Mean moms have a patron saint these days: Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Hambleton put a for-sale ad in the Des Moines Register a few months back: "OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents, who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under the front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet."

Hambleton and her son, Steven, ended up on "Ellen," who gave him, besides a lot of ribbing, a bumper sticker that read: "How's My Driving? Call My Mom."

Hambleton said she's fine with being the meanest mom in the world: "It means I love my kids," she told host Ellen DeGeneres.

While Hawai'i's mothers obviously also love their children, none we know have copped to going to those lengths. Yet several mothers candidly told The Advertiser that they're fine with being in the "I'm not your buddy, I'm your mother, so eat your vegetables" camp.

COMFORTABLE WITH 'NO'

As the mother of four with another due in July, Lisa Cabato of Central O'ahu would have it no other way. She says it's a matter of self-interest.

"If I (weren't) a stick-to-your-guns mom," said Cabato, "I would have a problem at home."

Cabato, whose children range in age from 2 to 10, looks to her circle of friends to keep her schedule-oriented regimen in line, and finds support in others with big families. One good friend, who also has four children, parents much the way she does.

But she's seen mothers around who seem to have given up control. Without statistics to back her up, Cabato still suspects "mean moms" are fewer and farther between.

Not like when she was growing up.

"We listened to our parents, the realm of friends I hung around with," she recalled.

Michelle Kim Stone is also fine with the moniker.

"I'm an attorney, so I can already be seen as being mean," said Stone with a hearty laugh. "I can only improve my reputation."

Stone knows she probably called her own mother mean back in the day, but then again, her single mother was raising three children and working full time.

"I don't know how she did it," admits Stone, mother of two tots and the in-house counsel of a local bank.

The worst threat she or her siblings could utter — "I'm telling Mom" — was enough to get her to mind her older brother or finish the chores.

"By the time she came home, she was exhausted," Stone recalled, adding her mother didn't have time to launch long, cajoling explanations. "It was just 'No.' I think with three kids by herself, she didn't have time to negotiate with children."

She and her husband say parents perhaps fall into the trap of negotiating too much with their children.

"I'm OK with saying, 'Because I said so,' " Stone said.

She points to the fact that she and her siblings are reasonably responsible, independent and successful.

It's too early, yet, to see if she'll turn out like her mother. Well, perhaps: Stone's eldest son is at the toddler stage, so she's gotten pretty comfortable with the word "No."

"He's checking out boundaries. He looks at me, and if I don't say no, he assumes the yes," she said.

Like Cabato, Stone suspects fewer parents are as quick to set limits the way their mean moms did.

"I hope to be like my mom," she said, "but I haven't told her thank you."

Even if that means being mean? You bet. "Mean" to Stone is twofold:

"Being able to give appropriate discipline and setting limits," said Stone. "The intent behind it is, you love and care and worry about your child's safety."

Now, Stone's mother has a new nickname: The Spoiler.

"I think because she was a 'mean' mom, she can enjoy all the fun part, as grandparent. In her eyes, she's paid her dues."

BEWARE 'THE STUFFER'

Even one of the original "mean moms" — Bobbie Pignaro, now 72 — had to give up her title once her children grew up.

"I did go from being 'the meanest mother' to the 'warden,' " writes Pignaro, who e-mailed from Taft, Texas, where she was helping her husband recuperate from surgery. "From there I became known to some as 'the stuffer.' They all live north of me, about a 5- to 6-hour drive. I stuff them with their favorite foods when they come home and even send leftovers home with them. So you can see, they are still suffering at the hands of a 'mean mother.' I have been known to fly to their homes carrying some of their favorite foods to them."

That "mean mom" poem that women have been passing around the Internet? Pignaro's.

When Pignaro wrote "The Meanest Mom" about her own mother more than 40 years ago (see excerpt, above), family and friends urged her to submit it to the Catholic weekly newspaper, Our Sunday Visitor, which published it near Mother's Day. Later, it also made it into Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's magazine, Guideposts. (Warning: The original also refers to her mother spanking children with a belt.)

"Over the next few years, it was published many, many times in all sorts of papers, from church bulletins to daily newspapers," Pignaro wrote. "Assuming I had my 15 minutes of fame, which I never wanted, most of the time, I forgot that I had written it. And then along came the Internet and it exploded."

Of the hundreds of letters she's received in its new resurrection, nearly all were very positive, "mostly from people who had mean mothers."

Her sense is that even among those who had tough moms like hers, some tried to be one themselves, "but I don't think there are that many out there anymore."

Pignaro wrote: "No one wants to take what I call the big two Rs: respect and responsibility. ... We don't teach our kids either of them."

Cabato agrees that there are times when she wants to be a friend to her little girls, but "there's a short fuse of where my friendship is. I don't want them to think, 'Mom's cool about it.' You still need authority."

She takes her inspiration from a well-known source, she joked: "The Dog Whisperer."

"The dog whisperer says you have to be the leader of the pack," she said, then chuckled. "I know my kids are not dogs, but it kinda makes sense. That's my reward, the freedom to be with them in public, and they're not wild."

WHAT DID YOUR MOTHER TEACH YOU?

Maybe it's just in a mother's nature to constantly teach her child something to survive the real world: How to eat right. How to be honest. How to work hard. What lesson did your mother pass on to you? Was it a piece of practical advice or a profound nugget of wisdom that guides you daily? We want to hear from you for a Mother's Day story. Send your mother's lesson, along with your name and phone number, to zserrano@honoluluadvertiser.com, with "Mother's Day" in the subject line; fax to 525-8055; or mail to Mother's Day, Island Life, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, 96802. Deadline is April 25.

Join our discussion: Are you a 'mean mom'?