BEYOND MOTHERS’ DAY: A REFLECTION

Now that the day has passed, maybe we can take some time to reflect on how each one of us celebrated Mothers’ Day and what this day really means. When we think of Mother’s Day, we generally think of it as the second Sunday of May being set aside to celebrate mums and all amazing (and let’s face it, sometimes miraculous) work they did in raising us.

Come hell or high water, they got us up and through life, through tantrums and ear infections, first days at school and proms, horrible heartbreaks and more. They are there when we get bruised knees or when we don’t get the promotion we thought we deserved.

Roots

But Mother’s Day actually had very different roots, ones that speak more to modern feminist agendas than anything else we usually do to celebrate the day. Every May we usually only point out the emotional and domestic labour our mums do for us, which is why it’s so common for us to say ‘hey mum, let me make breakfast today, it’s your special day!’

Traditional ways of celebrating Mother’s Day are always centred around her role as the backbone of the nuclear family or about saying thank you and acknowledging her devotion to the family (we can dive into the completely different topic of why we think it’s acceptable to only have one day a year to celebrate this essential role, but for now let’s focus on the current topic).

However, according to Stephanie Coontz, author of ‘The Way We Never Were’, not only would the creator of Mother’s Day be disappointed in how we celebrate it, she would be utterly horrified. On Sunday, I dedicated my time to observe the way some of my friends celebrated their mothers. On social media, everyone woke up to post pictures of their mothers and heartfelt messages as captions.

Reached

I wondered how many of those messages actually reached the mothers because those mothers are not on social media? Anyway, I digress. My contacts posted their mothers and meals they cooked for them. And on Monday, it was back to normal. no more talks of Mother’s day, or their mothers.

Now, get this - on Mother’s Day, mothers are celebrated through social media posts and giving them breaks from their normal daily routines. That means cooking for them. And on Father’s Day, father’s will also be receiving breakfast in bed, strangely no one will tell them ‘Dad, you don’t have to cook today, it’s your day,’ So, we celebrate mothers by coming for them, and we do the same for fathers on Fathers’ Day? Isn’t the point to give those we celebrate a break from their normal everyday activities? Anyway, maybe that’s a discussion for another day. Where were we?

Ah, mother’s day. When Mother’s’ Day was officially adopted in 1914, it’s meaning and significance had already changed. Businessmen, merchants, and politicians who were against women’s suffrage quickly transformed the holiday from one that supported acknowledging the role mothers played in larger society and instead, moved to shrink it down to one that only celebrated a mother’s role in her own home, and only thanking her for the labour she gave to her own family.

They recognised the power that was in appreciating women as essential to building and caring for communities, and strove to erase it until we only defined motherhood, and mothers, as being isolated and singular members of family, and not public protectors.

What can we take away from this? We can learn that complacency leads to the sterilisation and commercialisation of our roles as women in society that we need to be conscious every day, of our responsibility to uphold the values that Mother’s Day originally held, which means appreciating mothers (and mother-figures) for their essential role in nurturing our communities and enacting widespread community change.

Celebrate

But most of all, I wish we could make it a habit to celebrate and highlight these roles women play more often than focusing on one day of the year. I wish we’d even write books about the contributions women heaved in our Swati society, so that even future generations can read about where we come from and draw inspiration on how they can contribute as well.

So please, to celebrate these incredible humans, call your mum, or even send her flowers if you like, but also be sure to appreciate the women who help shape and build your community: the activists, the members of local government, the petitioners and volunteers.

Support the non-profit organisers, the female writers/journalists, teachers, Sunday school leaders, or carers who made a difference in your life. Acknowledge that Mother’s Day goes beyond just caring for a single family or home, but that the labour of motherhood is one that nurtures our communities, our countries, our earth.

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