A Provocation

Because Time Warner magazines like their readers to be dictated to, rather than figure things out on their own, many of them have some sort of end-of-the-year-ish grand statement about a person, place or thing. People has its “Sexiest Man Alive”, Time Magazine has its famous “Man of the Year” (which, oddly, these are never the same two people), and Sports Illustrated has its Sportsman of the Year.

I’m sure other magazines in the Time Warner stable have similar end of year features (“Spiky Heels of the Year” in InStyle or “Pudding of the Year” in Cooking Light) but they tend not to be as widely displayed at the 7-11 checkout.

At any rate, one of the features of SI.com, the online and superior version of Sports Illustrated (not the least of reasons is that it’s free), their staff writers spend 500 words and maybe 30 minutes coming up with who their choice would be if they had the power. They are either the relatively obvious (Drew Brees) or the relatively obscure (Kurt Fearnley, a wheelchair marathoner). On occasion, SI selects vaguely undefined groups of people as their Sportsman of the Year; in 2004 they selected Red Sox Nation, a nation I was far more irritated to live in than George Bush’s nation, which is saying something.

This year, though, writer Aimee Crawford chose a group that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with.

She selected “Working Mothers.”

(Keep reading if you want to see me dig myself out of this. Or don’t keep reading and satisfy yourself that I’m a jerk.)

The whole “mommy wars” thing is out of control anyway, so to say that working mothers define sportsmanship is a provocation in and of itself.

Now, it must be said: my wife is a working mother. And she works hard as both a mother and as a worker. In this day and age, it is not easy to be a stay-at-home mother (who, clearly, are working mothers, too). But Crawford provided examples, not of mothers who work during the week, come home and help with the house and homework and bedtime, sometimes then doing work for their jobs, and on the weekends and every so often during the week take kids to soccer games/swim meets/ice skating practice/you name it.

No, her examples are people like Kim Clijsters, who took two years off from professional tennis to get married and start a family, then returned to win the US Open. Or Candace Parker, who is perhaps the biggest star in women’s professional basketball. Parker took some time off to have a baby with her husband and then came back and continued to dominate the WNBA.

These women are inspirations. These women show that a woman can succeed at the highest level of their fields and still have families. And these women are fabulously compensated.

The woman who works hard during the week so that her kids can play hard on the weekends, holding down a job, helping raise her family, helping keep the house – without nannies, parental help, or other assistance – they are far more heroic and worthy of praise than Kim Clijsters or Candace Parker.

But this is not the only thing that makes me look at this article with a slightly jaundiced expression.

What about the working father?

My brother-in-law has an important job in Philadelphia that tends to keep him away from his wife and two sons in New Jersey during the week. He still manages to help coach their lacrosse teams, go to their flag football games, and stay involved in their sporting life. That’s an arduous schedule, and I know that he’s dying inside a little bit when he can’t help with the practices during the week.

In 1993, David Williams, an offensive lineman for the Houston Oilers, took a game off to be at the birth of his son. The amount of excoriation was overwhelming. I’d suggest an action like that is worthy of Sportsman of the Year – fathers who choose to fly in the face of all that society instructs is the role of the father in order to be a partner in the raising of a child from the very moment of birth.

Little known fact: many of the fathers I know feel a vast amount of guilt when they’re away from their kids. I know I do. I’m writing this from backstage at a concert that I’m working on, and I would rather be reading to Josie and putting her to bed.

So here’s my suggestion to Aimee Crawford: how about recognizing working parents, not just mothers, and recognize that these days a large number of fathers take just as much time in their day to do sports and activities with kids as mothers do.

And the last time I checked, Candace Parker and Kim Clijsters were making buckets more money than I was.