Mothers and Sons

When I saw the video of Elon Musk striding into the Capitol last week, child slung across his shoulders, reminiscent of the way in which wealthy New York women used to flaunt the must-have-impossible-to-get accessory, their Birkin bags, it occurred to me that the sagas of parents and sons are a thing right now.There’s the emergence of Barron Trump — who has literally found his voice — as someone who has “brand value” in the Trump family.Fox NewsAnd then there’s the resurfacing headache of the Biden family’s perennial problem child: Hunter Biden, who required a literal “get out of jail free” card from his dad for Christmas.(I couldn’t understand the surprised reaction in the press about this. Everything we’ve ever known about President Biden has indicated that one of his great weaknesses is his lack of a clear eyes and a firm hand around his troubled offspring).And then there’s the other parent in the news, the one who struck a chord with me: Penelope Hegseth, the Minnesota mom of Trump’s controversial nominee for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.More than a week ago the New York Times published an email she’d written to her son, in extremis, in the middle of his second divorce in 2018.President Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, at the Capitol on December 4, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesIt struck me first and foremost as an example of extraordinary courageous parenting — although the point of it, according to a spokesperson for the New York Times who defended its publication, was it told us extra damning details about Mr. Hegseth’s problematic attitudes to women. (He was accused of sexual assault in 2017, but settled the claims, saying the encounter was consensual. The New Yorker then reported that he was pushed out twice from the top of two non-profits amid claims of intoxication on the job, sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement. He has denied the claims.)A reminder of the two worst paragraphs:You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.I am not a saint, far from it.. so don’t throw that in my face,. but your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called outI am certainly not going to defend Mr. Hegseth, about whom I know little more than know what I’ve read in the press — and the “little” extra I do know is not good. But when the New York Times published that email, I’d argue they put the wrong person on trial: the mother not the son.Pete Hegseth speaks onstage during the 2023 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on November 16, 2023 at Nashville. Terry Wyatt/Getty ImagesAnd they put her in an impossible position.Of course she went on Fox News in the aftermath to do damage control. Of course she castigated the Times for publishing it. And of course, she said what she’d written was “not true”, and written in “haste” and in the midst of “deep emotions” … that she’d felt horrible and apologized to him right after. And of course, she said on camera that her son Pete is the right guy for America, etc etc etc.What else is a mother supposed to say?Is something she wrote in private to her son, openly leaning into the privilege of the mother-son bond, an objective indicator of anything other than the depth of her emotion at that moment?I am the mother of twin 21-year-old sons who are most definitely nothing like Mr. Hegseth. They are gentlemen. They are kind, smart and they almost always make their mother — of whom they are fiercely protective — very proud.Singer Kelly Rowland, second from left, is interviewed by co-hosts, left to right, Pete Hegseth, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade on ‘Fox And Friends’ at FOX Studios on March 21, 2016 at New York City. Ben Gabbe/Getty ImagesHowever…. (Yes, in case you are wondering, they have approved what follows…)On occasion, there are “growing pains,” which results in their mother rolling her eyes and articulating words she would not want to re-read in the New York Times two minutes later, let alone seven years.I’m thinking of a fairly predictable scenario.Like the time I appeared in my living room minutes after they’d had the mother of all parties… and they were under the impression they’d cleaned it up. I thought I handled it pretty well, initially: I looked around at the debris and said matter-of-factly, “I am going to bed: when I wake up, this room will not be looking like this”…and the room was looking much better when I wandered in the next morning, but the long-term damage was now more clearly visible; I took in the cigarette burn in my brand new carpet, my depleted wine supply (I am the moron for not locking it away), and the stains on my couch, and I felt my blood pressure rise and a sweat starting to form. The calm of the night before vanished, replaced by a scary version of myself, as I went to knock on their bedroom doors and let them have it.Admittedly, I have never had cause to say anything to either of my sons that rises anywhere near the level of the language Penelope Hegseth appears to have felt she needed to use in an email to her son. And, yes, it’s a tell that she put her thoughts in writing. We usually think harder about things we write, than when we toss them off verbally. Because we know that the written word has a shelf-life and can be referred back to.President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, speaks to reporters as he leaves the Russell Senate Office Building on November 21, 2024 at Washington, DC. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesBut she is also right, per my example, when she says that parents say things to our children in the moment that reflect more than anything else the level of our emotions. And she’s also right, notionally, when she says one’s children do grow up.Whether or not Penelope’s son, Mr. Hegseth has “redeemed himself” over these past seven years, as she claimed on Fox News, is up for a debate, one that a Senate confirmation committee will hopefully hear.But I hope that this one email to him isn’t part of the discussion around the facts of his behavior and character, of which there seem to be an abundance.Because what I think the email chiefly tells us is something that is helpful to Mr. Hegseth’s cause actually — which is that he’s got a terrific mom.Adapted from Ms. Ward’s Substack

Mothers and Sons

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