Can we normalise rest on Mother's Day?
No amount of flowers will re-energise us.
A note from me: This essay is a little late and I am sorry. I took your survey results and have been (slowly) working on DD as a brand which left little time to actually sit and write as I do this on top of paid work and mothering. I am aiming to evolve DD with better essays, interviews and also a very exciting collaboration coming soon. As always, thank you for sticking by me.
I’ve been thinking of Mother’s Day content so much so it was starting to feel more like pressure to post something. Anything. I thought a gift guide may even suffice but truly what do mothers want? This is the trouble with writing such personal essays. It feels ‘ick’ to write anything that doesn’t feel right, or true or of substance – is it going to help? Make you laugh, cry, relate? Or is it just adding to the noise of an already crowded mumsphere? Those are the questions I ask myself before publishing but I digress…
What have we all been screaming for as the perfect gift for Mother’s Day? It’s not a Dyson Airwrap, a Diptyque candle or a pair of Platform Uggs. It’s something most of us confess jokingly and something that there’s no affiliate link for. Rest. But instead we continue to perform as good mothers, good wives, good partners do for the sake of our children and if we’re honest; for the sake of good content too. I am not immune to this and I often catch myself wondering whether all this fussing over flowers and matching table sets is worth it just for my parents who wouldn’t care if I served dinner on paper plates or am I just doing this because it will take a nice picture? I guess in 2023, both things are and can be true. I do enjoy the finer things and I suppose laying in bed all day, ignoring our children, our responsibilities, and for those of us in heterosexual relationships (and yes, yes not all men), leaving it all up to the men to caretake and tablescape, just seems cruel. So it makes sense we should celebrate motherhood by continuing to do it all. Forgoing our own needs and desires to enter goblin mode, instead drown out our fatigue with floral arrangements and brunches, and only have a menty-b as an optional side and only if we have time.
When I say ‘rest.’ I mean actually stop. Stopping both, the mental and physical labour which of course if you are breastfeeding this may not be possible but it might be for a few hours in between. Physical labour we can see and measure. The cognitive however, can not be measured nor can it be easily escaped. Even on the slow(er) days we are programmed to still be in mother mode - we’ll put a load of washing on while the baby’s asleep, never mind we also haven’t slept for the past 24 hours. While I’m out for a walk I think of what costume my son will wear to a birthday party on the weekend, pay a bill and dictate a grocery list to Siri in between listening to Jay Shetty who I rely on to help teach me how to live a more purposeful life.
Mother’s Day, like Valentine’s Day is a marketers paradise. Last year Mother’s Day generated close to $32 billion for the US economy. I can hear you all saying yes but we don’t want anything, this is all capitalism and evil consumerism’s fault. Mother’s Day should be about appreciating mothers. And you’re right. Mother’s Day did begin as a day to commemorate one mother in particular, peace activist Anna Jarvis’ late mother, Ann. She pushed to have a day set aside to honour all mothers and fought against the commercialisation of Mother’s Day. This is not a stab at my own husband (he did buy me a thoughtful present, cooked a lamb roast and cleaned up after) nor is it a stab at yours, because it’s hardly their fault that they were brought up in a world where females take care of gift-giving so it simply does not need to take up any space in their minds. All the ads are targeted at females, even though I’m fairly certain all males have mothers. Lots of schools’ Mother’s Day events require mother’s to bake something to bring, as if they have time considering most work outside the home also. Imagine saying to the fathers’ on Father’s Day “don’t forgot to bake some cupcakes for your morning tea!”
What I am getting at isn’t so much at the commercialisation – I feel we are too far gone. If we are serious about equality, and lightening the mental load then we should inform and empower the opposite sex about this. Teach them that they too can and should plan, host and organise gifts for not only Mother’s Day but all other occasions like Easter, Christmas, anniversaries, date nights… their own mother’s birthday. As Miley so poignantly points out; we can buy ourselves flowers but sometimes it’s nice to not have to wrestle the kids into the car, go to the store, choose the flowers and arrange them. Sometimes it is nice to know someone else has thought to get them and all we need to do is just receive the flowers and/or show up to the event, and instead of hosting and accommodating everyone else, for the one day that is meant to celebrate mothers and all that we do, it should be perfectly normal and expected for a tired mother to voice that they’d like a day off, a sleep in, an hour, a hot coffee or just to pee alone. And that request be met with a smile and an agreeing head nod (and a hotel booking!) instead of a furrowed brow, a face of concern as if to say; “why do you need rest. Do you hate your children?” And now we’re there. The real reason why mother’s taking a sabbatical makes us feel uncomfortable is because we still consider mothering and homemaking to be joys not jobs.
Yes to all of this!!!