While catching up with the latest Monday morning ramblings on cable news, I happened upon an interview with a woman who was making the case that Soccer Moms were no longer “a thing” in political circles. It turned out that her name was Dominique Browning, the author of a recent column in Time, where she discusses this phenomenon. So what is the new, hot meme to replace the long sought after Soccer Mom when politicos get together and try to win over the hearts and minds of voters? Legacy Moms.

Politicians spent hours analyzing what soccer moms thought about them. We were, after all, a huge voting cohort — whether we were Republican or Democrat, centrists or independents. But the children are now grown and on their own — it happened in the blink of an eye, it seems. So what happens to soccer moms when the games come to an end? Now, its time for them to understand a few things about — Yoo hoo! Over here, guys! — the largest new cohort of moms any politician has ever faced: The Legacy Moms. We are in our 50s and 60s. Our ranks are growing; the 45- to 65-year-old population overall grew a whopping 31.5% between 2000 and 2010 (and women are more than half that.)

For all the stuff you read about “the boomerang generation,” the fact is our kids aren’t really coming back to live with us at a startling or even unusual rate. Some of them need a transitional pad, with this tough economy — but that’s happened for generations. Even so, soccer moms have been smart enough to renegotiate our relationships with our adult children. Our children are still the stars in our firmament, but the impetus of their everyday needs no longer drive us. Instead, we are, once again, on our own, more of us living without a husband than with one. We’re dealing with a whole new set of freedoms. And we’re beginning to consider a future with a longer horizon than the next year, or even 10 years.

So if I’m reading her correctly, the Soccer moms have graduated – figuratively – just as their offspring have graduated literally from high school and college. They are now the Legacy Moms who are tending an empty nest and wrestling with more weighty issues than the cost of diapers and gasoline or if little Johnny will enlist and head off to Iraq. They’re looking down the long lens at what sort of world they will leave behind.

I suppose that’s all well and good if you’re really addicted to labels, but as hard as this may be to hear, there’s already a name for the group you’re entering: Seniors. (Along with those rapidly approaching Senior status.) And politicians already pay more than enough attention to you. And there’s another glaring hole in your analysis. Even as you aged, a whole new generation of girls grew up to become women, got married, had babies and became soccer moms in their own right, with all the same concerns you used to worry about. The Soccer Moms are still with us… it’s just that the special spotlight has moved away from you.

Besides, haven’t we manged to grow up and move beyond some of these cliche labels? Everyone is worried about their children, both for the present and the future. How about we just settle for a voter group called parents?

Even if we did need yet another of these political media driven tag lines, “Legacy Mom” is about as pretentious and silly of a name as I could imagine. Let’s get a grip, shall we? February 2012 should probably go down in the history books as the time that the key demographic voter tag meme jumped the shark.