An open letter to disappointed mothers on Mother's Day

It's actually totally reasonable to want the people who claim to love you to acknowledge you.

Dear fellow mother,

If you’re disappointed by how your family has honored you (or not) this Mother’s Day, let me tell you something you might not hear from anyone else:

You’re allowed to feel disappointed. In fact, you should feel disappointed. Because you matter. Because we denigrate mothers in this sexist world year-round, and you should get one day where the work you do is finally noticed in some small way.

Mothers are allowed to want things, and anyone who tells you otherwise has an agenda of demeaning and disenfranchising you.

I’ve written a lot about how and why men are so bad at Mother’s Day. You can read those pieces here, here, here, and probably elsewhere, too. Today, though, I want to talk to you.

A couple of years ago, I posted this on Facebook:

Disappointment on Mother’s Day is about more than just one day. It’s a profound, deeply reverberating grief for all the ways we rob mothers of their humanity, for all the ways we ignore their sacrifices, for the many losses of motherhood—of dreams, of dignity, of the hope that our partners will ever acknowledge all we have given up.

So you are entitled to that disappointment, and to your anger. Anger may be the only thing that stops you from blaming yourself for yet one more act of mistreatment by a patriarchal society.

The unbelievable work mothers (even the mothers we deem inadequate or mediocre) put into parenting is all around us:

It’s visible in the mother showing up at school constantly to advocate for her neurodivergent child, even as school administrators blatantly disrespect her and blame her (don’t worry, because they’d do the same if she didn’t show up).

In the mother desperately try to breastfeed by using one of those god-awful supplemental nursing systems, only to be told to leave a store when she breastfeeds her baby in public. Or in the mother who decides to formula-feed, but who is also publicly shamed.

It’s visible in the mother desperately trying to break generational cycles, taking breaks in the bathroom or the closet to cry and scream and sob about her own trauma so she doesn’t pass it onto her kids. It’s on her face when she’s judged for being too gentle, too permissive, too wrong, as well as when she’s judged for not being gentle enough. Because, of course, everything mothers do is wrong.

Motherhood leaves its imprints on our bodies, where our babies’ cells reside even after they are born—and even if they are never born. But also in stretch marks, leaky bladders, painful sex, body shape changes, shifting immune systems, lost hair, weird skin, and so much more.

It is endless work. It’s endless work that we pretend is leisure.

We tell mothers their standards are too high. When their husbands don’t help, we blame the women. We subject mothers to endless labor, scrutiny, and criticism. We pretend their struggles aren’t political.

You deserve a day that honors the work you do, have done, will continue to do. The work you do even without thanks (unlike most men, who demand constant and even public gratitude). The work you do even when you’re sick, bleeding from childbirth, alone, or actively counter-parenting an irresponsible or abusive coparent.

Instead, what most women get is nothing—or maybe a begrudging small acknowledgment that comes with a whole heap of obligation and resentment.

If you push back, you hear that you’re entitled, materialistic, spoiled. That you shouldn’t expect anything for a “made-up holiday.” Or most infuriatingly of all, the men—and the society—that exploits your labor 364 days a year may tell you, “Not everything has to be about you.” As if anything at all ever gets to be about you.

In a healthy society, women would see that there is a pattern here, that this is happening to most women, and that there is a purpose to this abuse.

The demoralization is deliberate.

It is not an accident that you feel like shit on Mother’s Day.

Because in a patriarchal society, we tell women that their problems—the problems a sexist society created—are their own fault. We make women feel guilty for wanting to be honored just once per year. And so then, they work even harder and longer because they feel guilty.

Mom guilt serves the very specific purpose of keeping mothers working harder and harder. Mom guilt convinces us our problems are individual. But usually, they’re the product of a sexist society that foists an entire community’s work of labor onto a single person.

If we realized this, we could stop blaming ourselves, rally together, and demand better—of our partners and our world.

Your partner is complicit in this shit, too. He benefits from it.

Just like we convince women that domestic labor inequality is a communication issue, gaslight them into believing he’s a bumbling nice guy and not a beneficiary of misogyny, and tell women to keep trying, and in so doing, give men years more of free labor, we also convince women that after all of this bullshit, their partners don’t even owe them gratitude.

Not one single day of celebration.

Of course it’s to his advantage to not honor what motherhood really is, how hard it really is, how disproportionately all of the burdens fall on mothers’ shoulders. Because if he did, he’d have to admit that he knows how hard you’re working—and how that work directly benefits him, and buys him leisure time at your expense.

Making you feel selfish for wanting a celebration is a classic form of DARVO. It redirects your attention to your own shortcomings, and turns Mother’s Day into yet another opportunity to make you feel inadequate.

Even if your partner is not consciously aware of what he is doing, he is doing it because he’s been told to by a sexist society.

From birth, men are taught that women exist to serve them. That motherhood is natural—and certainly not hard. Our entire society pretends that the immense work of motherhood isn’t work at all. When you grow up in this toxic environment, it just doesn’t make sense to reward something you view as easy, trivial, natural with presents.

That doesn’t mean he escapes blame. He should have learned better. He could have learned better. Many men do learn better. Your particular low value man has chosen not to. He is aware that Mother’s Day happens, that at least some women get celebrated on Mother’s Day, and that you would like to be among them. I bet you celebrate him on Father’s Day. And if you’re like most women, you’ve asked him to return the favor.

He is making a choice, year after year, to devalue you.

The state of the marriage isn’t relevant, either. My parents divorced when I was 10. My dad got my mother a Mother’s Day present every year, and made sure that we did the same. Even when we were adults, even when I had children of my own, he still sent her a card or flower for Mother’s Day.

Because she made his fucking children. Because he saw her do it, and saw her suffer for it. Because he is not a monster.

In the years since her death, he has continued to honor her in various ways on Mother’s Day. So your husband has no excuse. And certainly, whatever conflict exists in your relationship is never an excuse for ignoring Mother’s Day.

There is something deeply wrong with a man who can watch his wife bring life into the world (or do all the necessary labor to bring a child into the home), sacrifice so much for a child, and then all but slap her in the face on the one day he’s supposed to thank her.

This Mother’s Day, feel the rage. Then realize that it really is political. It’s not your fault that society teaches men that women don’t matter.

But it is his fault. He’s not a nice guy or confused.

He knows exactly what he is doing.