- Mommy blogger
- Mompreneur
- Soccer mom
- Mommy porn
To some people, these are badges of honor. To others, and in the same context, they are terms of derision and scorn. Here are some (sorta) comparable terms.
In the same way that the second list can be corrected red Sharpied to police officer, flight attendant, children's science kit, and erotica, the first list can be rewritten as blogger, entrepreneur, soccer parent, and porn/erotica (or mom, mom, mom, and fiction... or parent, parent, parent, and fiction).
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| I totally do this. Or, I let me kids get their own cereal, sleep in, and then several days later clean the crusted Rice Krispies off my |
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| I do not look like this. |
I really, really hate the term mompreneur. It makes me want to poke my eyes out with the pen I stole from the guy who sells me paper (who inconveniently does NOT sell printer paper, and is nothing like Jim, Dwight, Stanley or Andy). I have a small business. It doesn't make a whole ton of money, but I enjoy it. I meet lots of people. It's fulfilling. But rather than be called an entrepreneur, like every other male business owner (or female business owner in a business completely unrelated to children), I am called a mompreneur because my business is aimed straight at moms and kids (and, you know, dads, grandparents, aunts, friends... lots of people). Technically, mompreneur is defined as "a female business owner who is actively balancing the role of mom and the role of entrepreneur." Except that is what any working parent is doing. My husband is a dademployee (which is not a word) who is having a hard time balancing the role of dad and the role of employee working 60+ hours a week. But his role doesn't get a gender attached to it. I'm not sure who has it harder. Yes, I can close up shop when my kids are sick, or have an appointment, or have a super-duper-important school thing that I absolutely must attend. But my business suffers. My husband, the dademployee, just can't do any of those things at all.
Then there's also Laura, aka adequatemom, my co-writer here. She's a "mompreneur." She would really, really like to make a living as an editor, or even a greeting card maker, and put her talents and education to use to do something she loves. Instead, she spends 1/3 of her day at a job she doesn't particularly enjoy (but is damn good at anyway) because there are still bills to be paid, in a perfect world spends 1/3 of her day sleeping, and divides the remaining third between mundane tasks like cooking, eating, bathing, driving around, maybe possibly finding some time to herself to read a book, very occasionally seeing her husband, volunteering... and being the primary caregiver to her daughter. But yeah, let's reduce that to "mompreneur." Let's do that.
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| This does not resemble my family. |
Soccer mom. Just look at the hatred in some of those definitions. Why? Just why? Okay, I'm not actually a soccer mom because none of my kids are in soccer, but I do drive a minivan and this term is often applied to any parent who chauffeurs kids around in a minivan. I don't really hear the term soccer dad, and it's often the dads who are doing the soccer coaching. I do hear the term hockey parent (no gender). So why soccer mom? It actually started as a political term, coined by US Republicans, and specifically refers to white middle income women with school-aged children, who supposedly have nothing better to do than ferry around their children, but who would love to vote conservative. I find the term dismissive of the moms themselves, because they do have better things to do and they certainly have interests outside their children. I do. And I don't have anything resembling right-wing politics.
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| I enjoyed this piece of shit and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Also, I wish my husband would wear a tie. |
And, finally, mommy porn. First off, don't Google that term, because it won't bring up a bunch of references to EL James' Fifty Shades of Grey like I thought it would. Anyway, as I have previously written, Fifty Shades is dismissed as "mommy porn." Why? Because it is a book that appeals largely to women of child-bearing age and has graphic sex scenes in it. You could also call it "porn" or "erotica" or "a book." I like the term "book" because it doesn't come with any implications of the reader except that they... like to read? Incidentally, one of the search results that did come up when I googled "mommy porn" was this one, about a new book set to be a bestseller, featuring a variety of cliques at a primary school in England... mom cliques, not kid cliques. The subject matter hits home for me. There are a ton of childish mom cliques in my town. Except it's being compared to Fifty Shades, despite its completely different subject matter and lack of sex, because it appeals to the same demographic. And the new term? Mumlit. Literature that appeals to Mums, a term apparently coined by a legitimate news agency, which helps to legitimize the term. In North America, I'm sure it would be translated to "mommylit." Hey, here's an idea. How about we just called it "literature"? Nah, then dads (or "men") might accidentally read it and find some insight into the lives of their female partners. Or non-parents might read it and find some insight into the lives of parents. No, it's better we warn them off entirely and compartmentalize people's reading tastes. Girls, you read these ones. Boys, you read these ones. Guess what, there are more bestselling authors, award winners, and modern classics on the boys' list.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my mompreneuring now. There's a potty seat just waiting to be sold.
What a rockin' post. I have reached similar conclusions but I think I took a slightly different path to get there. For example, I don’t particularly find these mom-related terms in themselves to be dismissive or reductive. I think of myself as a mommy blogger, and don’t find that term to be demeaning. Then again, it’s different when you apply a term to yourself, rather than having a label slapped on you by someone else with all their assumptions about what that term means and how you fit that pigeonhole.
ReplyDeleteSo rather than having a hate-on for these particular mom-related words, I have a hate-on for being labeled or pigeonholed. I find it really patronizing when the mass media (or even individual people who should know better) assume that just because I have a vagina I'm going to want to read (or buy, or watch, or use, or drive, or be aroused by) the same products as other vagina-owners.
I also have a real problem with any parenting-related resource that is targeted at moms. It is not 1950, we are not raising the kids at home all day and waiting for Daddy to get home from the office so we can pour him a martini. We are in this together, and parenting resources should be called PARENTING resources, not “Stuff for Moms”.
So yeah, add these two together – “Moms are the only parents” + “Women are all the same” – and you end up with these bullshit mom-related terms that only serve to label and alienate us rather than encouraging us to seek out our similarities.
Yeah, I don't think these terms are necessarily demeaning, but acknowledging the identity-takeover that mothering tends to have. . . and honestly I find that acknowledgement comforting, because it has taken over a major chunk of my identity and I can blame my current physical and mental fatigue, lack of muscle tone (except in the child-lifting arms, where I lacked it before), disregard for my appearance, and lack of attention span for the things that used to occupy my time. . . all on the fact that I'm busy being a totally rad mom (or at other moments, also a totally adequate mom, or at other moments a totally adjectiveless mom).
ReplyDeleteAnd, while dads certainly have their own process related to dadness, which is, I think, underacknowledged (so, under-labeled), it is not the same process.
Becoming a mother, from day one (in such a physical way) made me realize just how much women ARE different from men, and I often find that acknowledgement liberating and celebratory. Of course, when it is limiting, it is stupid. And alot of people don't give any thought at all to how they use words, and of course, use them very stupidly. And that's stupid.
So. I also am a mom blogger. . . but I'm starting a new blog that is not about being a mom, and keeping the old one for parenting related things. Because it's nice to play up the parts of me that are not consumed by nurturing a tiny human. . . while being also nice to be in that mom-club and say you know what I mean?!?!?! And have someone say yes.
I've given this some more thought. The title of this article. And I think you're right, Mominism (not really a word anyone would use, right?) IS the new Feminism.
ReplyDeleteOnly. . . what do YOU mean by it? Because you're saying all these Mommy labels offend you, and are you offended by feminism? Or maybe you are offended by being labeled a feminist when you act like a woman? Or offended by the media's reduction of Feminism to a cute tag-word used to a) sell, sell, sell and b) minimize any threat to the official status quo by making fun of it, thereby making it seem empty and meaningless.
So what I'm saying is Mominism IS the new Feminism, both in terms of what you're maybe pointing out as tag-word reduction of something meaningful into a stereotype, AND as a MOVEMENT.
Okay, the movement aspect applies to the first two terms, not the second two.
Mom Porn seems to be descriptive of the sort of person it is meant to appeal to, like having to do with themes that are of interest to moms and probably not people who are not?
And Soccer Mom is a stereotype that to me has connotations of keeping-up-with-the-joneses type competition and living superficially through your children's achievements. . . maybe that's just me, but either way I think we agree it's a stereotype and not associated with any kind of movement.
But both Mom-blogger (I have never in my life used the word mommy, I'm pretty sure) and Mompreneur are connected to a movement of women empowering themselves to be more than "just moms". To be moms, in the fullest sense of the word, nurturing and guiding their children, and yet, being THEMSELVES too.
Just as feminism was about acknowledging women's rights and abilities to be more than "just women" but to define for themselves what being a woman can mean.
Women today are uniting and connecting in their sense that there ought to be more choices than being "just a mom" or being a "career woman." That they want to have a vocation, a personality, fulfill a personal purpose, AND be a fully engaged mother and wife, or not, or whatever it is that is part of who they are. And that the options offered to us by our society and "culture?" are not satisfying our desire to LIVE and LOVE and teach our children to LIVE and be whole, useful, satisfied, engaged members of planet earth and not just tired useless lumps with a bunch of derogatory labels piled on that have nothing to do with anyone.
And just as birth control was an element of feminist empowerment, Birth and Post-Birth CONTROL, by way of available information, education, awareness, and mutual support is an element of a new movement in motherhood. An element our mothers didn't have access to. Previous generations of women at the mercy of what they were told because they didn't know any better, raising their children "by the book" of rules instead of listening to their instincts, because they didn't know that was something they could do, and had no way of connecting to others who shared their doubts and ideas.
Well, maybe I'm generalizing my own experience too far. But it seems to me there is something in this Mom-ism that makes me feel empowered. And maybe some of it is just tag-words, but maybe if you look beneath them, might it be that all these words pop up because someone is trying to describe something happening. . .?
You put way more thought into the title than I did! I put approximately 10 seconds of thought into it.
DeleteI think originally I had something like maternalism? But it didn't sound catchy enough. No, Mominism is not a real word (I hope). The feminist movement sought (seeks, dammit!) to create a level playing field for women and remove gender bias. Or something like that. I was going for something similar for Moms, which I do realize creates a term that contradicts my hatred of mompreneur, mommy bloggers, and mommy porn.
I've seen mompreneur and mommy blogger a lot. Mommy porn I've only seen in reference to Fifty Shades, to be fair. Yes, mompreneur is meant to be empowering and is usually used in a positive context. Mommy blogger not so much. I'm with you on the movement they're connected to. But the terms themselves just don't need to even exist, I think. I don't like labels. They are too limiting and too easily used to restrict and compartmentalize people.
Also, my name is Mummy and I am a mum or a mother, so all these terms are just that extra bit of annoying for me.
Oops, Google is my friend. I am not the first to use the term Mominism, although this person used it in a different context (and one more along the lines of your thinking):
http://www.themotherco.com/2013/05/mondays-with-the-mamas-a-new-generation-of-mominists/
And this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-kurtzmancounter/a-new-generation-of-mominists_b_3239321.html
This person has a completely different context (and I feel her pain):
http://mommyk8.com/?p=52
Or there's this person, who stopped writing her blog seven years ago:
http://mominism.blogspot.ca/
Also, it is a word used by people who are actually talking about Mormonism, or the Mormon religion, but cannot spell worth a shit.