I've been puzzling over my feelings about John McCain's choice for his running mate for several days now, as more details about Gov. Sarah Palin and her family life come to light. Like many women my age, who came to adulthood in the era of Gloria Steinem, Ms. magazine and the ERA, I have been waiting for the day when I could vote for a woman for president.

As the mother of daughters, I look forward to seeing them live in a world free of sexism, where they can truly be anything they want, including president.

With some chagrin, I'll admit that I've caught myself thinking that a mother of five might have more on her mind than running a country -- particularly when one child is a handicapped baby, one is headed off to war and one is pregnant as a teenager. She also has a bad ex-brother-in-law and a potential son-in-law who claimed on his MySpace page to be a "f--ing redneck."

Well, sheesh. If that was my family, I'd want to run off on the campaign trail, too.

Palin's daughter is a poster child -- literally -- for why abstinence-only messages don't work on teenagers. The hunky boyfriend trumped mom's message pretty thoroughly, didn't he?

Lucky for Bristol it's only a baby and not HIV disease, sterility-inducing clamydia or any number of other serious venereal diseases that can be the consequence of unprotected sex.

The public reaction to Palin's teen-pregnancy revelation makes me laugh:"Oh, well, this happens to millions of families. The American people will understand."

Uh, not really. Most parents of 17-year-olds do not, in fact, have to deal with pregnancy. It's neither normal nor common, thank goodness. It is, in fact, a problem. Bristol Palin, like Jamie Lynn Spears before her, is no role model for my two teenage daughters.

I'm sad that the Grand Old Party couldn't find a more qualified woman with a little less baggage to put forward as their vice presidential candidate. Call me elitist -- I'm sure someone will -- but I think Sarah Palin sets back the position of women in this country by decades. It's just too easy to look at her and think: "This is it? This is the best women have to offer?"

Thank goodness there are plenty of women and mothers like me who know that it is not.

I was talking about the election with my daughter Beth the other day, and she said: “Well, all the Republican kids in my class are completely looney anyway.”

You cannot let a sentence like that fly by without a follow up. “Really?” I said. “How are they looney?”

This is a paraphrase, but it goes something like this: One boy, whose redeeming qualities include a love for baseball and a straight-A average, says he hates McCain almost as much as Obama and Clinton. Because McCain is too liberal.

But that's not what makes the boy crazy, according to Beth. He's crazy, she says, because he thinks the war in Iraq is a good thing — and he says that it would be OK to draft people to build up the Army.

Ha, she says, scoffing at him. “I know him. He’d be the first one across the border to Mexico if he got drafted. He’s not going to fight and risk getting himself killed.”

But that’s nothing compared to one girl in her class, a spoiled brat whose parents seem to give her every possession she wants despite her frequent detentions and skipping class enough to be at risk of failing eighth grade even though she makes 5s on her FCATs.

She says that women do not need to vote and that all a girl really needs is to marry a rich man. Women should not work, she says, and they don’t need any rights because their husbands will take care of them.

Well, how can everyone marry a rich man? Beth rightly wonders. “It’s crazy.”

That it is. I can only hope that these two kids do not represent our future.

This Mother's Day is, for me, proof that teen life does not stop for anything – especially not me.

Daughter No. 1 is spending the night with her best friend because they have a big night of watching Supernatural on the TiVo. This is because they have spent the past week in technical rehearsals as crew for the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater production of Seussical and studying for AP exams, and thus were unable to watch their favorite CW show.

Daughter No. 2, the thespian in the family, has roped me into working at the Seussical character brunch on Sunday, so that she can be there to perform as a character. If you go -- and I highly recommend it as a great, inexpensive Mother's Day outing -- you'll see her as Alice in Wonderland. (Horton and the Cat in the Hat will be there, too.) Let it be noted that I signed up to help at the brunch before I knew it was Mother's Day.

In the afternoon, both girls will be in the play. Then they'll help strike the set and head off to the cast party. I figure I'll see them sometime around 9 p.m.

So, instead of lounging around the house reading the New York Times all Sunday morning and eating breakfast cooked for me by my daughters (who actually can cook), I will be serving food to other moms and not seeing my own kids.

The day gets better after the brunch, though. My husband has promised me lunch at my favorite sushi restaurant. The kids have rides to the cast party and home again, so I am saved from the interminable carpool.

After all those years of hovering like Horton over his egg, this might be the best Mother's Day yet. Once the morning is over, I get to rest, relax and pretend I have no kids.

Martini anyone?

More ideas on how to spend Mom's Day.

I was helping my 14-year-old daughter to get her sheets on her bed in the few minutes before a friend came over to visit.

I picked up a piece of paper that was stuck between mattress and headboard, that looked like it could be trash, but to be sure, I glanced at its contents.

BIG MISTAKE.

This set off a firestorm of protest. Paper snatched from my hand, quickly wadded and thrown away. Defiant glare.

Truthfully, I didn’t have time to process the contents, and caught only one name, which I am now sworn by the bonds of motherhood never to reveal, for fear of losing all connection to my child forevermore.

This note was a note to herself, she later explained, in which she essentially was reinventing herself and saying what she might be like if she could be someone else and who she might pretend to have as a boyfriend. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s her story and she’s sticking to it.

I did not mean to invade my daughter’s privacy. But this incident did remind me how powerfully teens react to the mere perception of a privacy invasion, even when there is nothing at all to hide. What’s interesting to me, though, is that Beth will tell me who she’s on IM with. She’ll even tell me about the contents of her conversations sometimes.

What’s the dif? “Well, that’s a safety issue, Mom,” she says. “I know you’re just trying to keep me safe.”

Well, amen to that.

Our 16-year-old daughter, a vegetarian, has recently read the book The Omnivores Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.

This New York Times bestseller opened her eyes to food additives, including high fructose corn syrup, MSG, hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners. Pollan, a science and food writer who has conducted tremendous research into where our food comes from, suggests a mantra we should all live by: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

By food, he means food that would be recognizable to your great-great grandparents in the 19th century. Food that comes from real plants and animals that are fed what nature intended for them to eat.

Abby vowed on Easter Sunday that she would no longer eat any bad food additives. Her chocolate bunny remains unopened. She printed a list for my reference from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group of liberal, activist scientists concerned about our food supply .

Meanwhile, daughter No. 2, who will eat meat and has no compunctions regarding high-fructose, multicolored “food,” gets insanely painful migraines of unknown source. The neurologist’s recommendation: No food additives. No peanuts. No chocolate. No caffeine. No hard cheeses.

And my husband has slightly elevated blood pressure, so low-sodium for him.

I challenge you to walk in my shoes for just one trip to the grocery store. Try reading the labels on everything you buy. High fructose corn syrup is everywhere: In crackers. In jelly. In waffles and cereal. In strawberry cream cheese. Artificial sweeteners are in almost anything labeled “low” or “no” sugar. MSG is in packaged soups, taco seasoning, salad dressings and lots of mixed spices. You’ll see long lists of things that turn out to be benign vitamins in bread, but then there’s BHA or BHT. There are sulfites in bacon, sausage and frozen turkey and chicken products.

Sodium is loaded into soups, canned vegetables and almost every prepared food. Cold cuts have all kinds of complicated-sounding preservatives. Tuna has traces of toxic metals such as mercury which might trigger migraines.

Do you know how hard it is in the 21st century to sustain yourself on a 19th-century diet?

We’re managing so far. But even with the no-additives diet, our younger daughter has been sidelined with a migraine for the past two days.

I guess I really am going to have to take that no-peanuts edict seriously. But what do you put in a lunchbox for a kid who cannot eat cheese, peanut butter, cold cuts or tuna?

Two stories in the Sun-Sentinel this week provided openings for me to continue the conversation about sex with my two daughters, ages 14 and 16.

My older daughter brought the first story to my attention at 7 a.m. over breakfast on Wednesday. I was barely awake and very glad that I am certain of my message to her regarding sex, so I didn't have to think too hard.

"Ohmigod," she exclaimed. "Fifty percent of teens are sexually active?" That was on the jump of the story that, rightfully, had the news in the lead: That a fourth of teenage girls are infected with common sexually transmitted diseases.

I don't know if my daughter was thinking she needed to get with it, or if she was stunned that so many of her friends and acquaintances are having sex. But it gave me the opening to tell her, again, that I don't think sex at her age is advisable. That's partly because she could get a disease, as this story quite clearly shows, but also because sex should be between two people who care deeply about each other and are committed to their relationship.

It's not something to take lightly, I tell my children. And preferably, they should be old enough to be at least considering marriage before they start having sex.

But, I always say, if they do decide to have sex, they need to use a condom every time. And they should also be aware that even condoms are not 100 percent effective against all sexually transmitted diseases. Only abstinence is.

I didn't really want to have that conversation at 7 a.m., so my daughter got a shortened, somewhat sleepy, version. And then, today, another opportunity appeared on the Sun-Sentinel's 1B, a story about teens trying to convince other teens that the danger of contracting HIV is real.

This opening was even easier: "Sex can kill you."

I don't really want to frighten my children into never having sex, but if my frequent talks about it helps to keep them safe, then I've done my job.

So far, so good. What's your strategy for discussing sex with your children?

A boy came into the peer tutoring class at my daughter's middle school looking for help on his Spanish I homework. The teacher turned to the two native speakers in the class and asked them to help. They happily agreed.

"What do you need?" one of them asked.

"Well," said the boy, "I don't understand how to conjugate these irregular verbs."

"Say what?" the two answered. "We have no idea what that is."

My daughter, who is making an A in Spanish II but is far from fluent, took a look. "Oh, yeah," she said. "This is what you do. Basically, you just have to memorize these ones that aren't like the others."

And that's how she became this boy's Spanish tutor. This made me laugh. Kids who speak Spanish can't teach it, but a kid who doesn't speak Spanish can?

We don't teach speakers of Spanish how to write, read and speak correctly in their native language until maybe high school or college -- if ever.

And apparently, we don't teach them enough about conjugating verbs in English that it makes sense to them in Spanish, too.

I've been told that this lack of correct Spanish is a pretty big issue for Spanish-language media, which often ends up passing over American employees in favor of people who have studied Spanish in their home countries the way that we study English.

It's too bad that schools in the United States can't teach native Spanish speakers about the structure of their own language while also teaching them English. Maybe if we did that, we could also teach Spanish to the English-only masses while they are still young enough to absorb new languages -- in elementary and middle school, not beginning in high school.

Ours is one of the few countries in the world with such poor instruction in foreign languages. Don't you think that should change?

Since I am often quick to critcize the school lunch program -- particularly in light of the horrendous choice the program made with its beef supplier -- let me also be the first to praise when school lunch goes right.

Today Broward County Public Schools announced that it will offer a vegetarian lunch option starting next week. Unfortunately, only three schools get the privilege of choosing a Gardenburger: Everglades High, Driftwood Middle and Eagle Point Elementary.

I have to hope that these schools are just a test to see if students will choose a Gardenburger. I know mine would. I'm still hoping for other vegetarian choices beyond a salad bar or cheese pizza -- lentil soup, vegetable soup, black beans and rice, or perhaps a nice bean and cheese burrito?

But the Gardenburger is a great start. It's a far better choice than beef, even when the beef is not from a questionable source. Gardenburgers have no saturated fat, no transfat, no cholesterol. They are high in protein, so they fill kids up. The production of Gardenburgers uses no methane (a byproduct of cattle that contributes to global warming). AND they taste good!

Altogether, a better choice. Thank you, Broward Schools.

It was a bad Monday morning. It started when my older daughter blatantly and repeatedly refused to do something I had ordered her to do: Wear her contact lenses to school.

Of course this went nowhere. Everyone knows that ordering a teen to do something she does not want to do is a very good way to ensure that it won’t be done.

It makes no sense to me why the girl will not wear her contact lenses, which she must have in order to play water polo. She has astigmatism, so the lenses take some getting used to. It’s not like your typical nearsightedness that can be corrected in an instant. No. When you have astigmatism, your eyes need time to adjust to the glasses or contacts. Then you see 20-20.

Besides, she looks great in her contacts. She has beautiful eyes, with think dark eyebrows like Brooke Shields. But my daughter is not a primper. It took six months to convince her to keep her hair brushed.

I’m her mama. I want my girl to look beautiful when she goes to school. So I nag. And sometimes I just lose it. What 16-year-old girl does not want to look pretty going to school, for heaven's sake?

Also, on a practical mothering note, I want her eyes to adjust to the lenses so that she can see while she’s treading water, fighting defenders and having a ball thrown toward her head. Call me crazy.

I certainly felt crazy this morning as I was lecturing at my daughter all the way to school over something as trivial as wearing contacts.

I really hate it when I’m like that. Usually our drive to school is much more fun. We listen to music together and talk about friends. Or we discuss something we read recently, or maybe the work she has to do for her classes. I like that 20 minutes most days.

Today I made her cry. When she said, “Mom, will you just let me finish my sentence?” I said, “NO!” And then, regretting, “yes.” She said she will wear the lenses three days a week. OK, I said, but it needs to be three days in a row.

It’s a start. Maybe if I can get her for three days, she’ll make it four. We'll see. We have to get one day first.

Good for the South Florida's school boards for taking quick action to pull the beef from school lunch menus in the wake of a USDA shut down of one of the meat suppliers to the National School Lunch Program.

I never thought school food looked edible, appetizing or, in fact, very nutritious even before I read this appalling report. (In defense of school lunch, I will say that South Florida Parenting's longtime nutrition columnist, in whom I have utmost respect, tells me the nutrition quality of school lunch is actually pretty good.)

Still, I would never eat that stuff and could never force my kids to eat it either, even on those days when it would be so much easier to hand them money than to scrounge for something to put in the lunch box.

Now I'm really glad my kid packs her lunch every day. She may not eat everything in her lunchbox. No doubt there's a fair amount of food-trading going on at her lunch table, just as at any other. But I'm pretty sure she'd trade carrots for cookie, not meatballs or beef patty.

I don't know why school food is so awful. I know they have to feed a lot of people in a short time on a limited budget, but is that any excuse for serving meat from abused cows to children? And why do they bother, honestly, with slopping a pile of slimy, smelly spinach on any kid's plate? Can't there be some way to serve fresh, healthy, antibiotic-free, disease-free food to children at school?

Maybe Heath Ledger's accidental death will count for something.

Maybe it will make some of the 2,500 kids each day who try a painkiller to get high for the first time to decide not to. Most kids who try painkillers do it because they think it's a "safe" high, according to a new study from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Or maybe Ledger's death will wake up the parents who stock painkillers and sedatives such as those that killed him-- oxycodone, Percocet, Perodan, valium, Xanax -- to keep a lock, and an eye, on those drugs.

Just two days after Ledger's death, the Office of National Drug Control Policy -- the folks responsible for "Parents: The AntiDrug" campaign -- launched a new national campaign to teach parents about teen prescription drug abuse. Because parents' medicine cabinets are where the drugs are coming from.

There's lots to be alarmed about, not the least of which is that prescription drugs are easier to get, cheaper and more dangerous than the only drug teens use more than prescription pills: marijuana. You can find the entire study here.

So what do you think? Will Ledger's death make a difference? Do you think teen prescription drug abuse is a big deal?

First, it was Jamie Lynn Spears. My kids, ages 13 and 16, were as appalled as I was. Their conversation centered around the dysfunction of the Spears family.

Then came Juno, a delightful movie about a pregnant 16-year-old whose personality is so cool, who wouldn’t want to be like her? Except that … she’s pregnant!

So the talk we had about this movie was a little different than the Zoey 101 talk. I could see that my daughters really liked Juno. And sure, it’s admirable that she had the baby and gave it to a rich woman who desperately wanted a child. But I felt compelled to explain that not getting pregnant in the first place would really be the admirable thing.

It must be on the brain these days. Last week, in a meeting with students who write for our teen newspaper, Teenlink, one of the students asserted, with not one bit of doubt, that one in three high school girls gets pregnant.

Uh, no. Our youth editor and I corrected her. That is not true. “Oh, yes, it is,” she said. “It’s just that most of them have abortions.”

Where do kids get this stuff?

In truth, the evidence regarding teen pregnancy and sexuality is mostly good news.

The rate of abortion is at its lowest level since 1974, according to the Guttmacher Institute, respected by advocates on both sides of the abortion debate for the accuracy of its research.

The teen pregnancy rate has been steadily declining, too. It is about 75 pregnancies per 1,000 girls ages 15-19, again according to Guttmacher statistics, as reported by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. That’s 7.5 per 100, less than one in 10 – still too many, but not even close to 1 in 3. Thank goodness.

The teen birth rate did increase last year for the first time in 15 years, from 40.5 births per 1,000 girls ages 15-19 to 41.9 births per 1,000.

But even with that increase, there’s evidence that teens are waiting until they’re older to have their first sexual encounter. The birth rate continues to decline for younger teens.

So, I guess messages like the one I continually send to my teenage daughters is getting through: Wait. Don’t have sex until you know that you are ready, preferably not soon.

I can't wait to hear about how Beth's day went today, after all the excitement of yesterday when the English teacher spent the entire day telling the students how angry she was with them.

For what?

Because they did not write their FCAT practice essay when they had a substitute teacher the day before. In the students' defense, the substitute, I'm told by my daughter, didn't find the correct "prompt" -- the question that they were supposed to write about -- until halfway through the class.

These eighth-graders, all honors students who have been subjected to non-stop FCAT writing prep since August, decided not to write the essay in the remaining 20 minutes of class.

The next day, which was yesterday, the teacher was "livid" with them. She accused one child of hiding the prompt from the substitute teacher. She grilled several students about the behavior of others.

When some of these kids felt enough remorse to write an apology card and enclose their finished essays with it, the teacher TORE UP the essays and the card in front of them. Or, that's what I'm told she did.

It sounds so awful. The poor woman is over the edge.

As far as I can tell -- and I'll admit I'm likely not getting the whole story -- the kids weren't all that bad for the substitute teacher. They were just acting like 13-year-olds do when they don't want to do something.

I guess that is enough to make a middle-school teacher livid. Think about how often she encounters 13-year-olds who don't want to do what she asks. That would be daily, I'm guessing.

It would be enough to drive anyone crazy.

Still, wouldn't it be better to give these students a break? Let them read and discuss some short stories or write some poetry or read a play out loud, or do something other than writing FCAT essays three times a week?

Maybe they wouldn't be such a challenge if their teacher let them enjoy English class for a change.