Done and Done

I spent the good part of the day trying to convince a male, 50-something, childless colleague that his assumptions on Life As Mom were incorrect. When a boardroom marketing-to-moms conversation diverted into mom guilt territory, he was almost dismissive, even as the moms in the room leaned into our well-honed patience skills and took time to explain. 

“Why in the world would peer moms have any influence on whether you'd give your son medication?” he said. (I paraphrase.) 

You see, as an illustrative focus-group-of-one example for our conversation and assignment at hand, a fellow mom colleague had shared the hand-wringing experience deciding to medicate her son with ADHD. (While I naturally fist-bumped her across the table. Been there. Done that.) But our older co-worker couldn’t fathom why peer mom judgment would have had any part in the hand-wringing. We patiently explained to our non-parent-yet-self-identified-mom-expert that judgments are heaped upon moms from the moment of conception. (Are you going to find out the gender in advance of birth and if so, what does that say about you? Breast or bottle? Do you have a birth plan? Are you tough enough to go au naturel? To circumcise or not? What is your childcare plan? Oh really? Do you even love your child?) I digress.

So even before my colleague’s son received his diagnosis, she was already aware of the debate around whether parents should medicate their children and the points of view from each side of the aisle. (I wondered silently if male-colleague-who-shall-remain-nameless had ever heard the term vac-cin-A-tions.) Yeah, obviously she researched the options and consulted her doctor. But the inputs for moms aren’t so simple. Every decision we make on behalf of our kids is debatable in the Courtroom of Fellow Moms’ Opinions. Every decision we make is somehow big enough to potentially damage them for life. And whose fault will that be? Dad’s? Ha. How in the world do we survive?

One would think it would be enough to make moms turn away from social media – the major source for the constant barrage of unwarranted opinion and unsolicited advice on the minutia of Everyday Momming. Advice we moms didn’t even know we needed, but our anxiety-ridden brains convince us that we may at some point down the line and so we’ll absorb and file it all away somewhere in the frontal lobe for future reference. How to raise your toddler son so he’ll be a woman-respecting adult. How to avoid pesticides in your kids’ food so you don’t accidentally predispose them to cancer.  Reasons bilingual children are more likely to make more money in their eventual careers. (Aren’t you taking them to regular Mandarin lessons?) I don’t even know if any of this is true, but it’s slewed at me daily and who reads more than a headline anymore? Who pays attention to the validity of every source? What it all adds up to is one aggregate headline: None of us is doing enough.  What a downer. A hand wringer, actually.

Last week, eMarketer reported the findings of a new study (and I do know the source on this one: Edison) showing moms are checking Facebook more often today than ever before – at 10 times per day and mostly via mobile phone. This space that frankly serves as the virtual court of opinion and unsolicited advice is sucking us in more and more. Why?

At the same time, we laugh it off in IRL conversation. We admit to being sucked into a photo gallery of bento boxes that will expand kids’ palettes in more adventurous ways over lunchtime. Is the creative bento box really taking the school cafeteria by storm? Please. We confess that we nailed that GMO-free, certified organic side dish of peas last night, but Johnny only ate the main course – blue box mac ‘n cheese. Meh, best effort. We toast our Type-B mom friends over a glass of wine when we steal a few minutes of happy hour to remind ourselves we’re well-adjusted capable women who, by the way, grew human beings in our bodies. Sometimes we laugh in the face of Mom Anxiety. But the undercurrent is strong, friends.

My colleague, bless his heart, couldn’t fathom that we would get side-trackedly sucked into bento boxes we’ll never construct without proactively having Google searched for ‘creative bento box lunch ideas for kids.’ The hell?

So yeah, dear childless male colleague who shall remain nameless, the next time you are tempted to scoff at the perils of motherhood’s mindset, please remember this: you’ve already been judged in the Courtroom of Fellow Moms’ Opinions and you’re sentenced to time out. And a gag order. 

Ah, to Have It All! (blech)

I was in a client meeting last week when the topic of moms “having it all” came up.

Gah. I want to stop typing right there. “Having it all” makes me want to throw up a bit in my mouth. It’s SO OVERDONE. Overused. Abused.

I’m going to forge on now as I did in that meeting; bear with me.

The topic actually came up authentically in the course of this client’s business discussion. It wasn’t a side conversation during a break in the meeting among the working moms in the room who were lamenting over which one couldn’t get her 5-mile run in this morning because she had an early board meeting to zip off to after dropping her three perfectly coifed and ironed children off at Montessori to continue on their path towards presidency.

Nope, the topic came up in the course of ideating a new strategic platform for the client, whose primary focus is on the mom consumer. (You do know what I do for a living, right?)

I personally have been accused of “having it all” in the past and while outwardly rolling my eyes, internally secretly loved the accusation because, well, that competition thing. It’s real, it exists, and don’t think I have gotten to this stage in my career because I’m not competitive. Why do you think the “mommy wars” exist? (Oops, throwing up in my mouth again.) Because moms are competitive. News flash!

For Pete’s sake, at my son’s soccer game last weekend, I showed up (un-showered, mind you) wearing a t-shirt, skinny jeans and a long necklace and another mom in workout gear pointedly asked me why I was so dressed up. She wasn’t joking. “Have you been to church or something this morning? Seriously, why so dressed up?” Uhhh…

Do I really have it all? Psshh, child please.

I yell at my kids. I have no patience for helping with homework. I’m late. They’re late. Sometimes I’d rather escape to Starbucks with my laptop than be at home. I’m stressed and anxious and have decided I’m probably thin only because my heart is constantly racing. I’m sure I project my stress onto my wee ones (one of whom has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety, okay?) and my workaholic tendencies are probably giving them self-esteem issues. Does that make you feel better?

Sounds like a dream, right? Just another day in Having It All! Whee!

Do you think we can just decide we should not be so competitive? That we can just decide to stop the drive towards trying to have it all? I’m telling you, it was mentioned in the meeting that day. People who are very smart and strategic, at the top of their games, and who work with moms every day allow this idea to spill out of their mouths too easily, in my opinion. I’ve heard it. Like, “let’s just help American moms off this path of destruction called perfectionism! Easy peasy, done and done!”

God, if only that whole sentiment came in a pill.

Instead of talking the tired talk about how “we don’t have to have it all! (wink!),” because God knows we love to beat a dead horse, let’s have a REAL, blunt, head-on conversation about the fact that yep, we do all want it all and we do want it all to be just like we imagined and we do want it to be better than the mom next door to boot.

If we (and the brands we love) really want to help moms, how about feeding into this innate drive, this wired-in competition, and flip it so that the drive is towards who is the BEST about shutting off (or attempting to?) the laptop at 5:00 most often? Who does the BEST job of encouraging her child to learn through play the instead of doing anxiety-ridden worksheets? Who is the BEST about asking for and leaning on help from her personal village? Who is the BEST about talking most openly and honestly about her fears and insecurities when it comes to motherhood? Who is the BEST at making others around her feel like their no. 1 goal should be to achieve perfectly imperfect? Who is the BEST at not gossiping about other moms and the way they manage, acknowledging the fact that none of us knows what’s really going on at home, in families and personal lives, and God bless us every one. Whew.

Own up to it and then figure out what works for you. What is your “all.” And then work it, mama. Not just for you but also for your need to show Suzy next door that yes, you indeed are going to rock those hot pink skinny jeans and let them mask your anxiety about the fact that your demanding job and the needs of your offspring are in a constant state of war that you will never admit to Suzy.

Because God help you, you will persevere with ALL the drive you have. All.You.Have.

The Competitive (read: Crazy) Side of Christmas Consumerism

I recently reached my stop and hopped off the Crazy Train. (Not going to claim I didn’t hop on another.)

I’m not really sure where I boarded that Crazy Train. But I was on it for about a month. Okay, and a half.

I suppose it all started in a haze of post-Thanksgiving Christmas gift shopping. Come on, you know how that time of year mixed with that level of maternal consumer responsibility can make one irrational. But of course I was on top of it. I had done the Black Friday thing and besides that already had a great head start. (I’m looking at you, Target, and your sneaky pre-Thanksgiving toy coupon books.) Unfortunately for my sanity, my loving husband had set the bar on “the big gift.” Graham was getting a drum set. It had been researched, compared, decided. Hubs had it in the garage in boxes already. He was going to freak on Christmas morning and we both knew it.

But Reid? What was going to make Reid freak? Yes, these are the kind of big questions that were haunting my thoughts. People, I’m telling you about my Crazy Train experience, after all. I NEEDED REID TO BE EQUALLY FREAKING OUT ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, DAMMIT! I’m talking about my little sweetheart. My Reidy. My Doogie. My blondie who loves to follow directions and hear stories of what a sweet little baby he was. He melts me. Regularly. Naturally he must be rewarded for that by Santa.

Reid is my techie. Hand him an iPad, iPod, iWhateverelse and he’s on it. He tells the rest of us how to use our devices. He instructs his big brother. He NEEDED toy technology. He NEEDED the LEAP PAD! THE TOY OF THE YEAR! AN IPAD FOR KIDS! SOLD OUT EVERYWHERE! BLOGGED ABOUT BY MOMS IN THE KNOW! UNAVAILALBE ON ANY SHELF! SO YES, NATURALLY THAT WAS THE THING I MUST HAVE FOR MY CHILD!
This is the stuff marketers’ dreams are made of. I was trapped.

The next part is embarrassing to type. But I must confess it here as part of the healing process. I spent every morning for about a week this past December outside the locked doors of my neighborhood Target. Yes, you did read that right. It went down each morning as I pulled into the lot and surveyed my competition.

The first morning, Alpha Mom was already waiting. She informed me that she had been coming to the Target every morning for two weeks. Once, she had been thisclose to snatching the Leap Pad, but a woman "in high heels" beat her to the shelf and grabbed all three. While marveling about how I was bonding in the cold with this random stranger over our shared need to secure a Leap Pad, I was a bit taken aback about the high heels comment. I may have fidgeted and wondered how well my dress slacks were hiding my shoes. She said she works nights and that the weekend before, she hired a sitter for her kids and drove all over the metro, racking up hundreds of miles on her car, trying to find the elusive Leap Pad. I thought about the amount of money she must have spent on a sitter and gas. And compared that against the retail value of the Leap Pad. And I thought about the Leap Pads going for two times their values on eBay and Amazon.

My friends, family, colleagues and even clients knew what I was doing. They offered to help, and asked for regular updates on my progress. This only fueled my fire.

Each day there would be another competitor mom or two. I sized them up. Wondered if I could out-run them. Or if they could beat me up. One day there was a dad. But each morning as the Target employee who opened those red doors and most likely mentally judged us with his sideways looks, and we dashed straight down that gleaming linoleum and then to the right, nothing was there. Each day, the stockers would say, “Oh I think we’re getting four on the truck tomorrow! Come back Thursday and we’ll have more! We’re getting in about two each night!” Yadda yadda and whatevs. Why was I trusting strangers in red shirts who obviously had no information? Because I was crazy.

Finally, one morning it happened. The regular, plus a new blonde in scrubs, and I dashed back to the aisle. They, in their tennis shoes, beat me to the punch. There were supposed to be four, according to the red t-shirts from the day before. But there were two. My mompetition looked at me, Leap Pads in hand, shrugged and said, “Sorry! Welp, Merry Christmas!” The blonde offered to give me her “strategy sheet” if I walked to her car with her. I wished her a Merry Christmas, said, "Hope your kids enjoy that,” and took my high heels and my dignity to the office.

I tried to tell myself that Reid DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT A LEAP PAD WAS! That he couldn’t care less if one showed up under the tree or not on Christmas morning. That by the time his birthday rolled around in June, it would be easy to find all the Leap Pads I wanted at the normal price. I managed to find some sense and hubby bought him a kid’s digital camera and some other goodies we knew he would enjoy.

He had a great Christmas. Without the Leap Pad.

Last week, running typical weekend errands at Target I sauntered to the aisle where it all began. There were two Leap Pads on the shelf. No one was running towards them, no one was fighting over them or pulling mace out of their purses. I tossed one into my cart like no big deal, along with my shampoo and some glue dots. And as I exited the store that day I hopped right off of that crazy train.

The Leap Pad now has a temporary home hiding out in the basement. When June rolls around, a certain little boy may or may not freak out at his techy birthday present. And his mom will enjoy the return of her sanity.

Mean Mommy

I have a confession to make.

I am a mean mommy.

My children didn’t tell me this (yet). I just feel it sometimes. I know it. The guilt tells me so.

This is not guilt that has compelled me to admit it to you (or maybe it is).

It’s just that while you wouldn’t believe the number of people who have told me over the past five years that they don’t know how I “do it,” I have my days that all the reasons people tell me this (working at a demanding career and having two kids 15 months apart while simultaneously going to grad school at night, yadda yadda) seem to all sneak up on each other and culminate in me blurting out to my little guys to “Hurry up!” and “Move faster!” and “We’re late, we’re late, we’re late!” and “I forgot my phone!” and “No we cannot go back for your hippo or fire truck or anything else!” and “What forms have I filled out and what forms have I forgotten?!” and “Do you have your backpack, did you take your vitamins, do you have a lunchbox? Can you eat that breakfast any faster?!” and “Is this a t-ball day and do you have your t-ball stuff? GET IT NOW BECAUSE WE’RE LATE!” etc. etc. etc.

I hate that mommy.

And truth be told, those “how do you do it?” wide-eyed questions of amazement at my perfectionist, supermom, master of juggling tendencies have, um… dropped off since I finished grad school and the Hawklets stopped wearing diapers. Damn it! I really miss those unwarranted compliments – the ones that make me think the ruse I’m pulling on everyone else is totally working.

I love my job. I love being a mom. I have even found a way to blend those two statements into one. I love that I have created a job in which I can focus on moms.

But that? Also sometimes turns me into mean mommy. The schedule, the constant iPhone, the late-night laptop sessions, the stress that I seem to too easily project onto the wee ones. It’s enough to turn me to MommyJuice. I mean, why do you think there is a wine brand called MommyJuice? IT’S FOR MEAN, GUILT-RIDDEN MOMMIES LIKE ME, OBVIOUSLY!

I don’t want my guys to be stressed out, especially unnecessarily. (Though candidly it does seem like sometimes they are operating at a snail’s pace and unless it’s Sunday I just.can’t.stand.it.) I don’t want them to feel the need to start saving up for therapy due to the obsession with constant lateness their workaholic mean mommy projected onto them as young children.

I want them to know that if they need extra hug time at drop-off, or if they need to go back and get Hippo, this mom will turn the SUV right around because my time belongs to them and my stress belongs at a safe, legally enforced distance of at least 10-feet away from us at all times.

Do you ever feel like Mean Mommy is creeping up on you? What do you do to make her go away?

I Won Something

I don’t enter sweepstakes. I don’t play the lottery. I don’t win things.

Until this week.

This week I won something really big. Well, really big at least within the walls of my employing firm, Fleishman-Hillard.

So in this case you might be meh and I might be peeing my pants. But let me tell you why..

My third baby, the one I call FH Moms, the one I birthed at the office instead of the hospital and that requires food of the intellectual kind instead of the pureed – was named by firm leadership “Practice of the Year.”

Yes, that’s right. A little idea I had was just validated as a really really good idea by the crazysmart leaders of the 28 other global practice groups our firm maintains.

There I was, sitting in a staff meeting, listening to our regional president who was in town from Corporate to give a "State of the Firm" update (which it turns out was a guise to come to town to give me this award), and suddenly she was talking about me, about the practice I started, about the fact it was being bestowed a HUGE honor.

And I suddenly found myself in the mental states of “Oh dear God I did not wash my hair this morning” and “Did I just chew the skin off my bottom lip?” and “Speech! Speech on the spot! Quick! Be pithy!”

And then someone flung the black felt draping off the beautiful glass award and someone else wheeled in a cake and… "wait, I was just home sick with a stomach bug yesterday and uh-oh, now my colleagues are giving me congratulatory hugs and am I giving them flu germs? Shirt to shirt? Is that possible?"

I won something. For being smart and working hard.

Hey mom, I won!

Attempting to Stop the Shiny Penny from Jumping to Conclusions

Hubby Hawks is a research subject. Or, he should be. Watching him father, I feel as though I am watching a major generational shift taking place in my own home. I’m watching a trend gathering in front of my face. You know that term “The Greatest Generation?” Well, I believe he is part of the greatest generation of fatherhood to date.

Let me explain…

My husband is helpful. Yesterday, I bragged to my colleague in the office that the night before I had come home to enchiladas in the oven. Yes, my husband cooks. He changes diapers. He bathes our children. He plays and reads stories. He packs lunches and backpacks.

I know. I’m livin’ the dream. But let me clarify. When I say he’s helpful, it’s not that he’s helping me per se. He’s helping his children. Because he is their father. He is parenting.

I do all of those things too. (Although for some reason I find giving baths so tiring.) But I am no Betty Draper, thank God. (Okay, and I am a horrible cook. Are you happy now?)

That colleague I mentioned above has a different parenting experience. In her household, some of the antiquated and stereotypical gender roles are still evident. Some. At least, enough for her to be in awe of my enchiladas in the oven.

The Cassandra New Family Report of 2009 underscored the shift to this new involved dad. It showed that Gen X and Y dads don’t see staying at home with the kids as demeaning. In fact, 40% of Gen Y dads believe themselves to be the primary caretaker of the children. When asked how they would choose to spend a free afternoon, they said they would want to be with their children. Moms said they would choose to have alone time.

This is all very exciting. But the research is also giving people permission to draw assumptions… jump to conclusions. Some think the daddy blogger will become the new marketing influencer, the “new mommy blogger.” I’m not convinced. Research shows dads just don’t communicate in the same ways we do. I’ve talked about this before, but maybe you weren’t reading here then. Dads who are changing diapers aren’t dictating what diapers to buy. They aren’t telling each other why they choose said diaper brand, or what that diaper brand is currently doing to green its business practices. They aren’t forging blogging communities and networks to find each other and have these conversations about where parenting and products intersect like moms are. Okay, okay, some dads are. SOME. Not enough to make a statistically significant difference. And that is the point.

And yes, I am fully aware that we have recently entered for the first time ever that point in which there are as many men as women in the workforce. And that the economic downturn forced more men to stay at home with the kids. But getting laid off doesn’t mean those dads were rushing home to start blogging about whether their kids’ chocolate milk should be organic. If I was a dad who was laid off in 2009 and I knew that some marketers equate my loss of a job to my being now part of a rising trend of “daddy bloggers” oh I would be pissed.

How could marketers be so tied to gender stereotypes that they think just because dads today are more involved, more hands on, more helpful in the household (or God forbid because they have lost a job) that they must also now be the same kind of consumer as moms are, having the same conversations in the same places?

Some marketers are too quick to jump on the daddy blogger bandwagon. I consider it part of the shiny penny syndrome that is rampant in this business. With every calendar rotation, the talk naturally shifts to what’s going to be the new trend? What’s going to be the new in thing for our business, to keep the trade media and our competitors talking about us, guessing our next move?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. My husband is not living his father’s fatherhood. But he is also not living my motherhood. And I can assure you he will never blog, tweet, or status-post. And if he does, it’s not going to involve any mention of diapers or organic chocolate milk.

That said, I do believe there is another type of blogger who will start to add volume to the mommy blogger’s voice this year and over the next few years, and I’ll share more on that in my next post.

(Ooooh, my first blog cliffhanger! Are you excited?)

When will VW get the mom memo?

The soccer mom is dead. She is buried next to the Astro mini-van. And if she wasn’t, I would kill her after watching videos like the one featured in this recent article.

I wasn’t sure whether I should feel offended or annoyed at the video, which is marketing the VW Routan. So I felt both.

The mom in question has an annoying mom-jean, bouncing around, hugging strangers kind of persona. Of course she speaks with a northern Midwest accent, youbetcha. To make it worse, this soccer mom has forgotten her children who are sitting on a street curb alone in the rain.
Did VW miss a little what-not-to-do-when-marketing-to-moms case study called Motrin Moms? Moms don’t like snark. They don’t want to be portrayed as disregarding their children. They certainly don’t want to be shown has having half a brain. They are tech-savvy, empowered multi-taskers in charge of the household after all.

For Pete’s sake, how many times are we going to have to keep regurgitating the Motrin Moms case before other major brands come around?

And they probably aren’t self-identifying as soccer moms anymore, even though kids’ soccer may very well be a big deal at home. Research has uncovered more than 50 mom sub-segments. Yet decades after the birth and death of the Soccer Mom, we still see her starring in mom-focused campaigns.

The Routan mom should be wielding a smart phone (not a clipboard!) where she manages the family calendar and 'to-dos.' And said to-do list wouldn’t include “don’t forget children.” She should be trendy (like her Routan?) and socially appropriate.

Of course moms appreciate humor in marketing. But it’s just not funny when the target is mom and particularly one we can’t identify with. We need to laugh with her; not at her.

Is this the consumer VW folks see when a mom walks into a dealership? Take the sterotype-colored glasses off, VW marketers. Not to mention the fact that if this is the type of mom driving a Routan, do you really think that’s the type of driver persona I want to identify with?

When did making-fun-of-mom become a marketing strategy?

So many questions. Such high blood pressure. (sigh)

The Look

This just in: Mom of six gets highlights!! (That b*tch! She must not care anything for her children if she chooses to coif herself! )

Remember mom jeans? Not cute. Why are they called mom jeans? Because women without children don’t wear them? Well… do they? Or is it because moms are naturally supposed to have upside-down-heart-shaped tushes and thus need the appropriate pants to compensate for the new morphed shape? A side effect of pregnancy and pushing, maybe? A mom stamp?

Naturally, moms are supposed to be frumpy and flabby. They are supposed to be dowdy with a pooch. They are supposed to be … oh sorry, I temporarily slipped into an alternate universe!

Is it news now that moms get manicures? Get their teeth whitened? Should Kate Gosselin be ridiculed for wanting a tummy tuck after housing six human beings inside there? I think not. There are far better reasons to ridicule Kate Gosselin that don’t include the fact that she got a tan, highlights and a manicure and thus no longer “looks like a mom.” The fact that she has changed her ‘mom look’ is not a news story. Come on, tabloids, I expect more from you!

I didn’t look so hot after giving birth to one baby. I can’t imagine what gross creature I would look like after giving birth to six.

I am a mom but I can also attempt to be the woman I was before being a mom (poor Hubby would probably appreciate that attempt). I have pushed two human beings out of my body after all. The least you can afford me is a mani/pedi/highlight/teeth whitening without ridicule.

Hey, I’m a mom – I have superhuman powers! I can certainly pull off both mom and woman simultaneously. Oh yes, hear me roar.

Could a down economy save parents from themselves?

I recently came across this review in the Brooklyn Rail about a book called Parenting, Inc.: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers—and What It Means for Our Children. Hmm. It’s quite a title. A mouthful, really. And obviously meant for “those” parents who over-indulge their kids with excess that is so readily available in the baby products market. But, wait a minute…I have a diaper wipe warmer. Have I thrown my own wallet into the hyper-consumerism bonfire?

The book points out the ways in which marketers are essentially fear-mongers, snatching up parents-to-be and convincing them they need these (expensive) things to be a better parent. Because if you don’t use a sleep positioner with your infant who can’t even roll over yet, you are subjecting him to possible death. Huh? And you must purchase the motion detector to ensure constant breathing. What? Well, you do want your kid to be safe…DON’T YOU? What kind of parent are you?

This is of course also fueled by an alpha syndrome – the need to keep up with Mommy and Daddy Jones. A friend of mine recently announced that he and his wife decided to register for the Cadillac of strollers because “a $10 stroller is for a $10 baby.” I actually don’t know any babies that cost $10, but boy that would jibe so much more nicely with the current economic state. Actually, from what I’ve read, babies cost their parents about $20,000 in their first year of life. (How’s that for birth control?)

And why do babies cost so much? Exorbitant daycare costs aside, could we actually be doing this to ourselves? Am I a better mother if I spend $600 more on my stroller? Somebody is convincing us that, yes, the more money we spend, the better we parent, and the more likely our kids are to get into Harvard. Oh, so that’s how it happens!

The whole phenomenon is shocking and fascinating to me simultaneously as both a mom and a marketer. The marketer in me exclaims, “Genius!” The mom in me asks, “What kind of consumerism example am I setting for my kids? What kind of consumers will they be as parents one day?”

As our economy continues in a downward spiral, could our (albeit forced) shift towards conservative consumerism actually help us set better examples for our kids?

Perhaps I should buy the book and learn about the ways I’m doing it all wrong, buying too much, and … oh, right, I’ll buy something so that I’ll understand how to not buy things. Problem solved.