Associated Press Anna Jarvis, the force behind Mother’s Day in America.
About this time, many spouses and children, including those who are grown, are hurrying to buy or create a gift for Mother’s Day.
I am here to say that my family can stand down this year. It may be too strong of a word to say I’m “boycotting” the whole thing, but I’m having second thoughts. So they shouldn’t worry about taking me out to brunch (with a crowd of other mothers) at a restaurant that has raised its prices for the day.
Not that there aren’t aspects of the holiday I don’t enjoy. One year, my girls (with help from my husband) gave me a ring with their names engraved on it. It’s the only piece of jewelry I wear regularly, besides my wedding ring. And when my children were in preschool, I delighted in their efforts to serve me breakfast in bed without spilling the juice. I still treasure their little handmade gifts — Who doesn’t tear up, at an imprint of a toddler handprint on a card for Mom? — and I look forward to their creations this year.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but see Mother’s Day is a bit of a relic, a holdover from a time when most mothers didn’t work outside the home, and most fathers helped out less with the housework and the children.
Insure.com, an insurance Web site, compiles a “Mom’s Value” index, computing the annual value of jobs done by mothers, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, if the family had to pay someone else to do them. (Example: “Cleaning up,” $5,135; Haircuts, $320; taking care of the children, $20,072.)
It’s entertaining to think that way, and certainly stay-at-home spouses deserve credit for all that they do. But most families I know work as a partnership. Sometimes, it’s the mother who stays home with the children, but it’s increasingly the father (and for male same-sex couples, it’s always a dad). Often both halves of the couple work outside the home, and they muddle through the household duties like grocery shopping, cooking, laundry and cleaning as best they can — together. Both are exhausted, much of the time.
The last thing my husband needs, after flying across the country on a business trip, is to feel guilty because he didn’t have time to buy me a bouquet of pricey, short-lived roses for a contrived holiday (although it’s true that I am, in fact, the family’s chief “summer activity planner” — valued at $7,704).
Even the founder of the modern American Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, eventually turned against the holiday. According to History.com, her efforts led to establishment of the holiday in 1914 — but she later disowned her creation. “Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar,” the site says.
Perhaps when my children are grown and living on their own, I’ll feel differently. I won’t be spending as much time with them. So I’ll likely jump at the chance to have brunch with them or receive flowers (or even a text message) from them.
But right now, what we really need in my family is a day off together, without an expensive agenda. To sleep late, read the paper, maybe go for a bike ride — if we feel like it. I know my children love me, because they show me their feelings on a regular basis, not just on one day a year.
What do you think? Do you think Mother’s Day is outdated?
Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/why-im-sort-of-ignoring-mothers-day/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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