There’s a backlash brewing among the Other Mothers. They, too, love their kids and want to raise them right.

But unlike the much-hyped Alpha Moms, whose desire to be The Perfect Mom sometimes leads them to excess in the name of excellence, the laid-back mothers are gaining ground.

“It’s a different version of the Mommy Wars,” says Sharon Hays, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California-Los Angeles.

The original Mommy Wars focused on the ideological battle between stay-at-home mothers and mothers in the workforce. This newest skirmish is more about personal parenting styles.

The so-called Alpha Mom is a marketing creating, the Super Mom of yesteryear with a few new twists. Alphas are educated, can-do types whose organizational skills bring a corporate mentality to their parenting and a technological ability to their problem-solving. These high achievers will often surf the Web and blogs for advice. They’ve also gotten plenty of media attention.

But sociologists, including Melinda Forthofer of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina-Columbia, say there’s no evidence Alphas are actually better mothers.

And now an anti-Alpha movement is taking hold. Those moms have it together sometimes. They may forget to send back permission slips or lose track of their turn for team snacks. They don’t necessarily have the catchy name, though some call themselves Beta Moms or even Slacker Moms as they urge their peers to chill.

Some, including former CBS TV news anchor Rene Syler, have written books advising the Alphas to lighten up.

“Our children are people — not projects,” says Syler, 44, of Westchester County, N.Y. “Motherhood is not a contest.”

“We get to the finish line. It’s OK to chill out a little bit and let your kids be independent, and individuals, and revel in who they are,” says Syler, author of GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER: THE PERFECTLY IMPERFECT BOOK OF PARENTING.

Lee LeLeux, 46, former nurse in medical sales in Baton Rouge and a mother of three, says she can multitask with the best of them, but her mothering style is definitely relaxed.

“I’m more laid-back than many other mothers I see,” she says. “I see it as so controlling, and I see it in their anxiety. I guess they’re trying to protect their children from everything that’s out there. They won’t let their child go next door or down the street.”

LeLeux says she lets her 10-year-old son, Zach, and 7-year-old twin daughters, Hallye and Greer, ride their bicycles in their neighborhood to give them a sense of independence.

“While I may be looking at my watch, I’m not going to restrict them from taking that bike ride around the block.”

Expectations ‘through the roof’

Amy Nobile, 38, of Kentfield, Calif., co-author of I WAS A REALLY GOOD MOM BEFORE I HAD KIDS, says interviews with more than 100 mothers nationwide for the book found women are “really judging themselves very harshly.”

“We heard this over and over again. It didn’t matter what state, whether they were a stay-home or working mom and had one child or five,” says Nobile, the mother of two preschoolers.

“We grew up in a time that said: ‘You can do it all. The choices are great.’ What it did was put an incredible amount of pressure on us. Our expectations for ourselves are just through the roof.”

Psychologists say mothering styles are a product of social pressures interacting with a woman’s own personality, so that some can resist these cultural prescriptions while others accede to them.

“A woman’s personality doesn’t change when she becomes a mother. It just takes another form,” says Molly Walsh Donovan, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School and an assistant professor of psychology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

“Women who are very high-achieving want to be high-achieving mothers. It can be a very good thing — and it can also put pressure on them.”

Daphne de Marneffe, a clinical psychologist from Corte Madera, Calif., says some people handle parental anxiety by becoming task-oriented.

“It’s hard to turn off that switch if you have been extremely competent at being super-successful,” she says. “Here you are confronted with this baby, and the road map is less clear.

“There’s an illusion that you can control who your child will become if you do all the right things, but that’s a problematic illusion because parenting is all about discovering who your child is and fostering their growth and development as an individual.”

Confidence grows with family

Ann Dunnewold, a counseling psychologist in Dallas, says she has heard all kinds of stories about how extreme parenting makes mothers feel as if they just don’t measure up. She tries to calm their fears in her book, EVEN JUNE CLEAVER WOULD FORGET THE JUICE BOX.

But some mothers grow more confident, especially after the first child.

“With my first one, I was very critical of myself and feeling like I needed to do everything right,” says Kathleen Falk, 35, a mother of two and a freelance graphic designer from St. Louis. “With my second, I’m much more laid back.

“It’s hard because if I’m around other Alpha Mothers I feel like I should be doing more to make things perfect. But sometimes I’m glad I’m not worried about some of the things they’re worried about.”

There’s no concensus on whether being an Alpha Mom is a goal or a curse, sociologist Forthofer says.

“Some feel it’s a label they would wear proudly, and others cringe at the idea of it,” she says.

Over the top?

Betsy Christian, 39, has a 6-year-old daughter, 4-year-old son and two stepdaughters, ages 18 and 20. A legislative public relations consultant from Austin, Christian counts herself as an Alpha Mom on the road to recovery.

“The first time I realized it was just way too out of control was when Kathryn, 6, was a year old and went to Mother’s Day Out for an hour once a week,” she says. “The kids were supposed to exchange valentines. I had some handmade paper, and I stayed up late at night making these valentines. I realized I was making handmade valentines for babies.”

Christian has been so annoyed at finding herself trying too hard (”I’m a good worker,” she says) that she started a parenting blog at http://www.valuewit.com to vent about her Alpha-learnings.

“I don’t set out to do it,” she says. “I find myself in the middle of it all the time. It’s wanting to do a good job. It’s about some type of performance review. I just need to throttle back a little from time to time.”

Katie Allison Granju, 39, an online producer for a television station in Knoxville, Tenn., is pregnant with her fourth child.

She says it’s easy for women to get caught up in wanting feedback on their parenting.

“We’re a very high-achieving generation of women, and we’re used to being able to do things in a quantifiable way on the job,” says Granju, author of LET THEM RUN WITH SCISSORS: HOW OVER-PARENTING HURTS CHILDREN, PARENTS AND SOCIETY, to be published by Soft Skull Press later this year.

“Every year, we get a performance review and see how other people think we’re doing. When you try to translate that to raising little human beings, it can be very frustrating.”

Although dads today are often full participants in parenting, Hays says ultimately, society tends to blame mothers for failed children.

And that, she says, raises the stakes even more.

“Mothers recognize this in the back of their minds. ‘What if I raise another Jeffrey Dahmer?’” she says.

I’ve spent years attempting to teach my own daughters and other young women in mentoring relationships that the big lie that women are sold is that “we can have it all, and do it all”.  When we come to the realization that this isn’t quite true, we feel like failures.  You CAN have the whole pie, you just can’t eat it all at once.  You’ve got to enjoy the pie piece by piece, over time.

Super Moms, Soccer Moms…you’re right.  They just keep being updated.   Interesting that this one has such a technology focus.

1. NO NAME CALLING
2. DON’T USE PUT DOWNS
3. ZERO THREATS
4. NO DIGGING UP THE PAST
5. AVOID LOUD VOICES
6. NO LEAVING WITHOUT SAYING WHERE YOU’RE GOING
7. DON’T RATCHET UP DISAGREEMENTS
8. NO EXTREMISM OR ABSOLUTES
9. STOP INVENTING MOTIVES
10. NO BUTTON PUSHING

No button pushing is our biggest challenge. We are both very strong willed and stubborn people when crossed. Thanks for helping us stop arguing, instead of trying to top one another.