This Mother's Day gift is a guaranteed hit - and costs $0

By Venessa Wong

Here's what I didn't understand about motherhood until I became a parent myself

Leah Garcia knows exactly what she wants for Mother's Day. "I want to be a dad for Mother's Day - actually, scratch that, all weekend," she said in a TikTok video that had attracted more than 422,000 views by Thursday afternoon.

Being "a dad" means "I can sit on the toilet for 45 minutes with no interruptions," she said. "Nobody is asking me to do 50 things for them before I can do one thing for myself. I don't have to run in 50 different directions all day. I can just be a dad." She told her husband and kids not to buy her flowers, chocolate or a fancy gift, or to even make her breakfast.

Bearing the brunt of caregiving is, of course, not an experience exclusive to women: 1.5% of men ages 25 to 54 are full-time caregivers. But that's compared with almost 14% of women in the same age group. Even in so-called egalitarian opposite-sex marriages, where both spouses have similar earnings, wives spend more time than their husbands on caregiving and household chores.

A chorus of people sympathized with Garcia in the comments, echoing her longing for peace and quiet and saying those would be the "perfect gift."

Such a request - which costs $0 to fulfill but requires plenty of effort - may be a letdown for some who have already gone shopping. Americans are expected to spend a collective $33.5 billion on Mother's Day this year, or about $254 per person.

But what many mothers desire is not monetary. (That might be especially true for working moms who have the money and independence to treat themselves: 74% of moms with kids under age 18 are also in the workforce.) Instead, they want a temporary reprieve from the chaotic demands on their time and energy - to have someone voluntarily absorb that pressure from them and to focus mental and emotional energy on intuiting their needs and centering their contentment, as moms often do for other people every day. And some warm snuggles and kisses.

The upside to this approach: It's free! The downside: It's harder than buying chocolate. Consumerism does provide convenient shortcuts.

'Mom always eats last, right?'

Courtney Hanson, a 35-year-old mother of two children in Florida, told me that on Mother's Day last year, her husband made the gesture of booking a hotel for a family trip. But during breakfast on vacation, she said, "I was chasing the kids in the hotel dining area, and my husband started eating his breakfast before I had had a bite of mine."

He didn't understand why she made it an issue, and this made her frustrated at him and at herself. "I don't want to be bummed, because this has been a nice day, but I kind of feel bummed," Hanson said. Her husband is a great dad, she added - but even then, "Mom always eats last, right?"

Now I wish I had treated my own mom better when I was younger. What I didn't understand about motherhood until I became a parent myself is the toll that everyday caregiving takes on a person, both physically and emotionally. That's especially true when no one in particular is taking care of you, and you're left - on top of everything else - to try to tend to your own needs, if you can even find the mental bandwidth to identify what those are anymore.

Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I spiritually fulfilled? My mind is so overextended that I don't really know.

But I do know that school dropoff is at 8 a.m., and if I run to the subway and manage to catch all my transfers, I can be in the office by 9 a.m. But first I need to defrost something for dinner before I leave the apartment - and check if there are any vegetables in the crisper because it's important to prepare healthy meals. But, oh my goodness, I have no cash in my wallet and it's the unofficial Mother's Day plant sale at school and now I am worried my child will feel excluded for coming unprepared to this farcical fundraiser in which I give them money to shop for me - and, oops, speaking of money, I still owe my other child's school for aftercare expenses, I think. I'll have to remember to check the credit card, which still has that charge I need to dispute from when the kids accidentally ordered the Paw Patrol movie using our TV remote.

Sorry, where were we? Oh, right.

Don't ask me what I want to do for Mother's Day. As you might have noticed, I am very busy. I. Am. Not. Planning. My. Own. Party.

To be clear: I love being a mother. I love spending time with my children. I do not see them as a burden. I'm also just very tired.

Many working mothers are: CVS warned of a "mental health crisis" after a 2022 Harris Poll survey it commissioned found that more working mothers had been diagnosed with anxiety or depression (42%) than working fathers (35%), the general population (28%) or their coworkers without kids (25%). Mothers aren't just whining. This issue is symptomatic of society's failure to support them.

'The expectations are just unrealistic'

Tiffany Nelms, a 42-year-old social worker in Martinsburg, W. Va., experienced postpartum depression after having a baby in 2020. It's not only the lack of sleep that affects mental health, she said - it's also the logistics and expectations wrapped up in motherhood.

"It's access to quality child care, whether it is open during the hours that we're supposed to be working, more generous parental leave," said Nelms, a member of the group MomsRising, which advocates for family economic security. "I may not have been depressed if I didn't have to go back to work when my son was four weeks old. ... How many people are depressed or anxious because the expectations are just unrealistic?"

Nelms shares a blended family of five children with her partner, and they plan to go hiking and have a picnic on Mother's Day. "They asked me what I wanted to do. I'm usually the planner anyway." Neither hiking nor picnicking are her family's preferred activities, she said, "but it's my day." Aside from buying food and gas, the outing won't cost anything. And one day, she hopes, when her children are older, "I'll get my Mother's Day in a hotel by myself."

Jessica Norwood, a 39-year-old working mother of two in North Carolina, also fantasizes about spending the day in a hotel room "with a face mask on my face, in a plush robe and fuzzy socks" with the freedom to scroll her phone, call her friends, order room service and watch a movie. "Most importantly, when I get home from said hotel stay, I'd like to come home to a clean house, wiped-down counters, empty laundry room, stocked fridge and pantry, watered plants, walked dog and happy and clean children who have had a fun and enriching day and are ready for a hug and kiss goodnight when I arrive to tuck them in and ask about their day," she said.

What I want most for myself is to have the ceaseless stream of thoughts, logistics and planning extracted from my brain, giving me the freedom to exhale and bask in the momentary blankness of having no one else's needs to think about. For my husband, and eventually my kids, to see the mundane work of keeping the family going not just as something they "pitch in" on, but as their actual responsibility - and not just for a day, although that's a start.

My husband and I both work full time. He does plenty at home. But somehow I am still the one who proactively researched our local daycares and schools, who manages the household calendars and medical appointments, and who keeps tabs on the offerings and costs of summer camps. I arrange the playdates and birthday celebrations. I make space for new clothes as the kids outgrow the ones in their dresser. I vet the shows they watch on television and online. I observe their emotions and how they respond in different situations and try to give them tools to confidently navigate this world while also feeling, I hope, loved unconditionally.

My husband and I both believe our kids deserve this much, even if I was the one who ended up in the driver's seat. Some people call that the mental load. I just call it giving a s-.

My kids are still little, and a lot of mothers my age don't know how we ended up in this position. Many of us were raised at the tail end of the 20th century to value gender equality and to find partners who did, too. But being an equal partner can still translate to two people operating very independent lives, largely taking care of themselves. My contemporaries in heterosexual relationships celebrated women's growing financial independence from men, largely by pursuing equality at work while neglecting equality at home. But adding children throws in new considerations - independence is not conducive to caregiving, after all. It requires a major shift in priorities.

Even women who work outside the home disproportionately assume the new duties of parenthood. It's bizarre, since many of us became parents at the exact same moment as our partners. One study by researchers in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands found that women are less selfish than men, although it is not clear if that difference is innate or the result of social expectations. Maureen Templeman, a psychology professor at Missouri State University, attributed women's disproportionate caregiving burden in a report to "gender norms and just the expectation that when there is care to be provided, it's provided by women." Other research indicates that in same-sex couples, one parent often ends up assuming more caregiving responsibilities, though studies also suggest these couples are more likely to think their division of domestic labor is equitable.

"Work and much of society are still built for single-earner families," concluded a 2018 New York Times article about how gay and lesbian couples divide chores.

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05-11-24 0636ET

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