The premise of TLC’s “The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom” is this: A stay-at-home mom is given the opportunity to work for a week in a job she gave up or would like to have, but her family doesn’t know that’s what she’s doing. They think she’s at a spa or something! She comes home, either happy for her choice to be a full-time mom, or eager to go back to the work force full time. I love the either/or, no-in-betweens of it all, and the overriding premise that working is a choice for all moms. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
Even before I've seen an episode, the TLC show’s home page is making me mad:
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Spar is more like it. Take a gander at the message boards, and you’ll find some pretty angry rants. Pam Kruger has watched and read the messages, and she writes on her blog that she was unexpectedly moved when a mom of four, and a cop's wife, returns home from her secret week at police training with a scholarship offer in hand to attend the police academy for real. Her husband shoots her down right away. "In 2008, how many mothers have stayed at home because their husbands have decreed this is the way it will be?" Kruger asks.
By the way, I have never liked the mind-numbing, limiting “soccer mom” moniker. I know advertisers need to wrap things up in nice packages when they are targeting certain money-spending audiences, but soccer mom is insulting and one-dimensional and just plain ridiculous. Moms who have spent their fair share of driving to soccer fields have spent just as much time helping their kids with homework, talking to them about what's happening at school, going to basketball games, lacrosse, the grocery store, piano lessons, doctor appointments….All of those things, by the way, are done my moms who work at home and outside the home, alike.
Oh, I'm intrigued, and I'll be tuning in Sunday nights to follow host Tracey Gold of "Growing Pains" fame celebrate stay-at-home moms.
