Mother's Day Needs a Rebrand
More activism and better satire.
If reading about Mother’s Day is uncomfortable for you, feel free to skip this one 🩷
Every year around this time I revisit an oldie but goodie piece of satire that I first saw performed in a live production of the Vagina Monologues: This Mother’s Day, Just Brunch me in the F*cking Face. You should read the whole thing, but here’s a teaser:
It’s funny because it’s true. But it’s also funny because it’s not the whole truth. If it were the whole truth, it would just be depressing and people would stop having kids. But sometimes we all just need a little comic relief and mental preparation for likely Mothers Day Disappointment. It feels like so much rides on this particular holiday. But why is Mother’s Day so tender and fraught, even for generally happily momming-moms?1 And why do we love to either idealize motherhood or talk about how much being a mom is miserable?2
The thing is, it’s not the act of being a mom that’s so brutal, quite the contrary. At the risk of sounding totally sappy, it’s the hardest but most fulfilling and rewarding thing I’ve ever done. The problem is that moms’ actual experiences are gaslighted and negated all year, and then one day a year we get flowers and brunch and told “you are amazing and taken care of and loved unconditionally!” However, the reality is that public policy and our individualistic, productivity-obsessed culture leaves us hanging out to dry, with no parental leave, no childcare support, shameful maternal health outcomes, and motherhood penalties at work. All of this is what’s really bubbling up under the surface, so no matter how lovely the gestures on Mother’s Day are, they unfortunately are bound to feel like not enough.
For the record, as I write this I’m emotionally eating chocolate covered almonds after losing my shit during another bedtime “routine” that made me think that stabbing myself in the eyeball might be more fun. But, there are actually lots of fun moments too, and many where I genuinely stop and imagine myself in the future looking back on these days with an exploding heart. And you know what? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be ready to stab myself in the eyeball by bedtime quite as often if overall our family had more support, adults around to help with our kids AND aging parents, and less stress about the massive chunk of our income we spend on child, elder and healthcare.3 Just saying.
John Oliver actually actually hit the nail on the head almost a decade ago, taking Mother’s Day satire to the level it should be taken and brunching US policymakers in the face. Sadly not much has changed since then.
Most Mom satire tends to sit in the relatively safe realm of asshole toddler jokes and self-depreciating body humor, with problems and solutions that focus on the individual and depicted as moms’ alone to solve. (Self care! Take time for you! Let the kids watch TV without feeling guilty! Buy yourself something nice!) All the really effing hard stuff about motherhood has by default become branded as our own individual problem - or just the fact that mom-ing sucks and there’s nothing we can do about it.
That cringey yet relatable restaurant scene depicted in “Brunch Me in the Face” is actually representative of another uniquely shitty part of the American experience and deeper issue. Underlying the soggy napkins and shade from strangers is the fact that despite a national narrative of caring about children and families, our public spaces really aren’t that welcoming of age diversity.
Go to the public square and cafes in most other parts of the world and you’ll see people ages 0-99+ hanging out together in a way that feels natural, enjoying each others’ company and probably even looking out for each other. Restaurants in the US are either explicitly “kid friendly” - i.e. anyone without kids would not choose to eat in them - or they are for adults and if you bring your kids you can expect some side eye from staff, patrons, or both. Cafes are dominated by 20- to 40-somethings on laptops. Once you start noticing it you can’t unsee it - our US cities especially are very age segregated (and ageist overall). Again, I believe this reflects our societal values, which assign worth based on current economic productivity. The unspoken message is that unpaid family caregivers, kids, and elderly adults are implicitly less important and their neediness should be hidden away.
This makes things a lot harder for caregivers who don’t feel comfortable bringing their whole family to public places, and reinforces the idea that they cannot count on others in their community to acknowledge and support caregiving. Of course it’s not just moms who are negatively affected; my childless friends have said that they truly want more interaction with children and older folks and that the age segregation makes them uncomfortable too. Exposure to diversity is good for everyone, and I think age diversity is necessary for building truly rich and fulfilling communities.
So let’s not be fooled into thinking that it’s the act of being a mom that makes us bitter, resentful, wine chuggers, when really it’s the experience of being a mom in our individualist, capitalist, patriarchal society. Why isn’t this what we’re talking smack and crafting more satire about? I guess it wouldn’t be as funny? Maybe we’d all get a little more uncomfortable with all this hypocrisy being out in the open? Or maybe we’d start changing some of the cultural narrative that is holding moms back.
Mother’s Day needs a serious rebrand. Perhaps back to it’s roots as an activist holiday. Maybe some new norms like: for every social media post about how amazing your mom and your wife are, you better also be telling us how you’re advocating for reproductive rights or paid leave or maternal health all year long. Because that’s how you really show us you care.
It actually helps me to think about why the holiday feels so fraught, and to identify the root causes of the bitterness as really being about social failures, not the underwhelm of individual gestures on one day that are supposed to make up for it. We all love to be celebrated, and we deserve it. But the flowers and brunch just probably won’t feel like quite enough until we’re fully supported the other 364 days a year.
Mother's Day Rebrand, a Haiku
Flowers are nice but
show mom you really care by
fighting for her rights
I started to put together my own Mother’s Day gift guide, but then I found this one from the Maternal Stress Project and it’s perfect.
Let me know what you think! Are you preparing to get brunched in the face? Do you enjoy Mother’s Day, or does it usually feel disappointing?
Whatever you end up doing, to all the caregivers reading: I see you and celebrate you!
xoxo
Anna
I completely understand why the holiday is fraught for many, it has been for me at times in my life as well. Complicated mother relationships and struggles with infertility and loss are often amplified this week. What I’m referring to in this essay is how fraught it is even for moms without those struggles and who have families eager to brunch them in the face.
Lindsey Stanberry wrote a great essay on The Purse this week - In Defense of Motherhood - celebrating the joys of being a mom (while also recognizing it’s hard and not glamorous), at a time when we seem to be inundated with messages about just how much it sucks to be a mom.
Recognizing that I say this from a place of privilege. And it’s still so damn hard!
Excellent! Thank you so much for writing this!
Man, you nailed it on the head talking about how American society is ageist in a way. I agree that it's partly about how late-stage capitalism has caused us to value everyone by virtue of their income (potential consumer!). I think the same dynamic has really just turned us all into homo independicus or something along those lines...independent to an extreme. So independent, so individualist, we imagine that everything – every product, every experience, every activity – must be tailored to us. Specifically us. The Consumer. The Customer. The Market. The Generator of Wealth. So if I'm at a cafe that serves wine, well, your toddler certainly doesn't belong there (or so I imagine the reasoning goes).
When really, having children, the elderly, a good cross-section of humanity interacting in a single shared space is great for building community. You know, the sort of thing that would really benefit mothers.