From WSJOpinion: The caricature of Amy Coney Barrett as someone out of the “Handmaid’s Tale” is not only unfair but wildly at odds with the reality of her life, writes katebachwsj
Main Street: With the nomination of Catholic Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, will Joe Biden's Democratic Party practice what it preaches? Images: AFP/Getty Images Composite: Mark KellyAmy Coney Barrett has been not-so-subtly depicted as straight out of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel. Judge Barrett, a mother of seven who sits on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, belongs to a Christian group known as People of Praise.
Some might have been surprised Saturday to learn that Judge Barrett lives in a household where her “superb and generous husband” often cooks and does “far more than his share of the work” raising their children. What she has said about work and family over the years confounds the normal contours of the culture wars. She is a walking example of how young children and demanding work can coexist—I dare suggest even happily. More women should hear her message of personal decency and nonconformity.
Interviews with Judge Barrett invariably ask how she balances her professional obligations with the demands of raising seven children. At a February 2019with the Notre Dame Club of Washington, D.C., Judge Barrett said she’s benefited from “a flexible workplace and a husband” who “pitches in, and a town of a manageable size”—South Bend., Ind., where she spent more than a decade as a Notre Dame law professor. She used to keep a basket of toys in her office so her kids could play while she worked.
She and her husband, Jesse, a former government attorney now in private practice, “were open to either one of us staying home” at “different points when things were intense with the children,” a trading back and forth that is common in dual-career marriages. Since her 2017 investiture as a judge, “Jesse is really doing much more of the heavy lifting,” including “most of the cooking” and “most of the kids’ doctor’s appointments and things like that during the day.
At her 2017 confirmation hearing, she introduced her older children and joked that the others were back home with “friends and fearless babysitters,” a line she used again Saturday. When her kids visit her courtroom, they like to “write out indictments for one another,”earlier this year. She’s mentioned leaving work to, say, run an activity at a kid’s school. This life of blending worlds sounds familiar.
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