Ok, so I’m just some kind of ignorant foreigner or something, but can somebody please define “soccer mum” for me?
Stereotypical suburban married woman who spends a lot of time transporting her and the neighbors’ kids to soccer games in a bus-size car. Worries about guns, drunk drivers, on-line porn, schools, etc. Commonly thought to be able to swing the vote in many parts of the US.
There are one or two on this message board.
As a general rule - the bigger the vehicle the smaller in size is the soccer mom.
Said is vehicle is often 4-wheel drive with off-road capability - but never driven anywhere but the school, grocery store, and mall.
Probably the British version of the soccer mom.
If you have a $40,000 3 ton offroad vehicle in a grocery store parking lot, with 8 cup holders to hold everyone’s double grande latte (hold the fat, extra cream), and a driver, who upon seeing your bumper sticker “Glock is my insurance” openly weeps, points, and says “BAAAAAD!!!”, you’ve found yourself a soccer mom.
Oh, that’s an easy one. A soccer mom is the kind of lady who, after dropping off HER daughter to soccer, hangs around chatting with me after I’ve dropped MY daughter off at soccer, as we both sit in my 1998 Nissan Quest MiniVan with added cup holders and ScotchGuard on the seats to protect the fabrics. The back seat is folded down for flexibility, and the captain’s chairs up front have arm rests.
She’ll sit and chat amiably, all the while eyeing me clinically. I’m male. I drive a MiniVan. I have “Potential”.
I love soccer moms. Whyever do you ask? 
Cartooniverse
p.s. This one’s for you, Buckaroo 
Well, Fchick, if you haven’t managed to wade through all the humorists, I’ll answer your question: It’s a stereotype, of a particular kind of suburban mom who supposedly thinks a certain way, and acts a certain way, and votes a certain way. Like all stereotypes, it’s not true. :rolleyes:
And the vehicle of choice, in the stereotype, is a bigass SUV, although mini-vans are also strong candidates.
Hehehe, all very amusing - I think I get the idea. Thanks y’all!
ALL sterotypes have a certain amount of truth attached to them…That’s why they are sterotypes!!!
fchick,
Where are you from? I presume that you don’t understand that, in the U.S., soccer (called “football” in your country, I assume) is not played universally, as it is in many countries. It’s somewhat unusual in the inner cities or in rural areas. It’s played more frequently though in suburbs, particularly the more well-off ones. There are amateur leagues for both boys and girls from about five years old up and soccer teams in high schools. There are soccer teams in colleges, although it’s not usually considered a major sport there, and there’s a professional league that doesn’t get mentioned much in the sports sections of papers.
Soccer is thus (at least by reputation) the sport that the children of well-off suburbanites play. A “soccer mom” is the sort of well-off suburban mother who spends a lot of her time getting her children to the various activities they engage in. As a section of the voting population, “soccer moms” tend to be concerned with what politicians think of as “children’s issues.”
Silly man, that would be a football mum.
Oh! I thought you said a soccer nun!
–Cliffy
OK, then, is there a stereotypical “football mum” in the UK? If not, is there a generic term for middle and mid-upper class mothers devoted to their children’s activities?
From my memory of the U.K. (where I lived from 1987 to 1990), a “football mum” wouldn’t be at all equivalent. Soccer is not an upper-middle-class sport, like it is in the U.S. Cricket and rugby are the upper-middle-class sports. Maybe certain sorts of horse-riding sports too. (Polo, perhaps, but that’s upper-class, since it costs so much, and it’s only engaged in by adults.)
As an example of the difficulty of translating the ideas from one culture to another, in the U.K. there are frequently signs in highway rest stops and at certain restaurants that tend to get long-distance travellers that say “No football coaches”. These don’t mean what you’d think. A coach is a long-distance bus. (A bus only goes within a city.) A football coach is a bus that’s transporting soccer fans to a game in another city (perhaps even in another country, going across the Channel to continental Europe). Soccer fans are notoriously rowdy.
Actually, I’m an aussie, so soccer is soccer, football is aussie rules (or rugby league) and we dont have an equivalent sterotype, that I know of.
In the olden days they drove mini vans.
The phrase “soccer mom” is essentially to do with psephology. It refers to a group of the electorate with common concerns and, therefore, voting patterns. Politicians running for office try to get the socer mom vote in the same way they might target Hispanics, for example.
A UK equivalent would be “Essex Man” - the upwardly mobile suburbanites who voted Conservative in the 80s and 90s and switched to Labor more recently. (Stereotypically, he is from the county north of London, owns a house that has risen in value, has somewhat low brow tastes, displays arguably simplistic disapproval of tax, people on welfare, crime, immigration, etc etc.) Tony Blair said he first felt Labor had a serious chance of winning the first election after 4 successive Tory wins when he saw a “vote Labor” bumper sticker on a minivan.
fchick, the view from Sydney is that the Aussie equivalent would be a “netball coach” - ie anyone who volunteers to cut the half-time oranges or who is unlucky enough to be in earshot when the referee doesn’t turn up …
We have a poster here who is a “soccer mom” according to her sig. But it wasn’t her idea.
annalamerino or something like that. One of those names I totally recognize, but can’t actually remember because it’s too much trouble. You’d think for someone called mnemosyne my memory would be better 
Hi fchick welcome to the Boards. I think a sort of local Oz equivalent is the “chardonnay drinkers” they were talking about a few years ago. That’s both parents I guess.
And they have a social status higher than “the mums and dads of Australia” that politicians like to evoke, while unconvincingly poking a pre-cooked chop on a pre-heated barbie with their family.
“Mr Howard, could you take off the tie? I know you don’t feel comfortable, but this is aimed at the mums and dads”.
Redboss