First ladies as role models for our girls?
President Calvin Coolidge didn’t want to talk politics with his glamorous wife, Grace. And he certainly didn’t want her to discuss current events in public.
He liked to see Mrs. Coolidge in stylish dresses, and she cheerfully obliged, keeping a hat and gloves perpetually at the ready so he could schedule formal events for her without warning. And what did Grace have to say about that setup?
“I am rather proud of the fact ... that my husband feels free to make his decisions and act upon them without consulting me,” she reports in “A Kids’ Guide to America’s First Ladies” by Kathleen Krull.
Ah, Grace: so lovely, so feminine, so obedient! Who among us would not want such a role model for our nation’s little girls?
In an age when women can be secretary of state and very nearly president, I’m guessing a lot of us, and that’s a problem when it comes to modern children’s books about first ladies.
There was a time when an unpaid hostessing gig was about as good as it got for female visibility and political influence, but that time is, thankfully, long gone. A woman doesn’t have to rush to the White House just because her husband is president — Melania Trump has shown us that. A woman can run for elected office herself, become an astronaut, perform brain surgery.
So why are we still pushing the married-to-the-president option for Presidents Day, with books such as the unfortunately titled “What’s the Big Deal About First Ladies” by former Hillary Clinton staffer Ruby Shamir?
Shamir’s breezy boosterism is problematic for a number of reasons, starting with broad generalizations: “No two first ladies did the job in the same way, but every first lady was a partner to the president and left her mark.” That statement is technically true, I guess — who doesn’t leave a mark? — but it’s misleading. We learn in Krull’s far more rigorous book that there were first ladies who did very little in their public roles, or even retreated to their rooms, in the manner of Jane Pierce.
There’s also the boredom factor. If you stick to the “they’re all remarkable in their own way” script, as Shamir so valiantly does, you end up celebrating Nellie Taft as, sigh, “The first first lady to ride with her husband after he took his oath of office promising to serve the country faithfully.”
Is there a child, anywhere, of either gender or any inclination, who will find that fact the least bit interesting?
And finally, there’s the big picture: When you celebrate first ladies for being first ladies, you run the risk of setting the bar for female achievement a tad low.
“Imagine if someone in your family really did become president and you got to help run the White House!” Shamir gushes in “What’s the Big Deal.”
OK, but imagine if you became president — and you got to help run the world.
There’s no job description for first ladies, Krull writes, and it’s unclear exactly when the term came into use. First ladies assumed hostessing duties from the very beginning, with Martha Wash- ington holding weekly public receptions and dinner parties. People often referred to Martha as Lady Washington, according to Krull, but a newspaper article did call her First Lady.
First ladies
The term seemed to gain traction after Dolley Madison presided at the White House, Krull writes, and it was in common usage by the 1930s.
Some first ladies really were a big deal — here’s looking at you Abigail (Adams), Eleanor (Roosevelt) and Betty (Ford). Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis championed the arts. Edith Wilson filled in for her husband after he suffered a severe stroke. And there’s nothing wrong with first lady books in and of themselves, according to Diane Foote, curator of the Butler Children’s Literature Center at Dominican University. Foote points to respected first lady books done right, such as Russell Freedman’s Newbery Honor-winning bio, “Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery.”
More recent first ladies can also make for great kids’ books, Foote says: “There are culturally current and relevant fig- ures. They are all over the news. People are interested in their stories. It can humanize the politicians they’re married to.”
The problem, she says, often lies in the process.
Kids’ books about famous people — not just first ladies but artists, politicians and sports stars — are often rushed into print without enough thought and research.
Foote points to a stinging 1994 Kirkus review of the book “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Activist First Lady” by T.J. Stacey: “Time and again, Stacey seems to wish to attribute Clinton’s achievements to a gooey, good Girl Scoutism. ... Speaking to her graduating class at Wellesley in 1969, Clinton declared: ’We’re searching for more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating modes of living.’ How a woman attracted to such modes became a player in American politics via one of the least ecstatic roles in society — First Lady — must be a fascinating and unusual story. Too bad young readers won’t find it here. This biography is bland and undistinguished.”
Krull’s book, a series of sparkling bios for the 8-12 set, succeeds in part because it dodges such pitfalls. Her first ladies are very different, quite complicated and not always all that admirable.