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Soccer Mom Hate
The disdain toward motherhood is the logical extension of misogyny
“There was no mother I wanted to be,” writes Meaghan O’Connell in her parenting memoir, And Now We Have Everything.
A mom was your servant. A mom picked up the wrong things at the supermarket. A mom needed to stop and get stamps on the way home from soccer practice and you hated her for it. A mom wore a white, collared shirt and stood at the kitchen island selling cereal in television commercials. Moms clustered on benches in the playground pulling snacks out of their bags. They took up the whole sidewalk with their goddamn strollers. Moms nagged. Moms were stressed out.
Try it yourself, and your own list will fill in pretty quickly: Moms are square, moms are sentimental. Moms are smug. Moms post 15 baby pictures an hour on Facebook. Moms use Pinterest like they’re painting the Sistine Chapel. Moms plan a child’s birthday party like it’s the Academy Awards. Moms wear a pussyhat and attend one march and call it radical activism. Moms drink wine and make bad puns and call it a personality.
Moms age and gain weight, and unlike the “dad bod,” this isn’t attractive. Moms overinvest in their children, talk too much about them, think too much about them, and unlike involved dads, who are admirable… look, moms are just worse than dads…
