Soccer Moms: an Abridged Field Guide

We’ve seen mothers and parents and single parents and soccer moms, as they are called today . . .

--Bob Dole, at an Ohio campaign appearance Friday

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Soccer moms are the rage, having supplanted the angry white male as the trophy voter in American politics. Candidates keep talking about and, they hope, talking to the soccer moms. Magazines devote cover stories to their lives, their dreams, their tips on Volvo maintenance. All America seems obsessed with a version of Freud’s dying question: Soccer moms, what do they want?

As it happens, your correspondent lives among the soccer moms in this quiet suburban community. He has stood on the sidelines of actual soccer games with them. He has observed them close-up at supermarkets, carwashes, piano recitals, preschools--the usual venues for soccer mom sightings.

He has, in one special case, even cohabitated with a woman who might technically fit one definition of a soccer mom. As that woman is his wife, it is only with utmost attention to nuance and the traps of stereotyping--no dummy, he--that he now submits the following field report:

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The first thing to know about soccer moms is that rarely if ever do they apply the term to themselves. Some, in fact, consider the coinage demeaning. Ask a so-called soccer mom what she “is” or “does” and the answer will be that she’s a working mom, or lawyer, or teacher, or stay-at-home mom, or doctor, or Democrat, or Dittohead, or frustrated ballerina, or Green Bay Packer die-hard, or maybe just plain mom. Many things, but not soccer mom.

They disagree themselves about what constitutes a soccer mom. Some say it is a woman who works full-time in one job, and then rushes home to arrange play dates, make doctor appointments, review homework. Others argue a soccer mom is someone who stays home and fills her days--quite easily--hauling kids to karate, coaching soccer and the rest.

An undercurrent of tension passes between these two camps. The working moms sometimes feel they are resented for maintaining lives beyond the suburbs. The stay-at-home moms suspect working moms don’t respect them. It is a conflict fought only in coded language, a complaint about the team snack the working mom cobbled together, a question about just what does Mrs. X find to do all day.

Despite such intramural divisions, soccer moms do have cause for solidarity. For example, most would agree their husbands could achieve a higher understanding of how difficult their lives can be. A soccer mom friend of a friend is contemplating a screenplay about a mother of three who, desperately weary from the daily rounds, plots to land herself in prison--if only for the rest it promises.

They share a genius for logistics, keeping children in constant motion with the aplomb of air traffic controllers. They tend to drive Volvo station wagons, Suburbans, minivans, lumbering rigs adorned with license plates that suggest a certain edgy humor: MOMSBUS. ROUNDUP. LODEMUP. That last plate happened to belong to one Betty Broderick, the San Diego soccer mom/socialite who notoriously shot down her ex-husband eight years ago. Which brings us to . . . soccer mom anger.

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It cannot be easy to feel guilt every day leaving work in a rush to go home, and then in the morning feel guilt rushing from home for work. It cannot be easy to rumble endlessly around the suburbs in some Peterbilt of a car with nothing but Raffi on the stereo. Certainly these suburban moms are aware many others would consider their station in life luxurious--a family, a job, a home. Still, all anger is relative . . . and there goes dear hubby in the sporty two-seater . . . and no I didn’t have time to watch the presidential debate last night. A school report. Crustaceans . . . and where do you THINK you might have left your shin guards this time?

And now come the politicians, trying to tap the supposed soccer mom monolith. Good luck. Your correspondent has yet to detect a common political ideology among them. If anything, they tend toward the apolitical--a question of time and priorities. A not uncommon soccer mom bumper sticker captures the attitude nicely: Imagine Whirled Peas.

No, the pols were better off playing to angry males, a more reliably herded breed. It seems there is not much meaningful a presidential candidate can promise soccer moms: better schools perhaps; more cracks at the glass ceiling. The things they want most, however, politics cannot deliver: respect, dependable baby-sitters, a Saturday nap. And maybe, just maybe, a sliver of time for themselves. This weekend? No, not this weekend. This weekend there’s the school fair, and a birthday party, and two soccer games, and where do you think you might have left your shin guards. . . .