In their official First Lady portraits “20th-century predecessors show a parade of cream-colored gowns, strings of pearls and periwinkle skirts. Clinton rocked a pantsuit in midnight black.”

As first lady, she chaired the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, pushing a proposed healthcare system some in the media dubbed “Hillarycare.” That failed, but she found more success with 1997’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and then the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act.

She worked with the National Institutes of Health to ensure more funding for asthma and prostate cancer. She did not, in short, stay home and bake cookies. Evidence of her own career is visible within the official portrait itself: Her book, “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us,” lies on the table beside her.

I remember having scabbed knees almost continuously as a schoolgirl. I was not allowed to wear pants to school, and my dresses were usually torn open under their short sleeves. I played horses and ran around during recess. My mother liked to say I was hard on my clothes  I liked designing clothes for dolls but not actually playing with them.

It was my mother’s idea to get me a Barbie. I thought the doll’s tiny feet made to wear high heels, blue eye shadow, and bright red lips were stupid. Her hairstyle too. 

In the mean time, I had my Aunt Marcia, who lived in the Bay Area—Berkeley and later San Francisco. She was married to my Uncle Harry, but then lived alone. She was the model I wanted when I was a girl. Not Barbie, but an independent individual. Aunt Marcia made the single life an option, something possible and even elegant. She had affairs and a dog and she taught college Sociology. She empowered my daydreams of a single life as a person in my own right.

Hillary Rodham Clinton would have been a good model. Though I’m sorry for her philandering husband, I might like her better for forgiving her husband and supporting him than my aunt who was the one philandering. She was pilloried for saying: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession.” She was a lawyer and she took her turn supporting her family. I did that too, taking turns with my husband as the primary breadwinner. I admire what HRC accomplished, both what she did and what she tried to do.

Who wears the pants in the family? Everyone. There are plenty of women  who still believe that men should rule their households. My parents did not subscribe to that division of power. My husband and I do not either.

A family should not be ruled. A family should work together toward shared goals. It should be loving and caring and productive, not a dictatorship.