tenderness. Instead, I found myself subjected to endless negotiations about every detail of managing the house, long lists of things that I needed to do or had forgotten to do, and a generally sour attitude. I reminded Michelle that compared to most families, we were incredibly lucky. I reminded her as well that for all my flaws, I loved her and the girls more than anything else. My love should be enough, I thought. As far as I was concerned, she had nothing to complain about.

It was only upon reflection, after the trials of those years had passed and the kids had started school, that I began to appreciate what Michelle had been going through at the time, the struggles so typical of today’s working mother. For no matter how liberated I liked to see myself as — no matter how much I told myself that Michelle and I were equal partners, and that her dreams and ambitions were as important as my own — the fact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected to make the necessary adjustments. Sure, I helped, but it was always on my terms, on my schedule. Meanwhile, she was the one who had to put her career on hold. She was the one who had to make sure that the kids were fed and bathed every night. If Malia or Sasha got sick or the babysitter failed to show up, it was she who, more often than not, had to get on the phone to cancel a meeting at work.

It wasn’t just the constant scrambling between her work and the children that made Michelle’s situation so tough. It was also the fact that from her perspective she wasn’t doing either job well. This was not true, of course; her employers loved her, and everyone remarked on what a good mother she was. But I came to see that in her own mind, two visions of herself were at war with each other — the desire to be the woman her mother had been, solid, dependable, making a home and always there for her kids; and the desire to excel in her profession, to make her mark on the world and realize all those plans she’d had on the very first day that we met.

In the end, I credit Michelle’s strength — her willingness to manage these tensions and make sacrifices on behalf of myself and the girls — with carrying us through the difficult times. But we also had resources at our disposal that many American families don’t have. For starters, Michelle’s and my status as professionals meant that we could rework our schedules to handle an emergency (or just take a day off) without risk of losing our jobs. Fifty-seven percent of American workers don’t have that luxury; indeed, most of them can’t take a day off to look after a child without losing pay or using vacation days. For parents who do try to make their own schedules, flexibility often means accepting part-time or temporary work with no career ladder and few or no benefits.

Michelle and I also had enough income to cover all the services that help ease the pressures of two-earner parenthood: reliable child care, extra babysitting whenever we needed it, take-out dinners when we had neither the time nor the energy to cook, someone to come in and clean the house once a week, and private preschool and summer day camp once the kids were old enough. For most American families, such help is financially out of reach. The cost of day care is especially prohibitive; the United States is practically alone among Western nations in not providing government-subsidized, high-quality day-care services to all its workers.

Finally, Michelle and I had my mother-in-law, who lives only fifteen minutes away from us, in the same house in which Michelle was raised. Marian is in her late sixties but looks ten years younger, and last year, when Michelle went back to full-time work, Marian decided to cut her hours at the bank so she could pick up the girls from school and look after them every afternoon. For many American families, such help is simply unavailable; in fact, for many families, the situation is reversed — someone in the family has to provide care for an aging parent on top of other family responsibilities.

Of course, it’s not possible for the federal government to guarantee each family a wonderful, healthy, semiretired mother-in-law who happens to live close by. But if we’re serious about family values, then we can put policies in place that make the juggling of work and parenting a little bit easier. We could start by making high-quality day care affordable for every family that needs it. In contrast to most European countries, day care in the United States is a haphazard affair. Improved day-care licensing and training, an expansion of the federal and state child tax credits, and sliding-scale subsidies to families that need them all could provide both middle-class and low-income parents some peace of mind during the workday — and benefit employers through reduced absenteeism.

It’s also time to redesign our schools — not just for the sake of working parents, but also to help prepare our children for a more competitive world. Countless studies confirm the educational benefits of strong preschool programs, which is why even families who have a parent at home often seek them out. The same goes for longer school days, summer school, and after-school programs. Providing all kids access to these benefits would cost money, but as part of broader school reform efforts, it’s a cost that we as a society should be willing to bear.

Most of all, we need to work with employers to increase the flexibility of work schedules. The Clinton Administration took a step in this direction with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), but because it requires only unpaid leave and applies only to companies with more than fifty employees, most American workers aren’t able to take advantage of it. And although all other wealthy nations but one provide some form of paid parental leave, the business community’s resistance to mandated paid leave has been fierce, in part because of concerns over how it would affect small businesses.

With a little creativity, we should be able to break this impasse. California has recently initiated paid leave through its disability insurance fund, thereby making sure that the costs aren’t borne by employers alone.

We can also give parents flexibility to meet their day-to-day needs. Already, many larger companies offer formal flextime programs and report higher employee morale and less employee turnover as a result. Great Britain has come up with a novel approach to the problem — as part of a highly popular “Work-Life Balance Campaign,” parents with children under the age of six have the right to file a written request with employers for a change in their schedule. Employers aren’t required to grant the request, but they are required to meet with the employee to consider it; so far, one-quarter of all eligible British parents have successfully negotiated more family-friendly hours without a drop in productivity. With a combination of such innovative policy making, technical assistance, and greater public awareness, government can help businesses to do right by their employees at nominal expense.