Are you a mom? No? Then you don’t need to read one more word. Go on, shoo! I’m not trying to be mean; it’s just that you probably won’t understand a lot of what I’m going to say. It’s a mom thing. If you’re a mom, you know what I’m talking about. Right, moms? Go, us!

Illustration by Nishant Choksi

I’m not saying that moms are better than other people, but there is, well, something different, something special about us.

When Michelle Obama calls herself Mom-in-Chief, I am, like, “Amen, sister!,” because Mrs. Obama knows what we all know: your husband may be a very important person, but who runs the show at home? Not Dad. Mom. But I think Ann Romney carries the day here. Unlike Mrs. Obama, when Mrs. Romney talks so movingly to the women of America, she leaves out the childless gals, and there is a reason for that: they are not moms.

You can sugarcoat that all you like, but Mrs. Romney chose not to, and I say good for her. Because, if you’re not a mom, you may not be a bad person, but you are an extraneous person. If there were something great about being a woman who is not a mom, something that added anything to America, if there were even one teeny-weeny example of how the non-moms hold America together the way moms do, Mrs. Romney would mention the childless gals. But she doesn’t, because there isn’t.

Mrs. Romney says there would not even be an America without moms, and she is totally right about that. We would just be a nation of dads, who, let’s face it, don’t know a strep throat from a screwdriver and always get the washing machine confused with the dryer—antics that are funny on sitcoms but have no place in the real America, which is why moms have to do everything.

With just the moms and the doofusy dads, but without the single gals, we would be an even stronger America—there, I’ve said it!—or, at least, an America with fewer ladies passing their evenings on barstools. And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?

Even the word “mom” is great. It’s got that cozy mmm sound, like “Mmm, mmm, good,” which reminds me of Campbell’s cream-of-tomato soup, which is the soup I always served my four children, along with grilled cheese sandwiches that I cut into fun shapes with cookie cutters on a frosty winter’s day, and which my mom made for me on a frosty winter’s day, and which my daughters will make for their children on a frosty winter’s day. Because making a thoughtful, nutritious, whimsical lunch is the kind of thing—one of trillions!—that moms do. But not so we can be thanked. No one ever thanks us for anything, and we moms learn to be fine with that, learn that our children’s smiling faces, when they take that first sip of hot Campbell’s soup and bite into those whimsical sandwiches on a frosty winter’s day, are thanks enough.

The single gals, the gals who haven’t had children, don’t understand that. They expect to be thanked for things. But when was the last time your child said to you, “Thank you for taking me to the emergency room,” or, “Thank you for writing my history paper for me”? And you know what? They don’t have to. Giving is our job.

And if you’re not a mom you don’t understand that. You may understand expensive shoes, and having meaningless, drunken sexual intercourse with men who never call the next day, and trying to cheer yourself up by buying yourself baubles, but you don’t understand that it’s all about the giving.

You know what else I love about being a mom? How we may be a special sorority, but we are not some snobby, exclusive club—not at all. I love how our members come from all walks of life.

Like, Ann Romney is a member—and, who knows, she may be our next First Mom!—but so is Snooki. Have you seen the photos of Snooki coming out of the hospital after having her baby? There she is, in a wheelchair, holding baby Lorenzo Dominic, her expression composed, dignified, almost grave, looking straight ahead, as if into her mom future. Unless I’m mistaken, which I never am, Snooki is thinking, I can’t believe I just did an episode where I sulked and bitched endlessly in Cancún because I was pregnant and couldn’t go out partying with my friends. I can’t believe I was such a skanky nincompoop my whole life. Now I must have dignity and grace, for Lorenzo Dominic’s sake, and pray to Jesus that MTV never airs reruns during his lifetime.

This is what her look says: “I have joined the sisterhood. I’m a mom now. I get it.” And today, if Snooki and Mrs. Romney were in a room together, all they would have to say to each other is “How about those contractions?” and they would laugh together in solidarity and be bonded for life.

My four children—two girls, two boys—are all grown now, off at college or pursuing their own careers. I’ve let them go graciously, which is also part of a mother’s work, and I speak to each of them on the phone only seven times a day. The boys still send their underpants home to be ironed, and I FedEx sanitary napkins to the girls when they forget their periods, but otherwise they are independent adults, and a credit to their country.

I wish I could say the same for Dave, their dad, whom I never asked to do anything to help me, because I knew, frankly, that he would screw it up the way dads always do.

I keep him in the basement now, with Sadie, our old, incontinent golden retriever, and that seems to be fine with both of them. I have several unmarried acquaintances, childless women, who have spoken to me about this, saying that they feel it is unkind to Dave. You know what I tell them? I say, Are you a mom? Do you run this country? Do you know the first thing about holding up America? Of course you don’t! So go along and scat, and let us moms do the jobs that we women were put on the planet to do. ♦