The Useless Advice We Give Exhausted Mothers for Surviving the Holidays

This advice pretends these problems aren't political, and makes everything worse

Hey moms! Did you know that communication is a key to a happy relationship? And that if you just talk to your husband and tell him what you need, everything will be ok? Do a chore audit! Make a to-do list! Your husband wants equality. He’s just too fucking stupid to see that the children need food and that someone must buy the presents, so he needs you to teach him and supervise him forever! Don’t you love him?

Also, don’t nag him. Men don’t like that.

This is the core message of most of the advice we give women, and the goal isn’t actually to make things better. It’s to keep women perpetually working toward something that cannot be achieved with a partner who does not want it. And to then blame women when equality doesn’t happen. This trends becomes all the more apparent during exhausted mother season, known colloquially as the holidays.

There’s something uniquely enraging about the advice we give to mothers for surviving the holiday rush. Because at the core of most of it is the idea that maternal exhaustion and demoralization are our own fault. Not only are we run ragged and left totally unappreciated, this advice suggests, but we’re doing it because we choose to. Because we have the wrong values or are just too unintelligent to do better.

This notion of mothers as dumb, incompetent, and incapable of pursuing deeper meaning pervades our entire social structure. It’s this idea that causes us to personalize what is actually political, and causes society to continuously deny the interventions that would actually make meaningful differences in women’s lives.

It’s a lot easier to focus on one weird tip and top 10 hot takes for mom and other such bullshit than it is to accept the reality that contemporary motherhood is oppressing women by design, that men know exactly what’s happening, that husbands are getting a free ride on their partners’ backs and they like it that way because they don’t see women as fully human.

ANYWAY.

I got an email filled with helpful holiday tips from a PR firm run by a childless woman. Her big suggestion to moms? Store-bought cookie dough still slaps! You don’t have to make homemade.

Yes, because making cookies from scratch is definitely a primary concern mothers face at the holiday season. IF ONLY WE COULD SPREAD THE WORD THAT THERE IS COOKIE DOUGH READILY AVAILABLE, I AM CERTAIN EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE.

Excuse me while I go flush my head down the toilet.

Then there are the people who are so very eager to tell moms that if they just relax everything will be ok.

Housework isn’t motherhood.

Your kids want your presence, not your presents.

Your kids won’t remember the bike you got them, but they’ll remember that you were frazzled and resentful.

Remember, moms, it’s your own fucking fault you feel this way. Women are just irrational purveyors of nonsense who arbitrarily decide to do useless work and to feel like shit about it because we love ruining the holidays and depriving the world of meaning.

Here’s the reality: Housework does matter. Kids expect presents. And in most families, there’s a whole ass other adult in the house who’s not stepping up to help with these demands. But sure, let’s blame the person sacrificing her own well-being so her family can thrive. We definitely can’t blame men! That’s called abuse.

Then we’ve got the defenders of men here to remind us that men mean well. Maybe your husband’s love language just isn’t acts of service! Maybe he has ADHD! Maybe you should spend more time trying to understand him. Did you ever think about that?

Yes, Karen, I’m sure every husband’s love language is abuse and neglect. WHAT A NOVEL IDEA AND HOW VERY SMART YOU MUST BE! He’s actually showing love when he sits around and does nothing! And you’re right! ADHD is definitely the reason men do so much less than women, because definitely no women have ADHD. Isn’t it interesting how women with ADHD are still expected to do all the same woak that we give men a free pass on? It’s almost like we don’t actually care about neurodivergence, but about defending men at all costs.

I think my favorite, though, is a new breed that has begun appearing on my Facebook. “Don’t you mean parents, not mothers? Let’s not gender everything!” Oh yes, because if we just pretend that a problem is equally distributed between men and women, that will definitely make it easier to solve! All lives matter. All gender suffer. Seriously, shut the fuck up.

You’re going to see a lot of advice this holiday season. Maybe some of it will make you feel bad, like if you just tried a little harder things would get a lot easier.

That’s not true. This shit is hard.

So here’s my one and only tip for surviving the holidays: Remember that the personal is political. All that shit that feels so unmanageable and difficult, that makes you feel like you can’t keep up? That shit is political. It’s by design. Start noticing it. Start considering how it makes life harder for you and easier for men. And push back in small ways where you can.

Happy holidays. And remember, you don’t have to be happy this holiday, or any holiday.