The Demise of the Alpha Mom

So what happened to the Alpha Mom? There was so much chatter about her on-line a few years ago and now…nothing. Perhaps they were tired of us “Beta Moms” making fun of them. Perhaps when they sold out to companies who wanted them to “review” their products that put them in the dog house with other moms. Or maybe it suddenly dawned on them—that no one REALLY cares what they think of fruit roll-ups.

For me it was a lazy Saturday afternoon in Riverside Park, Hippo Park to be exact, when my own disgust of the Alpha Mom first began. My sister and I were sitting on a bench as we watched our children run wild through the child’s park of hippo statues. The hippos were at various stages of emerging from the soft playground surface. We were sipping iced coffees—a mom staple, and the children had more Oreo on their faces than in their stomachs. It was one of those perfect NYC days.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a clipped English accent announced: “Veggie Puffs!?” and large cellophane bag full of seaweed green balls was shoved into our faces. Harshing my mellow with this fish tank smelling “all-natural organic snack” the woman popped herself down next to us to tell us all about the health benefits. The children charged over to take a look, which was all they needed to turn up their cookie smeared noses, and ran back to play on the hippos. My sister, who eats nails for breakfast, grabbed the offending bag from Ms. Know-it-All. Scanning the contents—she said: “I would NEVER feed this crap to my child…god knows what they put in it—they could easily get salmonella from this so called “organic” snack.

The mother took her malodorous smelling bag back over to her Baby Einstein enhanced son. We sipped our coffees, my sister lit a cigarette and we watched our cookie faced children do dangerous balancing acts on the life sized hippos while other Alpha Moms called out to them to be careful and called to their own children not to follow suit.

If you cannot be good Alpha Mom—at least be a good bad example.