The presidential candidates probably don't have a whole lot of time for watching television, except those bits they're on. But between reviewing their appearances on "The View" and "Larry King Live," Sens. McCain, Obama and Clinton might consider queuing up a few episodes of TLC's "The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom."
Because, shockingly, the new reality series (8 p.m. Sundays) is the closest thing we have right now to a cogent discussion about the dilemma still daunting so many women: Keep the career and miss out on raising your kids or give up the career and miss out on fulfilling your other lifelong aspirations.
Forty years after "The Feminine Mystique" helped launch a modern women's movement, we remain so distant from a national child-care plan or workplace reform that, apparently, we are turning to reality television for solutions. That's as loud a wake-up call as you can get.
The situation is so bad we don't even have the right language to discuss it. "Soccer Mom," the term, was coined during Bill Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign to characterize women whose lives were devoted to shuttling their kids from one practice/lesson/play date to another. Seen at the time as something of a voting bloc worth courtin', it has since become shorthand for upper-middle class, mostly white, obsessive mothers, usually clad in yoga pants and piloting SUVs.
TLC, however, seems to be using the term as a substitute for stay-at-home mom -- the women featured have a broad economic base and many of their kids are too young for soccer. Possibly because the title "The Secret Life of a Stay at Home Mom" was nixed by the marketing department as unsexy. Which it is.
Stay-at-home-mom has always been a less-than-perfect job title, much too passive-sounding a term to be accurate. Full-time mom doesn't work either because what does that make those women who also have jobs outside the homes -- part-time moms? Homemaker has a nice solid ring to it, but it is awfully dated and hostess-aprony.
So while Americans can turn "Google" into a verb and latte into an adjective, we still do not have an accurate and non-incendiary term to describe the millions of women who care for their children full time.
Roll camera.
The basic action of "Soccer Mom" is this: a stay-at-home mother leaves her family behind for a week, telling them she is going to a spa as reward for her hard work. Instead she is put smack in the middle of the career she either abandoned or always longed for -- fashion designer, head chef, police officer, flight nurse -- while back at home, Dad must, as the preternaturally perky and pregnant host Tracey Gold says, "pick up the slack."
