High-Powered Moms Are Missing Best Part of Life

I am tired of the glorification of that mythical all-powerful female with the high-powered career, the husband with an equally high-powered (or even more high-powered) career and the requisite two children being raised by a staff, and perhaps a relative looking in now and then (“The Fine Art of Juggling the Kids and the President,” March 4).

Juleanna Weiss, press secretary to Dick Cheney and mother of an 11-month-old and a 2 1/2-year-old, looks forward to “midnight awakenings as a gift of playtime that she misses during the day.” My children were about that age when my husband and I made the unpopular decision that I would resign from my career and raise my children.

We worship success and power in this society. Lezlee Westine, a deputy assistant to the president, had to help her 8-year-old daughter adjust to a new life. “That meant setting up five play dates in one week alone, finding a suitable Brownie troop and signing up for a soccer team.” If only real parenting were that easy.

No one, not even these super-women of Washington, can have it all. As a stay-at-home, part-time working mom, I believe that I have the best part.

JOAN WAGNER

Los Alamitos