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For generations, The Mommy Wars have largely skipped black women. For most of us, staying at home to raise our children full-time was never a choice. Our families’ survival depended on our wages—often earned from nurturing and caring for white families. With the rise of a post-civil rights generation, a critical mass of high-powered black women like the Princeton and Harvard-trained first lady Michelle Obama, have more options than ever. After gaining the educational credentials our mothers and grandmothers could only have dreamed of, many of us have exulted and rejoiced in having the choice to stay at home and raise our own children—a decision celebrated by black stay-at-home mothers’ groups like “Mocha Moms.”

As Michelle prepares to move to the White House to become “mom in chief,” the always racially-charged Mommy Wars have reached new heights. In a joint effort with NPR’s daily talk show Tell Me More, The Root has brought together four accomplished mothers—Rebecca Walker, Jolene Ivey, Leslie Morgan Steiner and Anna Perez—to share their takes on Michelle’s choices. With viewpoints that are funny, brash and bracing, the four women bring controversial and conflicting perspectives that are sure to spark spirited and downright-heated discussions about Michelle’s—and all women’s—choices.

Read the essays on The Root, then listen to the writers as they talk with Michel Martin on Tell Me More. (Check your local NPR station for airtimes, or listen to the show online.)

The Ultimate Mocha Mom
 

by Jolene Ivey, co-founder of Mocha Moms

I am thrilled beyond belief for Michelle Obama. Not just because she is black, but because she is making the same choice now that I made for my family. Black at-home moms often face particularly harsh isolation and judgment. Clair Huxtable did it all, but she only had to keep it together 22 minutes a week. Michelle Obama has a chance to create a new template for what a fully functioning African-American family can be.  Read More

How Michelle Obama Passed for White

by Leslie Morgan Steiner, editor of the anthology Mommy Wars

The J. Crew twin sets and Donna Reed hair won over white women voters. “See, she dresses just like us,” we thought to ourselves. “We can trust her!” But the mom-first spin is dangerous and insulting. I don’t know any moms, working or not, who don’t put their kids first. What she and we should be talking about is work/life balance. Michelle brings something to the table, and we need her at the table, suring up all women’s choices.  Read More

The End of Feminism As We Know It?

by Rebecca Walker, author Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence

When Michelle Obama prioritized her life over her career in a widely viewed television interview, I cheered. Feminism’s slippery promise of diversity has long been built around white centrism, its monopoly by women over 50, its de facto placement of the rest of us in the margins. Michelle’s rise challenges that centrism. She so embodies feminist goals that she surpasses them. How will white feminists deal with that?  Read More

You Make the Rules

by Anna Perez, press secretary to former first lady Barbara Bush

If you think you’ve been under a lot of scrutiny, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The good news is that the relentless glare can also help you shed light on important work being done by you and others around the country and world. The White House is full of traditions, but traditions are guides, not rules. It may be the People’s House, but the next four years, at least, it will be your home. Set your own tone.  Read More

READ Tell Me More host Michel Martin’s essay on http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97082447 “>What Michelle Obama is Giving Up. Listen to the ‘Mom-in-Chief’ podcast on Tell Me More.

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All the sisters want to trap themselves a Barack Obama archetype, and are in search of the perfect poison to put in their potion of love to get them an instant presidential candidate. You all know how I feel about it — it’s not like I think women should opt out of college or a successful career, like at least one dim bulb suggested. No, it’s more about having your priorities in place, as I have suggested here and of course, in my book. Finally, it seems as if at least one black woman smells what I’m cooking.

First Lady Michelle Obama finally revealed her secret for choosing, meeting and keeping a good man.So, basically you focus on the important things, like if dude is right in the head, if he has a good heart, and notsomuch whether or not he is some ideal of “perfection”? Really? That’s so weird, because whenever I have suggested that there really is no such thing as Mr. Right, I’ve been castigated. Women tend to listen to other women — certainly before they would ever consider the advice of a black man — so I guess it makes sense that when Michelle Obama gives the same dating advice I gave, it sounds like some grand revelation. But it doesn’t matter to me. I just know that the holidays are just around the corner, and for many sisters trying to hunt down their own personal Denzel Washington, it’s gonna be a lonely Christmas.

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Yo, Dora, I’m really happy for you, and I’m a let you finish, but PBS had the best children’s television show of all time.

I loved Sesame Street. I still do. I guess that’s why I’m slightly offended when my 4-year-olds act like there are cooler, more interesting characters to watch on TV than the likes of Big Bird and The Count. As a 30-something parent with her own precious memories of the show, and as one who’s relied on Elmo on more than one occasion (even if it was just to get dishes done or make veggies disappear) I resent my twins’ indifference. Cookie Monster could take Caillou, no question. Big ups to Little Bill, but come on. No other show makes learning fun while celebrating diversity while encouraging positive interaction and highlighting the importance of playing fair. I know that goes against the Toddler’s Creed, I’m just sayin’.

Trying to keep my kids intellectually afloat in a sea of saccharine programming (nothing personal, Lazy Town) is no joke. I now realize that the reason my mom responded to PBS’s yearly fundraising campaign with such fervor was because Sesame Street worked wonders for my tenderheadedness (she used the show as a ploy to get me to sit still while she braided my hair) and taught me valuable life lessons at the same time. And what busy mama (or papa) can’t appreciate being rescued —momentarily, anyway—from picking Cheerios up off of the floor by a musical interlude by Stevie Wonder, John Legend or Jill Scott? Or a lesson on emotions through a spoof of Mad Men?

My kids can stage a sit-in for The Backyardigans if they want to; I’m looking forward to checking out today’s premiere of Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary season. With an environmental theme entitled, “My World is Green and Growing,” and an appearance by Michelle Obama, the street that’s always felt like home to me just seems to get better with time. Yet somehow, it still remains timeless—consistently showing us the way things “should be,” by creating a world where

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