May 10, 2008

Categorizing Mom

Teleflora's "America's Favorite Mom" which is set to air as a prime-time NBC special on Mothers Day still hasn't figured it out. The show set out to crown remarkable moms based on categories, one of which bit the dust early on. You see, in addition to the categories of Military Mom, Working Mom, Single Mom, and CEO "Chairman of Everything" Mom was the category Non-Mom Mom. The Non-Mom Mom category (defined as "Grandparent, stepmom, or mom to adopted children, each one raising and loving a child. A priceless gift for everybody.") was recently changed to "The Adopting Mom" because of the reaction to the previous label of Non-Mom Mom. Duh. I'd like to know where the head of the person in charge of coming up with those labels was when they were signed off on. They've now issued this:

"
Teleflora is immediately changing the name of our "Non-Mom" category to "Adopting Moms". After closer examination, we can see how this may have been offensive to moms who have adopted children -- moms who are indeed real moms to their children in every sense of the word. In fact, many of us at Teleflora are “adopting” parents ourselves, including our president and owner. The essence of this category still focuses on a grandparent, neighbor, step mom, or mom to adopted or foster children, each one raising and loving a child."

Great. Thanks. Your thoughtlessness is forgiven. God bless America. Yet I'm still perplexed by the inclusion of a separate category for adopting moms in the first place. All of the other categories are defined by the mom's work status while just this one describes a method of becoming a parent. What if I want to nominate someone who is a Working Mom and and Adopting Mom, do I have to choose? Or does the fact that she adopted her child somehow eliminate her from simply being a Working Mom, would she need to be a Working Adopting Mom? The whole contest just rubbed me the wrong way.

So to end this rant I'd like to propose a new category to vote on:

Kick Ass Mom. This category is non dependent on current work status as defined by the IRS nor does it consider the method of becoming a parent as an influential factor. May we all thrive as Kick Ass Moms always.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm in for adopting the Kick Ass Mom category.


Biology (or is it just Blood??) is one of those things I'll never understand.

You hit one of my hot buttons as well. What's with the "step" business? Every time someone introduces me to their kids and says "This is my daughter blah and my step daughter blah blah" I steam. I can't imagine being a kid and hearing that over and over again. How can he/she ever think of themselves as a full feldged family member? How could they whole heartedly embrace their new family structure and hold their head up high? What's keeping their new sisters and brothers from taking that statement and turning it into one of ridicule?

Labels suck. Amen.

Mom C

QB said...

I vote you Queen of the kick ass category.