Oh, but I do know of the highly competitive parents out there. My husband coaches lower grade football as well, and in the fall he’s coaching football and I’m coaching vball, it gets a little hectic, and I don’t get to see as many football games as I’d like, but I try. At about the 3rd game, I was standing on the sidelines with my other 4 kids, watching the game, and a dressed to the nines mother comes up to me, asks me who I am. I say, “Oh, I’m the coaches wife.” She says, “Really? I’ve never seen you before.” I say, “Well, I coach vball, too, sometimes it’s hard to get to games.” “Oh, really? So, is this your only kid, she asks?” “No, those 4 kids over there are mine too, in addition to the kid playing on the field right now.” SO KISS MY ASS, LADY. Stop trying to compete with me. If nothing else, because you are going to lose. Parents like that drive me crazy. Just calm the hell down, and realize that NONE of these kids, not even yours, is ever going to amount to anything in sports, and we’ll all have a much better time. Seriously, everyone will, especially your kid.
I’m in the U.S. My kids play some park and rec soccer each summer.
I drive a Jetta
I don’t like to talk to strangers
I don’t really care if they win or lose (though soccer is way more fun to cheer for than t-ball) - sometimes I don’t pay attention to the game at all.
Yes to the snacks - they are little kids - they are running around a field - trust me on this, the snacks are a necessary thing - ever see a seven year old with low blood sugar.
I’m dressed up if I came from work. If I didn’t, I’m in old Levi’s and a tshirt.
Somewhat flirty? Probably not anymore.
Huh? Everyone puts their kids in soccer around here - or rather everyone who is going to have their kids participate in anything at all. The people in big houses and the people in little houses. Its CHEAP, compared to the other sports - very little equipment and what you need can be had for $30. Its a good intro to team sports. At young ages its coed. Its a relatively low commitment. And the kids seem to prefer it to a lot of the other stuff they’ve tried - less discipline than the martial arts classes (or even my daughters cheerleading or dance), more action than baseball.
I would say early 30s - early 40s.
The “soccer mom” is an extension of white, upper middle class suburban culture. They are usually extraverted joiners - trendy, attrative and successful in a kind of generic J Crew / Stepford kind of way. Typically they (and their husbands) are the same types of people who would join sports and non-dorky clubs in high school, fraternities and sororities in college, and spend their early to mid 20s living in places like Manhattans Upper East Side or Boston’s Alston/Brighton area until they get married and move to suburban Connecticut, New Jersey or Massachusetts.
My WAG is that it is a distinctly American phenomenon.
‘Soccer mom’ is simply another stereotype, to which some people cling as if it were a life raft. :rolleyes:
Well, I’m cashing in my guest membership chip, after many moons of lurking, to bring you my specialist knowledge of the ‘soccer mums’ of North West London. Of course on this side of the channel we don’t call them ‘soccer mums’, soccer being that strange way you refer to real football. 
But the phenomenon is certainly alive and kicking in the leafy affluent suburbs and their upper middle class residents. Much like their US equivalent these women are well heeled, even overly youthfully trendy and drive excessively large 4x4 SUVs. Usually salons tinted or highlighted hair, slightly too much makeup, ornage tan from frequent holidays in the sun and an unnerving interest in social status, their well turned out little athletic stars and each other.
The little darlings attend private school and the husbands are probably away on business rather a lot. Life is centred around the kids and the other women in their enclave. The North London variety are less likely to hang around watching the game though and more likely to head off to a manicure appointment or to grab cappuccino in a trendy Hampstead café.
As you would imagine it makes for an exhausting social schedule. 
Perhaps it’s regional, or an urban/suburban divide, as someone else mentioned. There are soccer fields in the city, but not many, as the big lots were taken up by baseball diamonds and tennis courts years ago. I’ve known only 3 kids in soccer since moving to the city - and they were in a league in the 'burb to our west. There are soccer programs available, and I know they’re not wanting for kids, but it’s not what city kids play as a default when they have a ball and some spare time. They’re much more likely to play basketball or this odd game they’ve invented which is sort of a dodgeball/handball hybrid, as far as I can tell - it involves throwing a ball (any size) against the wall of a building and trying to whack the opponent with it on the rebound.
While “soccer mom” as a political term initially meant middle-class woman with more political interest in education and child protection issues than traditional female issues like employment equality and reproductive rights, Soccer Mom has become, at least around here, a negative stereotype, and is only as representative of mothers of soccer players as any stereotype is.
Do black people like watermelon? Well, some of them, sure. Prob’ly about as many as moms of soccer players are Soccer Moms. Doesn’t mean every single one is, nor does it mean no one outside of soccer isn’t.
Trisha McMillian, what are you doing here?! (Yes, that was a quote. Yes, I’m a geek. Yes, I love your username!) Anyway, Trisha McMillian nailed it - at least as far as my local version of Soccer Moms, down to the hair and makeup habits.
Aah ok, I think I’m getting it. So "Soccer Mums’ are a pretty middle-class socially climbing bunch?? In which case, no, it isn’t the same in most other places. Football the world over is a pretty working class sport to play (as all you need is a football and a patch of ground), so doesn’t attract these man eating SUV driving nightmares you describe.
In the UK, ‘posh’ kids with SUV driving mums play rugby (‘rugger’).
Exactly, and I think the particularly soccer-mom-style soccer mom (if you see what I mean) are the ones that stand out as they are louder, brasher and, by their very nature, more conspicuous. We don’t notice the mousy diminutive ones because they’re, well, mousy and diminutive!
And cheers Whynot,
geek on
“I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in math and another in astrophysics, it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday. Oh, I’m sorry I missed that Wednesday lunch date, but I was in a black hole all morning.”
geek off
My son is 8 and plays fall soccer. I take him to practice when his father can’t and to games. I am 43 and drive a small SUV. I sit quietly in my folding chair and, if my friend Angela is there, I chat with her. Otherwise I watch the game and occasionally clap. I wear jeans and a sweater and a little make up the same as I always do. I avoid eye contact and conversation with the other parents and do my best to get my snack turn out of the way early in the season so that I don’t have to deal with the e-mailing back and forth. I just raise my hand during the first practice. I didn’t like his coach this past season so there was a bit of scowling on my part. So, while I’m a soccer mom who has her own chair in her SUV, I would say I’m like the anti-soccer mom.
By the way, do those of you without children realize why moms all drive giant vehicles these days? The ones who aren’t interested in a bit of status drive vans, I suppose, but none of us have plain old station wagons or sedans any more, and it’s because we need all that seating. Consider: child safety laws now require (in CA, at least) children to be in booster seats until they are 6. And children under 12 aren’t supposed to sit in the shotgun seat, either. This means that if you want to carry more than 2 children under the age of 6, you need a van. And if you have 3 children, one 6 or older, and try to get them into a sedan, the oldest one had better be pretty skinny to fit between two booster seats.
Even though I only have two kids, I still ferry a lot of other children around in carpooling arrangements, and it involves a lot of carseat-trading back and forth, and a van full of kids. I want to get a sedan next time we buy a car (who knows when) and use that most of the time, but I’ll still need the van sometimes.
I have been reliably told that a substantial number of people here in Australia drive huge SUVs or minivans, although they are not called SUVs. My friends in New Zealand say the situation is fairly similar there too.
Shortly after my daughter was born I traded in my station wagon for a mini-van. I got tired of clunking my head on the ceiling and there really wasn’t enough clearance for the infant carrier. Also, only midgets could sit in the back seat with her car seat in there.
I’m not part of the soccer crowd yet, but after reading this thread, I can picture a few hyper-aggressive poker players that don’t respond well to direction. I bet they are soccer parents.
This is basically the media image I envision. Young lefties seem to tend to enjoy sneering at soccer moms (perhaps dreading their own potential metamorphosis.)
Other than the carpools, my resemblance was not quite spot on.
I was a soccer sister in the '60’s.
I used to be a soccer girlfriend back in the late '70’s.
Then I was a soccer wife, then a soccer widow, then a soccer mom.
I drove a Honda Civic–but later a Volvo wagon, if that means anything.
I worked part-time. I tend to vote liberal.
I never challenged the refs, I certainly did not make it to every game, especially with the younger kid. I was not chatty nor loud nor overprotective. I just got up early a lot, and drove to a hell of a lot of practices and games.
The youngest played his last came this year, and frankly I am relieved.
The soccer banquet is Monday. I might shed a nostalgic tear. But that’s it.
I’ve never understood the term to be used in a good-natured way. It is a bizarrely derogatory comment about women who are (gasp!) devoted mothers, as if that’s a bad thing. :rolleyes:
I’m thinking about remaking an old movie…
“With Three You Get Minivan”
(I have two, part of the reason I only have two is I hate driving a minivan.)
Devoted mothers support their children in a variety of interests without stressing them out by overstructuring their time. Devoted mothers teach their kids how to win and lose with grace, and how to enjoy games even when they’re not winning. Devoted mothers demonstrate by example that having individual interests and hobbies, as well as devotion to the family life, is healthy and appropriate.
Psychotic crazy bitch mothers hire hitmen to kill their daughter’s cheerleading rival’s mother so their own daughter has a better shot at getting on the team.
Somewhere in between is the Soccer Mom.
I wouldn’t go that far.
My sisters kids got involved in soccer because her kids enjoy it. Lots of their best friends also have kids that enjoy soccer. I might think they spend way too much time involved in sports, but who am I to say? The kids are active, healthy and stay out of trouble and the parents enjoy it too. Plus they spend half their time carting other people’s kids around who can’t be bothered to even drop their kids off. I can’t tell you all the shoes and equipment they’ve bought for other people’s kids.
Sports and competition are things that my sister and her family enjoys. They both spend lots of time with their kids. She was involved in sports when she was a kid, and now her kids are too. Her kids are fit and healthy and do well in school. If my son was interested in soccer I might have been the same way.
Why not? Sounds to me like your sister meets the “devoted mom” criteria, not the Soccer Mom stereotype. I’m not sure why it’s still not clear that those of us who get and tease about the Soccer Mom stereotype don’t think everyone involved in soccer is one. We’ve said it kind of a lot.