Group provides fun for kids, moms
By:Eric Schwarz
For all moms, Mother’s Day this Sunday means an appreciation for the work they do and a chance to reflect on how parenting has changed.
The 31 members of the MOMS Club of Hillsborough-Montgomery are raising their children in nuclear families, and have chosen to put their “careers on hold,” in the words of President Margo Myer.
The club is a chapter of the International MOMS Club, a group of stay-at-home mothers. The acronym stands for “Moms Offering Moms Support.”
Mary James, an at-home mother in California, founded the club in 1983 when she wanted to find other families in the same situation. The organization has more than 1,000 chapters and more than 50,000 members in the United States.
The Hillsborough-Montgomery club has a monthly calendar chock full of activities for moms to do with their kids, and one night for the mothers to spend together or with their husbands as a group.
The group meets the second Thursday of each month at Hillsborough Presbyterian Church to plan activities for the month.
On evenings out, mothers will eat, do coffee, get their nails done or see a movie, Ms. Myer said.
Six of the members of the MOMS Club met for an interview Monday afternoon at Ms. Myer’s house on Beekman Lane in Hillsborough, all bringing their children with them.
Kathleen Sateary said her children Matthew, 5, and Emily, 3, don’t have many children in their development, so she joined the MOMS group so they would have a place to socialize.
Ms. Sateary used to live in a small neighborhood in Bloomfield where there was more socializing. “Here you have to wave to each other across a half-acre lot,” she said.
Cheryl Rubanich, the mother of Audrey, 2, and Jessica, 1, is looking forward to Mother’s Day.
“Mother’s Day, I refer to as Labor Day for moms,” Ms. Rubanich said. “On a day-to-day basis you do not get that appreciation.”
Ms. Myer, with a 4-year-old son, Nolan, responded, “I have to make sure Nolan gets ‘grandmother cards.’”
“I’m planning to let my husband do all that,” said Suzanne Dopke, who is celebrating her first Mother’s Day. Her daughter Erin is 10 months old.
Nolan, one of the older children in the group gathered in his back yard, has a surprise in store for his mother this year.
He had told his mother after preschool that day, “I don’t have anything in my backpack because I made something for you.”
But when Ms. Myer asked him about the item in front of visitors, Nolan said, “Mrs. Johnson says boys and girls can’t tell their moms and dads.”
Those gifts are special to mothers, said Ms. Myer, 41.
“My mother still has a rose pin I bought for nothing at the five-and-dime. She has a family ring I bought her for $15 at Two Guys.”
Ms. Rubanich called the club “the grapevine of mothering.”
She said she’s learned about “teething, taking away the bottle, taking away the binky; where to shop for things that are good buys, stores that have good return policies.”
Mother’s Day has its origins in an ancient Greek celebration honoring Rhea, the Mother of the Gods, and in Mothering Sunday, popular in England since the 1600s.
The first organized Mother’s Day in the United States occurred in 1862 when Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized celebrations in and around Boston. In 1914 Congress designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
For information on the MOMS Club, call Margo Myer at (908) 874-6557, or visit www.momsclub.org.