Mom Rant

An adjective is a word that qualifies a noun; that is, it gives more information about a person, place, or thing. It describes; it modifies; it identifies, it can even quantify. An adjective answers the question, “What kind is it?” It can denote the noun’s purpose. A qualifier, the final adjective in a series that sits next to the noun, is the “final limiter” and is considered an integral part of the noun.


Here are some popular adjective+noun combinations to consider.

Soccer Mom. Hockey Mom. And, most recently splashed across magazine covers and argued about in online forums: Tiger Mom. The last combination is not a new stereotype, to be sure. But it is packed with such a potent mix of ethnic and gender stereotypes as to encompass the whole nation’s anxiety about a lingering recession and its geopolitical decline.

“Tiger Mom” calls to mind the economic dynamism of the “Asian Tiger” economies (compared to the anemic U.S. marketplace). It conjures up the image of the stereotypical high-achieving Asian student (compared to the typical TV- and video game-addicted American slacker kid). It ascribes almost warrior status to the strict, demanding Mother who pushes her children to excel (compared to the permissive American moms who compliment their child’s every scribble).

Those adjectival appendages (Soccer, Hockey, and Tiger) are all nouns modifying nouns. They are called noun adjuncts, and, appropriately, they are grammatically optional. Irrelevant, you might say, to the correctness of a sentence.

In the popular press, these noun adjuncts are trendier than those adjectival modifiers that classify a mom’s role based on her employment status. Stay-at-home Mom. Work-at-Home Mom. Working Mom, which is semantically redundant. Full-Time Mom or Part-Time Mom. As if there is ever a time when a Mom is off the clock.

When did “Mom” become an insufficient signifier unto itself, when it is just one of the many roles a woman might play in her life?

And is anyone else tired of this constant ratcheting up of the mothering bar? Now moms are not just expected to be full-time professionals and nurturers (however they balance those demands). They are also expected to tackle the nation’s obesity epidemic by carting their children to soccer or hockey or any number of other sports. At the same time, they are tasked with bolstering America’s lagging educational performance by forcing their children to study and practice piano or violin countless hours a day.

And where are the Soccer Dads and Hockey Dads and Tiger Dads in the headlines? Are mothers single-handedly bearing the burden of raising the nation’s children, and, by extension, determining its geopolitical future? Last time I checked, the mothers around me have spouses or partners (male or female), parents of their own who help out, and a whole infrastructure of friends, neighbors, nannies, babysitters, day care centers, and schools who share that privilege and burden.

Can’t we all relax and ditch the adjectives that limit a woman to how successful her children are? Can’t there be as many different (and healthy) ways of parenting a child as there are parents and children? And, rather than placing the blame for our current national malaise on one particular group, can’t we focus on our connectedness and responsibility for each other? Focus on giving our children—and all children in our community, whether we are parents or not—our unconditional love? From that love follows the support, guidance, and structure (strict or lax, wherever you fall on that continuum) that all children need.