Just when you thought there wasn’t anything new to blame mothers for, Wilson says “soccer moms are the greatest enemy in modern life of natural history and proper biological education.” By “soccer moms” Wilson means mothers who take their children to arboretums, aquariums, zoos, and natural history museums, where living things are labeled and corralled—which I guess means I’m a soccer mom and so are a huge chunk of mothers. “The worst thing you can do to a child, in my opinion, is take them on a hike through a botanical garden where there are the names of the trees on the side.”
Sure, I agree with Wilson (and Rachel Carson) that setting children free to explore untrammeled nature without labels or cages is the best way to ignite their curiosity about the natural world. But labeled and penned nature has its place too.
As Leonard scathingly notes, there are, like, far, far worse things one can do to a child than take her to an arboretum. Wilson proves himself not only a jerk but a passive-aggressive weenie when he prefaces his labeling of this problem “the soccer mom syndrome” by saying “I hope I'm not offending anyone.” Says Leonard:
If you're going to classify a group of women (and what about the soccer dads, huh, where's their ring of hell?) as "the greatest enemy" of anything, then you might as well take full pleasure in your offensiveness. Because anyone who gets upset isn't going to be assuaged by hearing that you "hope" you're not being an insufferable twit.Quite.
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