What's a Soccer Mom Anyway? (Published 1996) (2024)

ONCE upon a time, like about three months ago, a soccer mom was just that.

She turned up where she was expected. Pacing the sidelines of her children's games, she wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like ''I don't have a life. My kids play soccer.'' One soccer mom in Indiana died leaving a will asking that all memorial donations be made to her church league. A soccer mom at her most flashy might be found in a television commercial, peddling an improved brand of tuna fish.

Then suddenly, some time around the Republican convention, the Soccer Mom became mythic. The hands that steered the mini-van were also deciding whether to turn left or right in the Presidential election. If Bob Dole did not find a way to appeal to such women, they might swing the election for Bill Clinton. In his closing statement during last week's Presidential debate in San Diego, Mr. Dole even addressed soccer moms directly, saying he understood their problems.

In Campaign '96, the Soccer Mom became oracle.

Misleading

But there is some question whether the mythic version actually exists. The Soccer Mom is either on the threshold of joining the Silent Majority and the Angry White Male of previous elections in the Swing Voters' Hall of Fame, or of being banished back to the sidelines. Believers say the soccer mom embodies the concerns of a huge swath of suburban female voters. But doubters find the title too limiting or misleading and even soccer dads will tell you there just aren't that many.

''It is one of the most overused terms in America,'' said Pat Schroeder, the Democratic Congresswoman, who as a former soccer mom said she personally never found much difference between suburban mothers and fathers when it came to politics. ''Everyone is talking about soccer moms -- what they can do to move them. I keep wondering about the demographics -- are the moms that different from the dads, and why?''

Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, the Republicans' soccer mom archetype, with both a son and daughter who played, is also skeptical of the term. ''It is unfair in the sense that there are soccer dads as well,'' said Mrs. Whitman. ''I have a problem when you lump people into a group, because you lose a lot of people.''

Certainly the soccer moms were not previously considered a distinct breed. A rough computer scan of major American newspapers found just eight references linking soccer moms and politics before 1996, when the number suddenly jumped well past 100.