Get Married, Have Kids, Move to the 'burbs ... and Brace for Battle

As dreaded Monday-morning drop-off rolls around again, I trudge out of my kids’ school, trying to avoid pockets of moms chatting and giggling over weekend dinner parties, ski trips, and ladies’ nights that I wasn’t invited to. It feels like junior high all over again. 

I call my mother—the quintessential stay-at-home mom who always had fresh-baked cookies waiting for me after school, who drove carpools before they became trendy—on my way home, to ask what life was like for her while she was raising my sister and me in suburban Washington, D.C., 30 years ago.

“Oh we had mean moms,” my mother tells me. Not everyone was invited to play bridge or attend the neighborhood Tupperware party. But moms were much less intense with each other.  “Honey, you have to understand that my generation of women got married younger, and we knew that once we had children, our ‘job’ was to stay home and take care of them.” My mom was two years out of college when she got married; she had me two years later. In her experience, if a woman’s interests differed from the group, she might have been isolated, but not outright bullied.

“My friends and I just wanted to get through each day, but I think former career women today expect more out of life,” my mom says. “It’s probably why you and your friends were so successful in your jobs, and you’re bringing that competitive attitude into your social lives.”

She’s got a point. I can’t remember my mom ever leaving us in the care of my dad to go off with her girlfriends for the weekend. My dad would have looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “But who will cook the dinner?” he’d have asked. Conversely, my own husband would be helping me pack an overnight bag, recognizing that I needed a break. He wouldn’t worry about making dinner: he’d just take the kids out.

In contrast, a friend who lives in an affluent suburb of New York City says that nearly all her friends have a regular Saturday night babysitter. On Monday mornings, the topic of conversation at school drop-off is, Who’d you go out with this weekend? And, Where’d you go?

I stop her to clarify, “Every Saturday night?”

“Yes, and people book up months in advance. It’s like couples’ dating. You see which couples are nice but a little boring, which ones brag, which ones are offensive…”

“Wow, I don’t think it’s like that in my town,” I reply.

“Or maybe you’re just not getting invited,” she says. I laugh at her candor and concede that might be true. “Most everyone moved here from Manhattan,” she adds, “so maybe we’re all just very social.” Not to mention well-off, because the babysitter alone can cost anywhere from $17 to $20 an hour in Larchmont, N.Y. (do the math on that!). Most husbands, and some wives, work in finance, which affords them regular nights out and multiple family vacations a year to places like Park City, West Palm Beach, and Nantucket. The weekdays are no less busy with book clubs, dinner clubs, and “outings into the city for everyone’s birthdays.” My friend says she often has to catch herself “because, before you know it, you can get sucked into this bubble and lose perspective.”

I’ve seen that happen in my own social circle. I was talking to an acquaintance at a party recently, and she prefaced her story by saying, “You know how in Aruba you have to reserve your cabana first thing in the morning?” I nodded, just to keep the conversation going, but did I actually know that? Absolutely not. I’ve never been to Aruba. But she assumed I’d been there and knew exactly what she was talking about. That’s called losing perspective.

But if everyone you know is taking jaunts to “the Dominican” (my friends don’t even bother to say “Republic” anymore, assuming we’re both in the know) for spring break, you start to feel like that’s the norm. How you spend your leisure time has become a way to declare your class status. There’s an unspoken competition for who goes on the coolest vacations, who entertains the most, who throws the biggest bashes, and who tries the newest hip restaurant first. Among people who work hard and play harder, it’s a way to establish a pecking order. 

Like my mom said: “I feel like you girls are afraid to be bored. You and all your girlfriends went to college and graduate school and had successful careers before you had children—more so than my generation of women. So when you stop working, you have all this pent-up energy and ambition, and you have to direct it somewhere.”

 Toward raising our kids? I ask hopefully. Or volunteering?

 “Or managing your social lives,” my mom adds dryly.

 A friend of mine in suburban D.C. confirms that notion. “It’s crazy here,” she says. “Lots of high school dynamics: If Janie’s husband gets a big bonus, you can tell because they’re doing a big renovation, or fixing up their kitchen, or they hire a decorator, or they get a third car that’s less practical than their Suburban, like a convertible. People will react with jealousy and say that they’re showing off their money.” When someone’s hosting a party, you can immediately determine the guest list by scanning the cars in the driveway.

Though these are the same issues that my mother and her friends dealt with 30 years ago, they weren’t bombarded with endless Facebook photos as evidence. All 400 of our “friends” know which fabulous party we were at on Saturday night and, more importantly, with whom. If you’re tagged, you’re “in.” A friend recently admitted to me that she monitors who likes her posts. If only four people like a photo of her, say, zip-lining through a Costa Rican tropical forest, she’s bummed out—and even more so when another guy posts a picture of his cheeseburger at Shake Shack and gets 37 comments and 70 likes. “Is it really because people like that photo? No,” she says, answering her own question. “People want him to like them, so they like his posts,” however uninteresting they might be.

Our mothers didn’t have to experience a mix of envy and sadness every time they hit the “refresh” button. During rare moments of leisure, they baked, read, sewed, or did some other handcraft. Or maybe they’d go for a walk. They didn’t go on Facebook and scroll through photos of acquaintances looking like they’re having the time of their lives. They didn’t post photos of a party they hosted and tag everyone who was invited. They accepted their assigned roles as mothers and did the best that they could to raise us. And you know what? They were probably a lot happier for it.