Given how much hostility homemakers get in the US, it may not have been as positive as you imagine. I didn't find the article as shockingly positive as your remark led me to expect it to be.

I think of soccer mom in relatively neutral terms, but my feeling tends to be that it means "she's merely someone with no life for well-meaning but misguided ideas and not because she's outright depraved." Like it's an attempt to say "full time moms: not as bad as we usually think they are."