Wanting work-life balance doesn't make Paul Ryan a hypocrite

So Paul Ryan doesn’t want to be Speaker of the House, but he says he’d take the job if granted certain conditions. One of these conditions: that some of the job’s duties be reduced so he’s not away from his family so much. Maybe he’s being strategic here; maybe he’s being totally unrealistic. But at a minimum, it’s an admirable thing for him to want to prioritize parenting, right?

Well, Sheryl Sandberg thinks so. But why, clever liberals want to know, does Sandberg not care about the Republican legislator’s hypocrisy, about the irony of what he’s asking for, about the fact that he’s an enemy of women? As history’s greatest monster, Paul Ryan is naturally opposed to lots of good things—including federal standards for paid family leave. So he’ll gets no kudos for wanting to spend time with his kids, because he is wrong and he is bad.

I’m aware that this story plays into intra-feminist debates about capitalism and class solidarity and child care, that Sandberg represents a pretty narrow, establishment vision of justice for women. And I get that liberals have complicated feelings about the question of Speaker Boehner’s successor, pointing as it does both to House Republicans’ disarray and to the fact that they’ve got the majority so locked down that they can afford to act like this.