Mother’s Day is the Enemy

You needn’t worry: everything is okay and nothing that I know of is on fire.

You just gotta know that Mother’s Day is a terrible holiday and I don’t understand why it’s celebrated. I’m not just going off on a silly diatribe; I need to be taken seriously for like 800 more words, then it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Mother’s Day is a day for acknowledging, privately or publicly, that we appreciate and love our moms, right? Whether I love my mom is nobody’s business, and so I’ll choose to keep that between me and KG. Fine, we can all live with that.

What about if I love my mom but don’t show her affection that meets her expectations? What about if I hate my mom and feel forced to show her some sign of love or otherwise suffer the consequences?

Let me take a deep breath and shout just a moment so everyone can hear me: some people are terrible mothers. We need to stop this monstrosity of a cultural value that momma always knows what’s best. You know why? Because some mommas don’t vaccinate their kids. Some teach them to bully. I read a Facebook post recently from someone who was proud her kid wrongfully accused someone of being a pedophile.

Some moms suck.

A child-mother relationship is always incredibly complicated and there is no one-size-fits-all to it.

I don’t – repeat, do. not. – believe mothers are marginalized members of our society who are largely mistreated the rest of the year. Sometimes we set aside time to celebrate the undervalued, but what are moms suffering from? My mom suffers from my occasionally multi-day delays when responding to her texts. THE HORROR.

Moms and dads are underpaid and underappreciated, just like the rest of us. But that’s true with any of the other million nuanced roles we have. I don’t want a Mother’s Day and I don’t want a Father’s Day because why are they more important than Brother’s Day, Babysitter’s Day, or Cousin’s Day? Sometimes those people are better for us than our parents. I personally advocate for every day to be Puppy Dog Day.

If we aren’t good at celebrating teachers or nurses or administrative assistants or parents without a nationally set-aside time to do so, then we need to start practicing showing these people we care on a regular basis. These dumb holidays are indicators that we suck at just celebrating each other as part of our regular life. Let’s please practice showing we value each other.

I hate Mother’s Day because my mother and I know where we stand with each other. I do not need any company telling me I need to remind her.

If crappy moms get to be rewarded for their bad choices on Mother’s Day, I want a Childless Woman’s Day. I won’t even need a babysitter, let’s just go get drinks. You can get me flowers and everything for not reproducing.

Mother’s Day should be permanently deleted from our calendars because it is sad. Those without mothers are sad, those who have lost children are sad, and those with abusive mothers are sad. Women who don’t have anyone to call them “Mom” are told on Mother’s Day that they are valued less than mothers. My role as a woman is not to raise offspring; I am adamantly child-free and intend to be so forever. The inherent assumption of celebrating the importance of mothers on a special day is that those who are not are less important. Again I say: being someone’s mom does not mean you know what’s best for them, or that you deserve a cookie, or that you are contributing to society any better than I am. I love my mom friends for so many other reasons than their motherhood. To me, their worth is not contingent on having offspring.

Women aren’t mysterious, temperamental, all-powerful beings who dictate the emotions of everyone around them. I want to be treated as an equal, not as an emotional bundle of explosives who needs to be constantly fed the reassurance that I’m valued.

If we truly love the women in our life, we’ll let them know without being told to do so.

I am a woman. I don’t ever want children but I do want you to tell me you love me when you feel like it, and hopefully that’s more than once a year.

What’s the worst part of Mother’s Day? Most moms I know are rad. They didn’t ask for this. At the risk of misrepresenting my loved ones: I don’t think they’d miss it if we just did away with it forever.

Happy Mothers Day. If you love your mom, you should probably tell her that more than just today.