I have to be honest: I kind of hate Mother’s Day.
It’s not really a day for me. I’m a foster mom, but am I really a “Mom”? I care for children who aren’t my own 365 days a year. I wipe butts and take care of them when they’re sick. I bathe them and buy them clothes and toys, I take them places, and honestly spoil them. I get sad when they’re sad and sing songs with them and march them to bed when it’s time each night.
But I didn’t birth them. I don’t have any legal rights to make decisions for them. I can’t even travel with them without getting permission. If motherhood is a bundle of rights and privileges, I’m clearly missing some of the sticks.
Mother’s Day is a hard day for my kids who are old enough to understand what it is. They miss their first moms. They wish they were with them even if they love me. It’s normal and natural and heartbreaking.
Mother’s Day is hard for people who had sucky Moms. Whether they’re in touch with them and feel obligated to come up with a gift, or whether they’re estranged and feel bad about what they missed out on as kids, it’s a hard day. Some people have traumatic memories of Mother’s Days from their pasts.
Mother’s Day is hard for Moms who have sucky relationships with their kids. Moms of drug addicts, and those who can’t be there because they’re incarcerated, and kids who are MIA, or inconsiderate, or just uncaring – it’s a hard day for those Moms. And it’s a horribly hard day for the Moms whose kids are in foster care. Or whose kids were adopted by someone else.
It’s a hard day for Moms who have lost their children any time from in utero to when they were adults. No parent should ever outlive their kids.
Mother’s Day is a hard day for women who want desperately to be mothers but are infertile.
It’s a hard day for women who have spent a lifetime nurturing other people’s kids as aunties and godparents and teachers and mentors but chose not to have children, or couldn’t have children of their own. Those women deserve credit too.
Mother’s Day is centered around this myth that somehow reproducing makes one superior to other women. It puts women who breed on a pedestal… regardless of whether they deserve to be there. And it excludes a lot of women who should be on pedestals for all their nurturance and mentoring.
Mother’s Day sometimes sucks for two-Mom households. Which Mom gets pampered? Neither in reality, if the kids are young.
Mother’s Day sucks for the trans women who get overlooked and not told “happy Mother’s Day,” especially if they know some clueless human is bound to wish them happy Father’s Day the following month. And the non-binary parents? They don’t get a day at all.
I know it’s a day of joy and fun for some women and to those women I wish a wholehearted Happy Mother’s Day! Enjoy your children and may it be a sunny day!
For the rest of the women? I see you. I’m so sorry it’s a hard day. You’re entitled to your feelings, whatever they may be. Be gentle with yourself. And know Monday will be here soon.
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