It's all about priorities for Michelle Obama

So Michelle Obama -- still in maternity clothes -- strapped her newborn daughter, Sasha, in the stroller and headed out to meet Michael E. Riordan, president and chief executive of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Luckily, Sasha kept her little mouth shut, but her presence that day in 2001 "was more than symbolic. It was significant," Riordan said in a recent interview. Obama "had her priorities in line. She really wanted to make that known to me. . . that family came first."

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 43, is not your mother's political spouse.

She is 5-feet-11 in her stocking feet, earned more than $300,000 last year -- husband's paycheck not included -- has two Ivy League degrees and was just named to Vanity Fair's 68th annual international best-dressed list.

But on the campaign trail, she has carved out a niche connecting with women over shared daily struggles: to get the kids up, their hair brushed, their lunch packed and out the door; to have a job and a family and not go crazy; to hope for better things for their daughters when they grow up and are off on their own.

As she crisscrosses the country on behalf of husband, Barack, Obama reaches out to and embodies a new generation of American women -- those much-studied multitaskers who hope to change the workplace but, in the process, inspire headlines like "Damned or Doomed," "Opt Out or Pushed Out," "One Sick Child Away From Being Fired."

Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law, said the Obamas "capture absolutely perfectly what's going on with their generation."

"In my generation, our challenge was just getting our foot in the door on men's terms," said Williams, 55. When Obama brought her baby to a job interview, Williams said, she expressed "in a very self-possessed fashion, 'I'm a professional, and here's my infant.' "

Obama is a woman who has ratcheted her career up and down to accommodate both campaign and children, but she never leaves home without two BlackBerrys, one for the job and one for the campaign.