So Michelle Obama describes her role as “mom in chief”. I find that splendid – and I am not a big fan of hers. She has two young daughters and she is choosing to devote her energies to raising them.

My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom in chief,” she explained, “making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls . . . that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.”

So of course it annoys prominent feminists, like this one:

I was okay, actually, with what Obama said. But I worried: Did she have to say it out loud, quite so explicitly? Is it really good for the team — the team here being working women — to have the “mommy” stamp so firmly imprinted on her identity?

And most of all: What does it say about the condition of modern women that Obama, catapulted by her husband’s election into the ranks of the most prominent, sounded so strangely retro — more Jackie Kennedy than Hillary Clinton?

Hey, I thought feminism meant women could choose to be anything they wanted and not let societal expectations dictate their choice. Whatever happened to that, huh?