View from the left
Vancouver Island News Group
29 Sep 2004
Frances Marr Darling
Opinion

Many who think they're feminists will look at Christy Clark's decision to abandon a high-powered career for family as a cop-out. They'll be aghast that she would jettison her most productive years in public life for a traditional mother's role.

Don't believe it. Feminism gives families choice. Clark made one, blessed as she is with a co-parent with regular work. Women who succeed at knocking out glass ceilings in public life or corporate boardrooms, at the cost of a hit-and-run daily home life, don't necessarily feel they've made it. Clark probably wants room to breathe.

So good for her. Political life at any level, school board or cabinet-level, is a time-devouring, energy-draining monster of a business. It demands 18-hour days and forgiving family and friends. Lower Island MLAs at least can commute from home, but the others need sleepovers in the ever-more-expensive capital. I can't see Clark retiring to bake cookies. She probably just wants good-night hugs while they matter to a toddler. Even a 40-hour-a-week job on the mainland would be a relief.

Politics isn't alone in demanding energy, focus, time on the phone and hours in meetings. It's just more intense and never-ending. Any job in the adult world will tear the heartstrings of a toddler's parents, mom or dad.

Two things need to change for families. We need to include children in structuring our work lives. Clark and New Democrat Jenny Kwan made inroads by bringing their infants to the Leg every day, like our village ancestors. But there's a vast difference between dangling a baby while writing letters or meeting staff, and slinging your infant while hoeing sweet potatoes. That jungle child will slide off as he gets older and play with potatoes himself; in simpler times, children learned by copying adults at work.

Not any more. No one wants three-year-olds to play with balance sheets or drill bits. But workplaces could be more open to family life. That means trade-offs like workplaces close to home, same- building child care, parental leave for kids' illness, family care a block away with lunchtime visits.

And that's in an ideal world. Ultimately Clark's is a choice of privilege. What about parents - mainly mothers - who dance the daily juggle? Families with no choice still cry out for more child care spaces, support for parents, and early education.

Nothing replaces our start in life, solid or otherwise. Christy Clark's family may benefit from her choice. Let's not forget the children whose parents have little choice.

• NDP leader Carole James said the real tragedy is that one woman is gone from a government thin on female members. So a shuffle that involves more than one female face is a step in the right direction. Even if new women in cabinet have a right-leaning view of daily life, this government badly needs their voices the table.

• Clark is leaving the most troubled, and most frequently re- organized ministry in government, the one most directly affecting the neediest children of all. Those families were the first to feel program cuts and now suffer the most. In a fair world, they get dibs on having services restored first.