Fear and Loathing with Suburban Moms

May 24, 2011, By Craig J. Heimbuch 33 comments

This is what happens when a person gets a little bit of power. This is what happens with the average person if given a title, a leadership position in a group. It's about authority. It's about the best intentions being politicized.

It's not my story. I heard it from a friend of a friend, maybe a friend of another friend after that. It happened at a preschool, the place we consider to be a vault of innocence, a place where the most complicated relationship we imagine having to manage is between paste and paper, a couple of wooden blocks that won't stack just right. But in the suburbs—places where life is supposed to be simple, places that seem the most benign—the struggle for power, for authority, for superiority over other people is a subtle struggle. Coups take place over lattes and in driveways. There's no military takeover, no grand scene on a public square. It happens in minivans parked outside the school. On Facebook.

The heroine of this story, the victim, the ousted, had no idea the guillotine was about to fall. She walked into the meeting with the new president of the group, a group of women supposedly devoted to helping other mothers out, looking forward to the next year, the new regime. Their kids are young, not quite in school. They are supposed to support one another and, here, this woman who gave of her time—perhaps when it wasn't something she was looking to get more involved in—had done her best. Her role was elevated over that of simple member. She had become a leader, a middle manager, and the group of moms she managed seemed to love her. She had created community, 'unit cohesion' as the military might describe it. When a member of her team didn't show up for a meeting, she inquired if that woman was okay, did she need anything, was there anything she could do to help?

She bought gifts. Her own money. She arranged social gatherings. She was doing her job. Or at least she thought she was. When the executive committee met—a monthly occurrance for which she had to hire a babysitter and delay mid-day errands—things seemed to be going fine. This was evidenced by the fact they rarely had anything to talk about. "I just don't have anything," the old president would say, presiding over these meetings. Month after month, there was nothing to say, no issues to hash out. After five or six of these meetings, our victim missed one. She couldn't get a sitter, she had family in town. The reason isn't terribly important apart from being both just and inconsequential. Nobody called to check on her, to see how she was doing. No one did for her what she had done for her charges.

Four months later, she missed another executive committee meeting. She emailed in advance to say she wouldn't be there. A death in the family. An out of town funeral. She had to go. She had to be there for the family, to pay her respects. Still, no response. Then, a couple weeks later, the new president got in touch, arranged a meeting. She thought it was about next year. She assumed it was to talk about things the group could do over the summer to build membership, to prepare for the next school year. She was wrong.

"There are many virtuous women in the world and you surpass them all," the mug read. It was her end-of-year gift, her severance pay. Not two minutes after the new president complimented her on a job well done, this new 'leader' cut her loose. "I think we're just going to go in a new direction next year. I think you'd be better off if you were just a member." Something like that. And, just like that, she was fired, let go, riffed, downsized, ousted. The suburban guillotine had fallen, the judgment passed, her sentence handed down. She'd been banished from the royal court, sent off to schlep it with the slums.

I first heard this story a few days after the fact and, at first, I responded the same way I did when I heard a friend had been downsized. There was some sympathy and then a hands-to-the-sky 'that's the way of the world these days' shrug. There are a lot of reasons a person gets let go from a job. Profits are slipping, operations are moving overseas, the market is down, the economy is sluggish. It happens more than most of us would care to contemplate. More than it should and just enough that it's not a shock. Then, the truth of the matter hit me. This wasn't a job, this was a volunteer service group. This was a group for moms which has the stated purpose of offering support to one another through the difficulties of early parenthood. This wasn't a multi-national that took a gamble on a product launch that failed. This was a support group.

It would be one thing if she had done a bad job, but all accounts of her performance in her role were positive. The new president said as much before firing her. So if it wasn't failing profits or poor performance that lead to this unfortunate outcome, what could it be? Group dynamics? Maybe, but this friend of a friend of a friend is dynamic herself, a master socializer. Besides, her group liked her as a leader. So what does that leave?

It smacks of Baron Acton's famous quote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

I suppose it's something of human nature, to ascribe great importance to even the smallest things when the smallest things are those that mean the most to us. It's the Draconian t-ball coach, the home owner's association going to court. It's small things made way too large. It's the Big Man on Campus picking on the nerds. When perspective is lost, feelings get hurt.

Where will our heroine turn for support? How can she possibly go back to being 'just a member'? It's a hostile takeover with whitened teeth, a slap in the face with satin gloves. The more I think about how everything reportedly went down—the cheerful mug, the quick elimination without explanation - has made me realize that even in the most innocent places, among the groups with the best intentions, there can be something cruel and conniving, a thirst for authority that can't be quenched. The bully never grows up and pays back your lunch money. He just buys a suit, cuts his hair and bets your retirement on Bernie Maddoff. In some ways, we never leave the lunchrooms of our youth. No matter how much we believe it when our principal tells us we should all get along, there will always be a clear divide—the cool kids table and the one for the rest of us.

I guess, in the suburbs, some things never change.