First Lady's Mentoring Plan Great; Now, Let's Make it Co-Ed

On Monday, the first lady's office launched a mentoring program, pairing 20 high school girls with a group of White House mentors. In addition to Michelle Obama, the Chicago Tribune reports that senior administration adviser Valerie Jarrett, the first lady's chief of staff Susan Sher, head of the public liaison office Tina Tchen, and White House social secretary Desiree Rogers rounded out the list of White House staffers participating.

Now, on one hand, I love seeing a group of White House power players woman up for a girls' mentoring program; on the other, I wish the list also included Rahm Emanuel, Steven Chu and Peter Orszag.

In addition to talking about college and career choices, Tchen told the Tribune that she also expects they will talk about balancing work and motherhood. It's potentially valuable (if a little early) advice, but I also worry that not having conversations about balancing work and parenthood across gender lines only reinforces gender divisions in parental responsibilities.

Boys also think about balancing the responsibilities of work and family -- and those who haven't thought about it would probably benefit the most from hearing how some of the White House's working mothers swing their schedules. And Orszag, Emanuel and press secretary Robert Gibbs all have children under the age of 10. I'm sure they would have some thoughts on balancing work and parenthood to share with the girls in the mentoring program.

The first lady's office does plan to launch a program for high school boys later on, modeled on its program for girls -- and I am pretty delighted to see administration heavy-weights directly backing mentoring programs. But, I think it might be valuable for men and women both if mentoring programs in general mixed it up a bit.