Here in capitalism land, we are forever being sold on some fake social trend emerging from a consumer trend.
For example: USA Today trumpets, “Alpha Moms leap to top of trendsetters.”
The article describes a new type of mom, the Alpha Mom (the phrase is branded, copyrighted, etc.), who is the busiest mom ever. She is a driven, Type A, educated and tech-savvy woman who is determined to achieve excellence in motherhood.
The headline easily could have read, “Successful, upper-middle-class-to-rich moms set marketing trends because they spend the most money.”
The article describes Constance Van Flandern, who coined “Alpha Mom,” as being so busy that she has moments in her day when she has a BlackBerry in one hand and one of her two kids the other.
Wooooooo. Get the smelling salts. That is busy. No mother in history ever multi-tasked like that before. Somehow it’s comforting to know a good ol’ rolling pin could sure accidentally crush an expensive electronic gadget, and still handle the pie dough.
Consumer expert Michael Silverstein gushed to USA Today that an Alpha Mom is “a hyperactive purchasing agent.”
But she hasn’t been prescribed Ritalin for the condition because this kind of hyperactivity is good for the economy.
Van Flandern coined “Alpha Mom” while working on an assignment to design a logo for a new a new video-on-demand cable TV service for information-hungry, multitasking moms. Mommy TV, Mommy Channel and Mommy Says were all rejected. Then Van Flandern had her epiphany: “I realized that the audience is me: a hip mom who wants be involved with her children’s lives but who doesn’t want to give up her identity.”
Being “involved with her children’s lives” is a good start for any mom, Alpha or no. But no kid wants a parent who considers him/herself hip. They never are. Also, they think the “mom” and “dad” identities are pretty important, all by themselves. No kid screams for his multi-tasking Alpha graphic artist when he scrapes a knee. You can’t text a boo-boo away.
This pseudo trend of Alpha Moms is easy enough to discount, except for the fact that new moms come along every day who might hear such baloney and believe there is some BlackBerry-powered supermom out there. Perhaps a Beta Mom channel could be devoted to moms with middle to lower incomes. It can emphasize that Alpha Moms who have night nurses for newborns, nannies, housekeepers, cooks and no shortage of “me time” are not the norm.
It’s just that performance artist Alpha Moms have more than enough money to have the time to tell you just how busy they are.
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