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The Other Mothers: 11 Types You’ll Encounter In The Zoo Of Parenting
Which mom type are you?
Babble has a hilarious new feature on some of the Other Mothers you’re likely to meet as you go about the business of raising your kid. These are the women you’ll run into on the playground, pass in the halls at your child’s school and chat with awkwardly over coffee while your kids play together.
The stereotypes they draw on will be familiar to every mom who’s been around the playground a few times. I recognize myself in a few of them: the Schlumpy Mom who looks like she’s barely holding it together, the Slacker Mom who lets her kids eat cake at all hours of the day or night. I’m not those caricatures, but I imagine I might seem that way to someone observing me as an Other Mother.
To be honest, the Other Mothers scare me. They always have. I was young when I had my kids, and I never felt like I quite fit in with the older, wealthier, more polished mommies around me. Now I’m older and I live in a younger neighborhood, and I’m more likely to meet moms like me when I go out to the playground. But they still make me nervous.
I worry that they’ll think I’m a Slacker Mom because I’m not playing with my kids enough, or a Sanctimommy if they find out I’m a parenting writer. I fear running into Tiger Mom’s claws if she hears my kids don’t do any after-school activities. Most of all, I don’t want to wind up stuck talking to Perfect Mom, feeling worse and worse about myself as she humbly, almost accidentally, reveals how perfect her life is.
Reading this article made me laugh, and it helped me face my fear of the Other Mothers. Next time a mom makes me nervous at a school event, I can just smile to myself and say, “Ah, she’s being a Sanctimommy!”
What mom types do you identify with? Do you have more to add to Babble’s list?
Photo: Martin Burns
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3 Comments
Bunnytwenty commented on Apr 21 11 at 4:07 pmOh good, it finds a way to insult every single kind of mom. Seriously unfunny. Do we have to stoke mom-rivalry at every turn, here?
dara commented on Apr 21 11 at 7:36 pmGreat post Sierra!
Gagagolly commented on Apr 22 11 at 10:09 amI am a mix of the “Too Cool for School” and the “Big Kid” because I get turned off by the “Glamors” and the “Schlumps”…there just aren’t alot of hip mamas where I live and so it’s more fun to just focus on my little kid, which draws other kids to us as their moms doing the mom socializing thing.
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