Chelsea Clinton has recently announced that, because of her pregnancy, she is stepping down from her part-time news correspondent position.

Ms. Clinton is catching a lot of flack from the public because NBC News paid her up to $600,000 a year for doing nobody knows exactly what. Ms. Clinton does have a couple of college degrees, but so do the rest of us who started out receiving exactly $0 at unpaid internships.

A wife I know frowned grumpily when, newly married, she discovered that her Air Force pilot husband was earning more money than she was as a local TV news anchor.

So, yes, people are understandably focusing on the injustice of the Clinton family’s having been funneled an exorbitant amount of money by NBC, when other journalists are barely scraping by and/or being held captive in places like Syria right now. Ms. Clinton’s announcement, from a hard working American’s point of view, hardly seems like a great sacrifice worthy of national news.

Here is what I’m not hearing anyone say.

You can be a self-proclaimed feminist, and Chelsea Clinton is exactly that, having said, “Everyone I know is a feminist.” Your family can speak out against the perceived injustice that women are not being given equal opportunities for earning money. Hillary Clinton recently said this on women earning less per dollar than men: “We’ve got work to do.”

You can say things like this all day long. You can believe it, you can even lobby for it at the highest levels of government, as long as you are applying it to other people and other families. But when that sweet little bundle of yumminess is your own baby? All of that ideology flies right out the window.

What we have here, in the case of Chelsea Clinton and her husband, is simply this. A man and his wife are deciding that they want the mommy to work less so that she can be home with their baby. That is lovely. It is very traditional, which is to say, normal. 

No one cares? Maybe. But the following observation is deserving of our nation’s attention because it demonstrates the disturbing truth that policy does not always correlate to reality: Whether or not Chelsea Clinton will ever recognize it, God has placed within her a powerfully deep maternal longing that is stronger than $600,000 and is something that she cannot ever feminist away. 

When we try to stand at the kitchen sink or the kitchen counter to cook, and anyone in our family's population under the age of 3 is nearby, it can be highly frustrating.

They cry and hang on your legs.

As every woman has observed, cooking is a two handed operation. No matter how tenderhearted you are about letting your baby or toddler koala bear onto you all day long like a suction cup or a piece of velcro, you cannot hold them while you cook. You really cannot have them stuck to you in a baby sling or carrier either, because you can't see over them to see whether you are about to chop a carrot or a finger.

I shove my high chair up to the counter and let them stand in it facing the counter. It's like a tall stool that almost has sides.

Once the child is old enough to stand without crashing most of the time, they can stand in the high chair and help. This is probably violating 16 safety codes recommended by the pediatric association. But the pediatric association people are in climate controlled offices with no tiny people hanging on their legs crying while they try to give their power point presentations. This is real life. I haven't had anyone fall or paralyze themselves yet and it keeps the toddler occupied while you cook. I give them a tiny portion of whatever I'm working on to make them feel big. When they get old enough, I have an un-sharp knife that they can pretend to use to chop stuff up.

You're their whole world. They're not trying to ruin your day or sabotage your cooking. They just want to be right there with you because you're where the fun is, you're where the action is, and you're where the love is.