Lucia Kanter St. Amour shares her thoughts on how to really support mothers on Mother’s Day.
One Mother’s Day, my sons made me a messy fruit salad. Strawberries, bananas, blueberries and even a sprig of mint. They presented it to me with silly grins, sticky fingers and the kind of pride that made me tear up. It was sweet. It was perfect. And it had little to do with what I actually needed.
Mothers’ Day is sold to us as a celebration, but … we still have to work. It’s not actually a day off. After the fruit salad came the dishes. The laundry. The meltdown over a missing shoe. The negotiations over screen time. The first aid for a splinter. The looming bills. The code called “summer break” to crack. The groceries.
I didn’t need brunch. I needed backup. Like so many mothers, I wasn’t just raising children — my labor was holding up the whole scaffolding of our family. Quietly. Invisibly. While caregiving for a special needs child. While holding down a so-called real job. While quietly crying in the shower. While trying not to collapse under the pressure of it all. In this country, mothers are vaulted on social media, then penalized in reality.
We’re romanticized in cards, but rarely supported at work or in policy. We’re handed a mimosa when what we need is paid leave. Job security. Affordable childcare. A system that doesn’t punish us for reproducing. Now there’s talk of $5,000 “baby bonuses,” as if a signing bonus could make up for the physical and financial cost of childrearing — or the opportunity cost of stepping off a career path because you had no choice.