Andy Dworkin in the Oregonian's blog and in print last week wrote an interesting article about political candidates using babies in advertisements and public appearances. In the paper version, he wondered why I pictured my longtime friend Terri Preeg Riggsby's baby son, rather than my own seventeen year-old daughter, as the "parenthood" image in my campaign TV ad.

I mentioned this to my daughter. She laughed the short, sarcastic, mirthless laugh only produced by humans aged 13 - 19, and said, "Just wait til he has a teenager. Then he'll understand."

That's part of the answer. A parent can *make* a baby pose in a photograph - Terri and I had fun getting Caleb to smile for the camera. Few people can *make* a teenager do anything.

There are two other reasons I chose not to use photographs of my sons and daughter in my ads. One, this campaign is my task, not my daughter's. Her job, on the Monday we zoomed all over Portland taking photos for the ads, was to be in school, finishing up the classes she needs to graduate in June. Over the seventeen years I've been a parent in Portland Public Schools, Steve and I have kept our children out of school electively only once. That was to attend their grandparents' retirement ceremony in New York, back when they were in grade school. We have stressed firmly and repeatedly that their work is to be in school and do their assignments and extracurricular activities to the best of their abilities.

The other reason photographs of my children aren't in the cable ad, (did you catch it on ESPN during the NFL draft? NOW, my sons think I'm legit :) is that the producers wanted action shots, not posed group pictures. And our younger son, Maxwell, is in New Jersey at college. We took standard family portrait shots on Christmas Day, the last time our family of five was together in one place. Taking a photograph of "Amanda's family" or "Amanda's children" without Maxwell was unthinkable.

All this aside, I don't want anyone to think I lack proud-to-bustin' motherly championing of my children. I think they're super cute, and I know I will win many votes as "Luke's mom", "Maxwell's mom", and "Ali's mom". So here is a photograph of me 'n' the kids, taken on Christmas Day by Steve - my husband, their father.

See? Super cute.