What exactly is a "hockey mom" anyway?

[dreamshark]

Is it the same thing as a "soccer mom?" That term was bandied about endlessly during the last two presidential election cycles. It apparently referred to affluent surburban housewives who mostly drove minivans or SUVs and spent most of their day ferrying their kids around from one activity to another. Single mothers in the inner city could not be "soccer moms," no matter how many soccer-playing kids they might have. Neither could working mothers, unless maybe they worked part-time at something kind of upscale.

Above all, soccer moms are not married to Joe Six-pack. Maybe hockey moms are different?

Comments

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I'll speculate and say that hockey moms have more money, what with hockey being the most expensive of the extra-curricular sports and soccer being one of the least expensive.

Other than that, I suppose it's just more bullshit.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

Hockey costs so much it may be that all you can afford is a six pack after you pay for all your equipment and fees.

[guppiecat]

I think they're interchangeable. In certain Northern climes, it may not be practical to play soccer, as it's an outside sport. In those locales, I hypothesize that hockey replaces soccer as the sport that provides parents an excuse to over-schedule their children in a misguided attempt to make the children fulfill the parents' abandoned dreams.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I think they're the same thing. I'm just trying to figure out exactly who Sarah Palin thinks she's appealing to when she talks about "hockey moms" and "Joe Six Pack."

[guppiecat]

I think that this article explains it pretty well.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I don't think Matt Taibbi should hold back; I'd like to know what he *really* thinks!

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I thought it was remarkably mean-spirited, but probably on target.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Actually, it doesn't. While it's fun to read savagely witty attacks on Sarah Palin, this article has nothing to say about the terms "soccer mom" and "hockey mom."

Palin seem to be using the terms as short-hand for "working-class American" which has drifted a long way from its original meaning (as a political term, that is. Presumably the original meaning had something to do with whether or not your kids played a particular sport).

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Hockey is more violent and manly than soccer, though, so Palin is a better mother than those effete soccer moms.

I'm only half-kidding, sadly.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I think it's simpler, really -- a "hockey mom" is a "soccer mom" who lives in Alaska.

not really the same as soccer moms.

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

Hockey moms (hockey parents generally) are not the same as soccer moms although there is a geographic component.

Yes it is an expensive sport, but youth hockey and youth soccer are different "cultures" (think of it as "comic fandom" versus "sf fandom" or something like that.)

Hockey revolves around ice rinks. For historical reasons it is played more in cold weather areas, but as the parent of a kid who played hockey from about seven through when he aged out, (in Illinois) it is rare to have an outdoor rink - a novelty not the norm.

And it doesn't matter how many ice rinks you have, usage of ice rinks expands to 120% or more of the available ice time. Hockey parents get up at ungodly hours, because 6am ice time is a given. It takes a kid half an hour to get into the equipment. That means getting to the rink at 5:30. Which means - given that rinks are never near enough to where you live - that you *leave the house* at 5am. (possibly the kid is in pajamas, but the driver needs to be at least minimally dressed. You need to cram at least a granola bar and some liquid into the kid or they keel over halfway through the practice.

So the real answer is that hockey moms get up at 4am or earlier, an unspeakable number of times during the season, which can run from October through April, what with spring hockey.

There are some other nuances - less hockey in the south - foreign players tend to be from Russia, Finland - professional hockey is certainly perceived as violent, and much more. Less racial diversity in hockey.

A more important difference from my observations - there are a lot more male adult parents involved in hockey. Because the ice availability drives the time the games are, and because it isn't played outside in daytime the way soccer tends to be, men are a lot more involved.

There's also the initial barrier - before you can play hockey it is helpful if you can skate and there isn't really an equivalent skill barrier for soccer.

Youth sports of any sort is like a fandom - the fandom for youth softball/baseball is different from that for hockey, is different from that for soccer. (Also, hockey parents have a lot more male involvement.)

Here's a few hockey parent t-shirts from cafe press.

Hockey - uniting cold sleep deprived parents for morning coffee since the 1800s.

How to spot a hockey mom
Wears wool socks in July
Family van has more miles than the space shuttle, but less room for people.
Carries electrical tape and Fabreeze
Wears winter coat over pajamas at 6am
skin color make mimes look tanned
Shouts colorful metaphors at officials
Can carry a 50 pound duffle bag, four sticks, a baby and a cup of coffee.

My hockey mom can beat up your soccer mom.

There are lots more but I'm finding it harder to find the typical ones I've seen over the years because of all the recent politicalish ones.

And while I don't approve of unnecessary spending there is a small part of me that understands how if you were a certain sort of person, you might think that the world would be improved by another ice rink.

Re: not really the same as soccer moms.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. An interestingly detailed response to a rather flippant question.

All the more reason to believe that if Sarah Palin thinks "hockey mom" = "average American family" she is way off the beam. Of course we've already discovered that she thinks that a family income of more than $200,000/year makes her family a typical middle class family that understands the hardships that ordinary Americans are going through.

The perplexing thing, as always, is why this makes hard-working Americans with family incomes of $35,000/year stand up and cheer.

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

Following up on the "neither could working mothers, unless they worked part-time at something kind of upscale" part of the comment.

I hadn't ever really processed it, but I think hockey is an easier sport to be a working parent in, because the schedule is more stretched out over the day. And I certainly knew hockey single moms.

I need to think more about this.

Soccer, is to some extent a "new" sport in the US and I'm not sure how that plays into the equation, but I think it does.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a single parent family in Canada and I never played a game of organized hockey because we couldn't afford new skates every year let alone the equipment. Fees were minimal in those days but I don't remember any single parents with kids playing hockey. Things have probably changed to a certain extent since then but I do think of hockey as something for kids from at a certain income level or higher.

Soccer was something you played at recess or during gym class if you were lucky. That may have been more a function of my neighbourhood than anything else though.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Following up on the "neither could working mothers, unless they worked part-time at something kind of upscale" part of the comment.

I hadn't ever really processed it, but I think hockey is an easier sport to be a working parent in, because the schedule is more stretched out over the day. And I certainly knew hockey single moms."

Remember, I was talking about the term "hockey mom" as a political demographic, not as a term that literally means "mother of hockey players." There are plenty of urban single parents with kids that play soccer. But those were not the women being described by the term "soccer mom" when it rolled out of the mouths of political pundits.

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I realize that - what I'm reacting to (possibly not very clearly) is the sense that the hockey playing demographic is not exactly the same as the soccer playing demographic/culture.

Obviously there's a money component, and in some ways soccer is more egalitarian and diverse. You can scrape together soccer equipment money a lot more easily than you can hockey equipment money.

But I think there is some sort of class/culture issue with hockey. It is an more of an upper/lower class sport and not so much middle class, and it is an "old" sport - that was why one of the t-shirts I quoted was the "morning coffee since the 1800s" one. And it is tied to "northern part of the northern hemisphere" ethnicities. Not just American - in the area where I live teams had foreign kids - but they were Finnish or Russian or Canadian kids.

And fans of hockey as a pro sport are somewhat different too.

My gut reaction comes down to the sense that the "soccer moms" don't work full time - can't to some extent.

At least 10 years ago, when we were doing this, soccer wasn't possible for two working parents - hockey was, with a little finagling of an hour here and an hour there. But very few/almost no afternoon practices. (9pm practices, yes, 6am practices, yes.)

The minivans are the same, (although we did hockey for a couple of years when one of our cars was a Miata - the only way to fit the hockey bag in the trunk was to take out the spare.)

I'm also somewhat resistant to the notion that if your kid is involved in sports it somehow is only to fulfil something you feel lacking in your own life.

We did some very casual ice-skating as a family sport and my son latched on to the fact there were hockey teams. We never did the crazy stuff like the "travel" teams, but it was mostly fun. It's just another form of associational grouping, like sf fandom - or raising fancy chickens or whatever people do for fun.

I still don't feel I've nailed the difference between "soccer" and "hockey" but I do think there is one.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Do you think that her being in Minnesota for the convention had anything to do with her making the hockey mom comment?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

No. Her home state is quite a bit further north than Minnesota.

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

One thing to remember is that one of the "she's a terrible fiscal manager" has to do with building an unnecessary sports arena with an ice rink in it.

So I think the sports fan/parent has some significance if it is parsed correctly.