….like we don’t have enough to do

Mom VS MOM – By Ralph Gardner Jr.

“The pressure to be thin is brutal,” says a stay-at-home mom. (Photo: Ben Baker)

 Ann approached another mother at a school function recently and happily introduced herself. Not only were their younger kids in kindergarten together, she explained, but their older sons played in the same weekend soccer league. “She said, ‘Oh,’ and just walked away,” Ann remembers. “That was it. ‘Oh.’ It was a school event. It wasn’t like it was the steam room at Bliss where she was naked.”

Ann is certain she knows why her fellow mom dissed her, if in fact she did. It has nothing to do with Ann’s confusing on-again-off-again marriage, or the disparity in their net worths. (Ann is middle-class; the other woman is profoundly wealthy.) No, as far as Ann is concerned, the reason the other woman turned tail is that Ann works full-time. Her adversary, on the other hand, is a gloriously full-time stay-at-home mom — with all the attendant benefits that implies not only to her youngsters but also to the life of the school. A stamp licker, an envelope stuffer, an active member of the parents association, a person who can always be counted on to bring not one but two or three dishes to the annual potluck dinner — even if, as Ann suspects, she buys them and passes them off as her own. “In the school directory, you can see who has a job and who doesn’t,” Ann says, imagining the woman taking a black marker and banishing her to oblivion. Continue reading →