When did grown women start publicly referring to themselves as “moms”? The other day, Sarah Palin said she was concerned about foreign policy as “a mom with a son in Afghanistan.” Soccer moms, hockey moms, stay-at-home moms, working moms, single moms. What ever happened to ‘mother’?

Rule #1 of domestic nomenclature: Do not refer to a woman as a mom unless you are that woman’s child. 

Rule #2: Do not refer to yourself as a mom with anyone who is not your child.

The less time and energy women expend being mothers, the more adorable motherhood becomes. This cornball vocabulary trivializes and demeans an exalted and timeless institution, this sacred vocation that has wrecked more lives than any other. A mom is decorative. A mother is severe and semi-official and disturbingly ever-present. A mom sits in the bleachers and yells, “Go, Buster! I love ya!” A mother takes you by the ears and scrubs your mouth out with Fels Naptha.

As Florence King said, “Let’s face it: We like the idea of motherhood, we like the symbols of motherhood, we like the metaphors of motherhood, and we like the cute, casual vocabulary of neo-motherhood that we have cooked up, but we don’t like motherhood…”

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