Mother’s Day Manifesto
Hopefully the following “manifesto” won’t be needed by everyone. I drafted the text below for mothers who never get what they want for Mother’s Day, if what they want is to be left alone for awhile to do their own thing without having to constantly be pleasing others. I found it satisfying to write. If it resonates with you, feel free to share it, modify it as you see fit, and use it as a template for asking for what you actually want and need from loved ones if they want to pretend that this holiday was really created to honor us.
Mother’s Day Manifesto
On at least one day a year, non-mothers should practice making no requests or demands whatsoever on the mother’s time and effort, for the entire day. Non-mothers who are still young children should have their wants and needs sufficiently taken care of by older non-mothers on that day so as to allow the mother one much-needed day of rest and peace.
This benefits the mother greatly by providing one day a year to partially recover from some of the stress of motherhood, though one day is not really enough to recover from all the stresses mothers always face. But it is a start. And mothers do need at least one day to put their own needs and preferences first, in order to be a loving and caring mom the rest of the year.
A secondary benefit to this annual practice is that it may be eye-opening to non-mothers to be forced to be mindful of the absurdly unfair quantity of requests and demands made of mothers on any other typical day.
Non-mothers: On this day, do not assume that your needs and wants automatically take precedence over hers. Do not expect her to center her life around you on this day. Do not expect her to adjust her schedule to fit yours.
Do not expect anything of the mother of the house on this day - no attention, no validation, no praise, no planning, no decision-making. No unpaid labor of any kind - no housework, childcare, laundry, grocery shopping, or cooking. Except for paid employment, she should not have to do any physical, cognitive, or emotional labor whatsoever. If she wants to nap all day or check into a hotel or be gone all day from dawn to midnight, that is entirely up to her, with no judgement whatsoever. Whatever she does with this rare, hard-earned bit of free time is entirely up to her. But judgement does fall on you, non-mothers, if you cannot cope with family life for even one day without her. This is a test.
It is a test that families should easily be able to pass, if the family workload were distributed equally, but clearly it is not.
If non-mothers, together as a family, with the combined effort of dads, uncles, adult children, and any other non-mothers, cannot accomplish the feat of demanding nothing of the mother on Mother’s Day, you fail the test.
The test should continue every day until the family gets it right.
If the mother of the household does not get a full day of peace to do whatever she wants on Mother’s Day without putting others first (within reasonable legal, ethical, and financial limits, of course), she should demand an alternate designated Mother’s Day date of her choosing. And that should continue as many times as it needs to, until the family can get it right and give her one day of peace and feeling cared for herself without having to caretake other people in return.