Organized Gangs of Wine Moms, Unite!
Your country needs you.
Earlier this week, Fox News decided it had uncovered a new threat to America, and guess what? It’s moms!
Not inflation. Not gun violence. Not a broken immigration system.
According to a Fox News opinion column, the real danger is “organized gangs of wine moms” who are standing up to ICE.
It is meant to sound ridiculous. And it is. But it is also deliberate. We’ve seen this movie before. When women show up in public and refuse to stay quiet, ridicule is always the first line of attack.
The title “wine mom” does a lot of work here, and make no mistake, it’s a pejorative. It paints women as frivolous and unserious. Privileged. Tipsy. Emotional. Not quite competent enough to be taken seriously, and certainly not worthy of moral authority. It is the modern version of hysterical. A way to dismiss without engaging. A way to erase the substance of what women are saying by mocking who they are.
And notice what disappears when that framing takes over? Our humanity.
Suddenly, these women are not constituents. Not parents. Not citizens. Not people responding to the reality of their communities. They become a nuisance mob. A punchline. A threat that does not need to be listened to, only contained.
Mothers showing up for their children and communities is not new. More than a century ago, mothers organized for the right to vote. In the 1980s, Mothers Against Drunk Driving reshaped national policy. For years, Moms Demand Action has led one of the most effective movements against gun violence in this country.
When women organize, they get shit done. And they also become targets for having the audacity to do so.
Just last year, prominent politicians like JD Vance mocked “childless cat ladies” during a news cycle that floated the idea that people without children should have less say in democracy. Now, women with children are the problem.
Cat ladies yesterday. Wine moms today.
The specifics shift, but the message stays the same: There is no acceptable version of motherhood once women start using their voices.
If you are loud, you are unhinged.
If you are quiet, you are complicit.
If you have kids, you are emotional.
If you do not, you are selfish.
That is why women standing up to ICE triggers a visceral, and now dangerous response.
Immigration enforcement relies heavily on moral distance. It is easier to talk about “law and order” when the consequences feel abstract and the victims are unrelatable. Mothers collapse that distance. They show up with bodies and faces and stories. They insist on asking what happens to families, to children, to communities. They make it impossible to keep harm theoretical.
And that is deeply threatening to a political movement built on dehumanization.
If you can turn women into a joke, you never have to answer their questions. If you can turn protest into “crime,” you never have to reckon with why people are protesting in the first place.
This is part of a larger lie we are being sold that the only acceptable way to be a mother is to stay quiet. To stay private. To stay grateful. To try saying “thank you.” To absorb the stress, and never translate it into action.
The exhaustion is their strategy. Make caregiving harder. Make public life more dangerous. Mock women who push back. Drain their energy and hope they retreat.
Tired women are easier to control than organized ones.
But, friends, I’d rather be tired than dead.
The public square does not belong only to men with microphones and opinions. It belongs to us too. We are whole people with values, agency, and the right to shape the world our children inherit.
Fox News can call women standing up for their communities whatever it wants. Wine moms. Gangs. Criminals. Elected leaders can call us crazy cat ladies. ICE can call us “fuck!ng b!tches” after shooting us in the face.
Small men drunk on power have always had ugly names for women who refuse to stay in their place.
But, and history is very clear about this next part:
Every time women have been told to sit down and shut up, they have instead stood together and changed the country.
Ready to enlist? I joined Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco on Hysteria! to detail our plans for the revolution. And friends, not everything is doom and gloom; we also broke down the huge child care news out of New York last week, and what it means for families across the country!
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods, or click below to watch on YouTube:
In case you missed it…
NEW on My So-Called Midlife: I’m joined by my friend Brad Meltzer, one of the most widely read authors in America. We had a candid conversation about empathy, self forgiveness, and the ideas behind his viral talks Make Magic and How to Write Your Own Obituary. If you need hope given, well, everything, this one’s for you. And be sure to check out Brad’s gripping new thriller The Viper, out now.
This week, Holly Corbett wrote a powerful piece for Forbes on a troubling milestone: women accounted for nearly all of last month’s job losses. As I shared with Holly, women didn’t suddenly stop wanting to work, they were pushed out by a system that makes it impossible to balance work and motherhood without real support. When child care costs more than a mortgage and paid leave is still a luxury, the “choice” to step back isn’t really a choice at all. Click here to read the full story.
Seattle’s Child dedicated their recent issue to child care, and we love to see it! I was thrilled to share with them why workplace child care benefits can no longer be treated as a perk. When employers step up, families stay in the workforce, women do not have to choose between their livelihoods and their kids, and businesses retain talent. Worth a read if you care about what it actually takes to make work work for parents.
And while you’re here…
Some genuinely hopeful news worth your time:
Big news from San Francisco: the city is making a major investment in child care as the linchpin of affordability.
Under Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new plan:
Families earning up to ~$230,000/year will qualify for free child care
Families earning up to ~$310,000/year will receive a 50% subsidy
These changes begin rolling out now, with further expansion this fall
This policy is vital at a time when child care is one of the biggest drivers pushing families—especially moms—out of the workforce. We know that child care is affordable, families stay. Businesses retain talent. Cities thrive.
Some exciting things about San Francisco’s announcement: it includes expansion of infant and toddler care for kids 0-2, the most expensive segment of kids to cover but a vital one for working parents. And it includes significant investments in the early educator workforce, ensuring child care workers can earn a living wage.
At Moms First, we’ve been proud to have discussions with the Mayor’s team as they developed this approach and are excited to partner to encourage California to make even deeper child care investments. It’s a powerful example of what’s possible when leaders treat child care like essential infrastructure, not a luxury.
From New Mexico to New York to San Francisco, local leaders are proving what’s possible, and adapting to the needs of their communities.
This is how change happens.