The New York Post Calls NYC First Lady a 'Bad Mom'

Were you planning on reading New York Magazine’s seven-page profile on Chirlane McCray? Don’t waste your time, when you can read the New York Post’s totally not cherry-picked attempts to paint Bill DeBlasio’s wife as a mother in the Betty Draper mold, starting off with a brilliant headline: “NYC’s first lady: I was a bad mom.”

The sin here? That part where McCray admits that she didn’t spend every single day with eldest child Chiara during her infancy, because of a desire not to be defined solely as a mother, or to give up her career. As quoted in the original NYMag story:

Chiara was born in December 1994, seven months after the wedding, when Bill was working on Francisco Diaz’s state assembly campaign. McCray had always imagined a life with children, but as with so many women the reality of motherhood—the loss of independence, the relentlessness of the responsibility—was difficult. “I was 40 years old. I had a life. Especially with Chiara—will we feel guilt forever more? Of course, yes. But the truth is, I could not spend every day with her. I didn’t want to do that. I looked for all kinds of reason not to do it. I love her. I have thousands of photos of her—every 1-month birthday, 2-month birthday. But I’ve been working since I was 14, and that part of me is me. It took a long time for me to get into ‘I’m taking care of kids,’ and what that means.”

Crazily enough, I read this quote as an honest assessment of the sacrifices you make when you become a mother, especially in the context of being a feminist organizer for most of your adult life (which the article sets up for three pages before that). To the Post however, this means that McCray is lacking as a human being and as a woman (because who are we kidding here?), who basically set Chiara up for her later substance abuse issues, as Post writer Bruce Golding implies here:

In a startlingly frank confession, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s wife says she was unable to embrace motherhood and initially neglected Chiara, who last year dropped the bombshell that she was in treatment for abusing booze and pot.

Then there’s this part where the Post measure McCray against that monolith of “most moms,” and finds her lacking:

The disclosure — bound to horrify most moms — shatters the carefully crafted image of de Blasio’s close-knit family, which helped vault him into office.

Good job, Chirlane. Not only did your audacity to be overwhelmed by early motherhood fuck up your daughter for good, but you probably killed your husband’s political career as well!

The article later concludes with a heee-larious attempt to pit McCray against Sheryl Sandberg. As always, stay classy, New York Post.