Posted on 10/04/2004 5:20:13 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
Met any security moms lately? Every time that term is employed – the latest, favorite stereotype conjured by pollsters, pols and pundits – I try, based on media representations, to imagine just what a security mom looks like.
Try this: Arnold Schwarzenegger in drag, white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel of an armored Hummer plastered with Bush-Cheney stickers, careening across suburban lawns, divots, diapers and car seats flying.
The current conventional wisdom is that security moms – defined by some pollsters as the 22 percent of women who are white, suburban, blue-collar and college educated, with children – are going to decide this election.
But wait. Media Matters for America – which bills itself as "a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center" dedicated to monitoring "conservative misinformation" – isn't exactly an objective source. But it made a valid point when it claimed last week that news media are unskeptically promoting security moms as the swing constituency in 2004.
No question about it, security moms are all the rage, literally. "The hottest phenomenon in presidential politics is the metamorphosis of women from 'soccer moms' to 'security moms,'" writes a columnist for The Washington Times, said to be a conservative newspaper. On the alleged left, The New York Times concurs; columnist Maureen Dowd writes, "The so-called security moms, who have replaced soccer moms as a desirable demographic, are now flocking to Mr. Bush over Mr. Kerry, believing he can better protect their kids from scary terrorists."
Is the security mom image accurate, or just convenient? The last time around, the soccer mom – said to favor Clinton and Gore – was the hot political date. Media accepted that moniker without questioning its progenitor, the Stepford Wife – an only slightly more insulting characterization of suburban women.
No woman I know is so easily reduced. The soccer mom was said to be politically focused on "women's and children's issues" such as child care, education and neighborhood safety. Reporters began to use "soccer mom" as shorthand to describe these issues. Men, by omission, were concerned with what? "Real" work? World events? Kicking butt? By implication, fathers were simply too distracted by the affairs of state to be concerned about the welfare of their own children.
This reductionism came as no surprise to those of us who already knew how institutionalized that prejudice had become. In the late 1980s, in the then-largest government study of parent involvement in Head Start, of the 1,000 interviewees, none were fathers. That assumption about parental involvement is underscored every time newspaper headline writers write "Moms concerned about (fill in the child-related blank)" – again, as if dads aren't.
Is there a grain of truth in the division of parental labor? Of course. But do fathers care less about their children's futures than mothers? I don't think so. Such stereotypes reinforce expectations and behavior. They do us no good; and, when dissected, they're usually found to be inaccurate and misleading – just more political fog.
Conducted last week, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that mothers are "no more likely than other voters to name the war on terrorism or Iraq as their top voting issue." According to the poll, "only about one in four married women with children – 24 percent – rated the war on terrorism as their major concern." This polling organization, it should be noted, was one of the same groups that originally promoted the security mom stereotype.
The New Republic quotes Time magazine pollster Mark Schulman as saying that his firm has been trying to get a firm handle on the security mom phenomenon, but "we honestly could not find much empirical evidence to support it."
This is not to say that Kerry doesn't have a problem with women voters, at least compared with Gore's earlier higher ratings. But that may have more to do with Kerry's perceived inconsistencies than with fear of terrorists. After Thursday's debate, and Kerry's strong performance, one wonders what the polls will reveal (assuming one trusts the polls) about support among parents in general.
Perhaps, instead of thinking about security moms, we should at least broaden the stereotype – to security parents. Parents are certainly fearful during this election season. Terrorism is one reason. But the causes of that fear are more complex than only a fear of foreign terrorists. Just as immediate, and possibly more so, is the fear of losing a job – or the fear of a military draft.
While a draft – an "urban myth," Republican spokesmen and women call it – remains unlikely under current conditions, conditions could change. Last week, facing a tougher recruitment climate – including a de facto draft of reservists and a rising rate of resistance to re-enlistment – the Army lowered its entrance standards for recruits. An expanded war, especially on a new front, could create the conditions under which Congress would have no choice but to support a draft.
If parents become convinced that a widened war and a new military draft are more likely under one candidate than the other, then parents could indeed swing the election – and not necessarily in the direction that the security mom myth would suggest.
Louv's column appears on Sundays. He can be reached via e-mail at rlouv@cts.com or via www.thefuturesedge.com.
Met any security moms lately? Every time that term is employed – the latest, favorite stereotype conjured by pollsters, pols and pundits – I try, based on media representations, to imagine just what a security mom looks like
UMMM Gore carried the Women vote by 11 points. Bush is winning it by 2. Note to Leftist Feminist "Journalists" that 13% are the security moms. But HEY We know you Leftist Femis cannot deal with the reality that your radical hard left agenda is NOT acccepted by most women.
Sorry but Bush is not winning the women vote 2 to 1, or 66-33.
He is winning the women's vote and Gore's 11 point advantage among women had vanished, but it is not a 2 to 1 margin or even close.
Where did you get that?
Lord, I tire of the asynaptic.
' Bush is winning it by 2'
I assume that he means by 2 points.....
Sorry but Bush is not winning the women vote 2 to 1, or 66-33.
He is winning the women's vote and Gore's 11 point advantage among women had vanished, but it is not a 2 to 1 margin or even close.
Where did you get that?
Sorry Was not clear. Need to get off the 'puter for a while. By 2 POINTS not 2 to 1. So an 11 point Gore lead to a -2 defecit for Kerry is a 13 point swing.
Read it again, Hoss. The post said "winning by 2" (meaning percentage points), not "2 to 1".
"Scary terrorist." I think terrorism is scary. Never underestimate fanatics who want to kill Americans.
Yes, I read it wrong! Sorry and thanks for making it clear.
Just another example of how the liberal MSM tries to seperate Americans by either color, or class. They could easily have used the term "parents" or "moms and dads"...
and shame on Maureen for using such a supercilious frame of reference in her column when referring to the "scary" terrorists.
Just shows she doesn't get it. The single most tangible threat to our security and way of life, and she treats them as Halloween goblins. She wasn't standing close enough to the WTC on 11 September 2001.
Semper Fi
No friend, you were clear. I read it too fast and read it wrong. You were right and I was wrong. Kudos and thanks for being gracious in being right!
Keep the faith!
Hoss was my fave Bonanza character! ;-)
You are right and I was wrong! Sorry!
"Last week, facing a tougher recruitment climate – including a de facto draft of reservists and a rising rate of resistance to re-enlistment – the Army lowered its entrance standards for recruits."
Checking this out with my son (active-duty Army) ...but this is the first I've heard of the Army lowering it's entrance standards.
Anyone?
I never liked that term, 'soccer mom'. My husband and I drove my three to every sport and activity imaginable, and worked full days besides...
We were more interested in teaching our kids that "WE" didn't approve of certain behaviors or what they were seeing on TV, including the sexual misbehaviors and morally corrupt presentations of the former President.
Now, I am a 'security mom'. Since 9/11, I wonder if my children will LIVE thru more attacks, and mourn the loss of our forever-lost sense of safety and trust. W won't say the word 'crusade', but we all recognize that there is a crusade against US...my boys can fight for him. But not for sKerry.
Wonder who Hop Sing is voting for.
The term is McCarthyite and the righteous are unamused.
Hop Sing was one of the few in the west who wasn't afraid of Hoss! He would go after him with the meat cleaver on occasion! Haha!
Women, like all people, are ultimately responsible for their own safety.
As long as most of them would rather sit around watching reruns of "Sex in the City" instead of learning how to shoot a gun (or at least finding a guy who likes guns), they will never be "secure".
This "security mom" stuff is nothing less than yet another scam of political marketeers to get votes.
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