For real estate lawyer Brenda Finnegan, her lightbulb moment came when a teacher complained her 10-year-old was an opinionated cut-up who challenged the status quo.

"The very things that would make him a good leader," said Finnegan, 51.

The busy Valparaiso wife, mother and businesswoman could have signed Dylan up for debate club. Instead, she cut him some slack.

If Dylan mouthed off and received a detention, he had to serve it "and there would be consequences at home," the mother of two said. If he made honor roll, he could dye his hair purple.

Her son, now 13, made honor roll this spring. The seventh-grader "came home waving his report card, singing, `I'm getting purple hair,'" the self-described slacker mom said, laughing.

Stressed-out Super Moms, rip the "S" off your chest. Drop the perfect-mom mask. Slacker Mom is here, skirting laundry and skipping PTA meetings in one guilt-free bound.

And she's letting kids be kids again, say family experts, backed by books like "You're A Good Mom (And Your Kids Aren't So Bad Either)," "Confessions of a Slacker Mom," "What Every 21st-Century Parent Needs to Know," and "The Relaxed Parent: Helping Your Kids Do More As You Do Less."

Kids need unconditional love, values, time for play and reflection, said the Rev. Debra Haffner, a Unitarian Universalist minister, parenting educator and director of the Religion Institute in Connecticut. They also need time with their parents, even if it's over reheated pizza.

"I don't care what you have for dinner. I care that you have family dinners. We live on Lean Cuisines in my house," the mother of two said. "Turn off the cell phones, turn of the Blackberries and have a 20-minute conversation with your kids."

Hyper-scheduling and hovering is counterproductive. Children "need to make age-appropriate decisions to foster their confidence and independence," said Haffner, author of "What Every 21st-Century Parent Needs to Know." "The goal of parenting is to have a kid who can leave you .... . Children who don't believe in themselves are much more likely to end up living in your home (as adults)."

Note to caseworkers: Slacker Mom is interchangeable with "Real Mom" in this context. She expects her kids to be good, not perfect. Cold eggrolls for breakfast is better than no breakfast. Slacker Mom also knows it's fine to let kids get bored and make mistakes. They learn how to develop their imaginations and deal with disappointment.

Doing OK is fine

Tressa Witvoet can vouch for it. As she puts it, Super Momhood "is a load of crap."

The ultra-relaxed Valparaiso parent jettisoned her ideal of perfect motherhood when she had two toddlers. Now the mother of four children ages 6 to 18 months, she's never looked back.

"Parenting is unbelievably difficult," said Witvoet, 36. "There's all this pressure: Breast-feed or Bottle-feed? Stay at home or not? I don't care how you're doing it, whether you're a stay-at-home mom or working mom. We don't give each other enough credit for what we do. We just need to realize this is hard work."

After the birth of her second child, the stay-at-home mother suffered from postpartum depression brought on, she feels, by her inability to keep a perfect house and immaculate tots. The she "embraced my mediocrity," let go, and learned to laugh again.

"When my third baby came along, I had no problem at all," she said. "I just realized if we had to search the bottom of the laundry basket to find a good pair of underpants, it wasn't the end of the world. At the end of the day, if my kids are loved and safe and they're still alive, I think I did OK."

Relax, cut back

Aaron Cooper agrees. Super Mom, with her impeccable manicure and wall calendar, is too busy multitasking to stop and sniff her children's dandelion bouquets.

"Moms want their kids to be happy, but Super Mom was never that way," said Cooper, a Harvard-educated psychologist and author of "I Just Want My Kids to Be Happy."

"It's no coincidence that in the last 20 years, the `over-scheduled child' phenomenon -- widely condemned as harmful to our kids -- paralleled the overworked, overtired, overdriven Super Mom phenomenon," said Cooper, of Chicago. "Our youngsters' lives tend to mirror our own."

The Finnegan family is a case in point. Both Brenda and husband Chuck have scaled back their careers. They renewed a spiritual commitment to each other and their children. A decade ago, they rushed between work and shuttling firstborn Elaine (now 25) between choir practice, Vikette Corps, plays and voice lessons. Dylan, in contrast, is on the track team in the spring and football in the fall. He has time to pursue his own passions, skateboarding and photography. And his own laundry.

As for his slacker mom, now working in desktop publishing at First United Methodist Church in Valparaiso, she's traded the fasttrack for an even pace. She doesn't sweat small stuff like a sinkful of dishes, any more. Life is good. As she puts it, she "I began to do less and forgive myself more."

BREAKOUTS

Perfection is futile

Exhaustion is one factor driving the relaxed-parenting trend, experts say. Boomers and Gen X moms are tired of trying to have it all and scrapbook it, too.

Disillusionment is another. "The bar for motherhood has gotten so impossibly high, moms are giving up entirely," said Jen Singer, editor of MommaSaid.net and author of "You're A Good Mom."

The trick is to find balance to restore your sanity and your children's. Stop micromanaging. Relax. Find the place "where you can be happy and turn out perfectly good kids," she said.

The hard part is convincing Super Mom to slack off. She can be her worst enemy, her warped self-image her personal Kryptonite. She's been beguiled by Madison Ave and the media into thinking she can do it all.

"Think of the ads -- thank goodness they're becoming more rare -- where the mom is wearing a business suit, talking on the cell phone, has a baby in one arm and a skillet in the other -- insane," said work/life balance coach Renee Peterson Trudeau, author of "The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life."

More than 68 percent of households are now dual-income, added Trudeau, president of Texas-based Career Strategists LLC. "Between juggling parenting, your marriage, household and work/community involvement, women are struggling to be effective in all areas of their lives, but, something's go to give. We're trying to do too much."

Anne R. Pierce, a PhD. from the University of Chicago who tracks transition periods in American life, traces the modern mom's dilemma to an era of sweeping social and economic changes.

One result of women's liberation was pressure on mothers in the 1980s "to live up to societal images of success that devalued nurturing and mothering," Pierce says. " ... We were even taught to tame the overwhelming feelings of love, obligation and desire to be with our babies that childbirth brought out in us, so that we could more quickly and efficiently back into the workforce."

Changing your attitude from "I want everything to be the best it can be" to "Good is good enough" is the key to relaxed parenting. That doesn't mean "doing everything half-way or blowing things off," Trudeau said. "It's about deciding what is most important to you in life -- what will get the greatest amount of your energy and time, whether that's after-school time with the kids or `alone time' at night with your partner -- and adopting a `Good is good enough' approach towards everything else."

Happily, most women are wising up, realizing "they need to care for themselves first in order to be great parents," Trudeau said.

-- Molly Woulfe