Olympic ad honors mothers, even scary mothers?

With Mother’s Day just around the corner and the Summer Olympic Games in London not long after, Procter & Gamble has struck gold with a new online commercial celebrating the hardest job in the world. In the ad, mothers from several continents do the everyday duties that every mother is familiar with — waking the kids, feeding them, getting them out of the house on time. Their children, however, are destined for athletic greatness, a greatness that has to be nurtured.

But just as I was lauding both the spirit behind and the execution of the commercial, my esteemed colleague Kristen Baldwin railed against it, as she was repulsed by the mom’s jock stage-mommery. What I saw as a parent doing everything she could to help a child fulfill his or her dreams, she saw, “GET UP, JUNIOR. IT’S 4 A.M. TIME TO PRACTICE!”

She’s totally ruined the commercial for me…cuz she’s more than a little right. Drat. Watch it below.

What do you think, PopWatchers? An effective tribute to mothers everywhere? Or a well-intentioned but misguided celebration of Helicopter Moms who happen to have Olympic DNA?