DTCI: When attorney and soccer mom collide

In my defense, I never set out to become a soccer mom. In fact, I laughed out loud the first time I walked past a merchandise tent selling “Soccer Mom” sweatshirts. Becoming a parent (x3) on top of being a full-time attorney swept me up in one giant wave and left me incapable of either embracing or fending off extra classifications. But one Tuesday night, I got added to a text thread labeled “Soccer Moms,” and I knew my fate had been sealed.

It’s not a stretch to say that lawyers like to be good at stuff — need to be good at stuff. We are nothing if not achievers, strivers, performers and ladder-climbers. Our DTCI Women in the Law Book Club recently read a book about personality types. My suspicion was confirmed when we came together and every one of us (and every female attorney any of us could think of) fell solidly into one category: The Perfectionist. At first, I thought this classification was a mistake. After all, my name should never even be in the same paragraph with perfect. However, as I came to understand, being a Perfectionist is not so much about achieving perfection as it is about striving toward perfection. And that’s a description I cannot deny, and it is every bit as obnoxious as it sounds.

The easiest way to exist as a Perfectionist is to avoid all activities where success is uncertain. Otherwise, life is an exhausting exercise of swimming upstream. Which takes me back to the topic of being a soccer mom.

A starting point for all good soccer moms is the ability to get their kids to practice on time. My kid gets to soccer practice only with a well-coordinated effort that relies on meetings and work wrapping up on time, complete cooperation and coordination from my other children and husband, and clear traffic patterns. I just assume that the other parents dumping their kids off at soccer practice don’t have similar problems because they don’t complain about it nearly as much as I do.

While I lack an easygoing schedule, I thought I could make up for it by using my risk assessment and management skills. My talent for imagining worst-case scenarios has been finely tuned over many years of litigation, and I am a professional-level worrier. Early in the season, while the other parents were exchanging small talk and getting to know each other, I was making a list of the parents trained in CPR and identifying which parent I could nudge onto the field to render first aid. I’m the first to get white-knuckled when a kid grabs his ankle. I gasp louder than anyone else when there is a collision. And I know where they keep coolers of ice and whether there is an on-site paramedic before every game. Unfortunately, it turns out my talent for worrying goes largely unappreciated by the other moms, and I have noticed that other parents leave a gap on the sidelines wherever I set up my chair. I even heard a woman whisper “obnoxious” behind me on one occasion, but she could have been talking about the uncut grass.

The most obvious reason that I was never going to excel at being a soccer mom is that I don’t know the rules of the game. Every good lawyer likes to enforce the rules, beat down corruption, stamp out inconsistencies, bend this hapless world a little toward justice. I have become very good at joining in the outrage. “Yeah, ref. What were you thinking?!” But don’t ever count on me to know whether a player was offsides. There are plenty of parents, lawyers and nonlawyers alike, who try to enforce the rules with vigor when it comes to Saturday morning matches. In fact, I recently witnessed a mother who was so strong and unrelenting in her sense of right and wrong, good calls and bad calls, that I wondered whether she might be a lawyer, too. She was, however, asked to watch the second half of the game from the parking lot. So maybe not knowing the rules works out in some cases.

Besides the logistical and social problems, watching soccer revives a tension from childhood with which I have never come to terms. I had just started the third grade at a new school. The teacher sent us out for recess, and I remember standing at the edge of a grassy field where a group of kids (mostly boys) were dividing themselves up into teams for a game of touch football. I wanted desperately to join the game, but also wanted desperately to not get hit in the face by a ball. I chose to play and was the unfortunate target of several unsuccessful passes. It’s the feeling of standing on the edge of that grassy field that follows me around today as a litigator. And as I have found myself preparing for several trial settings this year, I continue to ask myself: Wouldn’t life have been easier if I had just stuck to the swing set? That takes me back to being a soccer mom, where I stand at the edge of another grassy field, not knowing whether to cheer him on to a rough-and-tumble victory or to encourage him to sign up for the Math Bowl team instead.

Just when I thought I couldn’t be any worse at being a soccer mom, I attended my first out-of-state soccer tournament last month. My husband was originally slated to handle this, but to everyone’s disappointment, a time conflict developed. Sure, I am appropriately doting, packed all the correct supplies and arrived on time at all the right fields. Nailed it! But then came the several-hour gaps between matches when everyone migrated to a nearby sports bar for some downtime football viewing. Attorneys aren’t known for being good at leisure, and I am no exception. I haven’t sat still long enough to follow a season of football since Brett Favre. In an effort to add something to the conversation, I pointed out a game that was occurring in my line of sight. I spent the rest of the afternoon worried that I had misidentified the Seahawks as the Falcons.

In my world, which is measured by a reasonable standard of care, the scales have never tipped in my favor when it comes to being a soccer mom. So for now, I will rely on an unqualified admission, and maybe a soccer mom sweatshirt, too.•

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Kayla Goodfellow is a suburban woman who spends a significant amount of time transporting her school-aged children to youth sporting events and other activities. She is also staff counsel at the Law Office of the Cincinnati Insurance Company and serves on the DTCI Board of Directors. Opinions expressed are those of the author.