Excuse my ignorance, but I’ve seen this expression used in a couple of threads now. Can someone please tell me what it means?
It’s FOOTBALL, dammit!
I think this means the stereotypical American SUV driving suburbanite mother-of-three. Right?
You forgot to mention the cel phone she is talking on.
It’s the basic (U.S.) suburban mother model. She’s working outside the home, running the kids back and forth between school, friends’ homes, and soccer games, trying to get the grocery shopping done, etc. etc.
Politically (which is where it started) it refers to a female voter who is more concerned about issues like day-care and family medical leave than about defense, balanced budget, etc.
Among the people I know and myself, it’s the SUV-driving, cel-phone babbling, pushy suburban mother who can’t shut up about her children and their accomplishments. She’s the one who coordinates the classroom birthday parties. She never leaves the house without makeup. She buys brand-name only. She shops at BabyGap. She never goes thrifting. Hand-me-downs “just aren’t good enough for Baby.” She belongs to a health club. She wears designer socks. She usually has a part-time job while the kids are in school…and makes sure to let everyone know how HARD it is to juggle her career and her children, “but the children always come first, of course!” Not that that’s a bad thing, but she also always brings up how well she does in her part-time job, which is probably at an exclusive boutique, and how the owners wouldn’t know what to do without her.
She annoys the crap out of me.
Wow, two times in two weeks I’ve had to offer this explanation. Let’s hope I can nail it.
I think this term first got a lot of mileage in the political arena, referring to a certain type of person (make that, a certain type of VOTER). On its surface it means any woman who has kids on a youth soccer team. However, more broadly I think “soccer moms” is supposed to designate the group of middle-class (or higher) and well-educated women who can potentially get fired up about kid and family issues in the voting booth. It came vogue just when youth soccer was HUGE in suburban America. I think it’s also come to be associated with minivan-driving.
The people I know who resign themselves to membership in this group are pretty much hanging up their pub-crawling days.
Thank you.
Although I am well aware of what soccer is, I had never heard the term “soccer mom” until now. I thought that maybe there was some obscure joke that I had missed.
I totally missed the meaning of it before. As two of my kids actually are in soccer, I considered myself a soccer mom since I was always rushing off to games.
An SUV? Try a 13 year old minivan. Cell phone? Had it disconnected when I quit driving long distances. Make-up done? Ha. I wish. Living in the suburbs. Nope. Never on top of things. Always late for soccer games, and have to hang my head down in shame…
I will be very careful not to describe myself as a soccer mom anymore…
Lola, I don’t think it’s as bad as Ham makes it out to be. I have laughingly called myseld a FUTURE soccer mom but I don’t sound anything like what he’s describing. I’m the kind of person who gets thrown out of boutiques.
My sister is a true Soccer Mom. She refs, plays indoor & outdoor & coaches peewee. Those other kind just give her a bad name. 
Italics are mine for the ones that really hit the nail on the hammerhead.)
Hamadryad, I think I love you. Would you be my neighbor?
A Soccer Mom is someone who is stuck with someone else’s hobby.
It’s like being a golf widow. Your life revolves around someone else having fun.
It’s a description of being supportive and yet put-upon.
That’s what we mean by it in my circle, anyway.
First off…fer crying out loud, I’M NOT A HE.
Eh hem.
Sure, I’ll happily be your neighbor. Does that mean I get to bump off the psycho lady next door who mows her lawn every other day, and has called the county on me three times this month because I only do it once a week? Please?
I think you can be a mom, and your kids can play soccer, and you can love soccer, and you can love that your kids play soccer, without being a stereotypical “soccer mom.” My sister manages it.
Hey, my mother used to be a soccer mom before I got old. 
I was “awarded” for Mother’s Day a key chain that says “The Best Soccer Mom in the World”. I proudly show it to anyone that will let me.
I hardly ever wear make-up. I can’t afford a mini-van, much less an SUV. I buy as much Best Choice and store brand as I can get. I buy my kids clothes at garage sales and resale shops every chance that I get. (Thank goodness my nieces little girl is a clothes-horse like her mom. She keeps my eldest clothed in her hand-me-downs.) I do have a cell phone, but it for emergencies only, (like the day I saw some Mary Engelbreight rubber stamps that my neighbor would just die for so I HAD to call her and tell her about the little boutique that I had seen them in). I used to work in Hallmark gift shop, but shopping isn’t nearly as fun without the employee discount. I quit my gift shop job to stay at home with my oldest because I couldn’t afford the day care of an infant on my salary. I’m thinking about returning to the workforce as soon as my youngest is potty trained. It won’t be in a boutique though. I need some dental insurance. And now that I think about it actually my manager would have been hard-pressed to take a vacation when I did work at the gift shop. I knew how to do the books. Other than that I don’t think they missed me much. The owner didn’t even know my name.
I volunteered my husband to help out with the soccer club (meaning like an assistant coach) which led to them signing him up for coach, which led to him going to soccer club meetings, which led him to volunteer for Assistant Commissioner because no one else would. So, now he’s the Commissioner. He reminds me all of the time that I got him into this mess. Anyway, since we were new in town, most of people we have met have been through the soccer club.
In 3 years (6 seasons) the only games I have missed were when the youngest had to spend the weekend in the hospital after being born and when the kids had the chicken pox. (This is the first time I’ve ever mentioned that to anyone.)
So, I’m confused. Am I a soccer mom? I thought I was.