[ad_1]
Gifts for Father's Day? They embody recreation. Google will tell you bluntly: we buy BBQ sets, beer cans, golf balls, hammocks and car cleaning products.
What do mothers really want for Mother's Day? A break, thank you very much.
And that says a lot about the reality Mothers live the other 364 days of the year.
Most of us this week began the annual ritual of panicking Mother's Day shopping. (If you do not, I would not want to remind you, but it's Friday now – better go, you're dreaming of your second helping hand of the annual Mother's Day brunch.)
A survey conducted by Angus-Reid in 2017 suggests that business cards, dinner, flowers and chocolate are among the best Mother's Day gift options. They are all … nice. They also feel the despair of Mother's Day gifts. This is the kind of thing you would have a blind date.
I would say that gaining popularity is the enlightened gift of Mother's Day.
Some children and their spouses will receive spa vouchers so that mothers can escape their family for a few hours, or undertake a household chore. It is a thoughtful gift – not material, relatively pleasant for the environment – that claims to be born from a place of deep consideration. The goal: to lighten the emotional and physical burden of the mother.
Yeah. You talk about a charge, agree.
Can we please, for a moment, stop and think about what these gifts represent?
Gifts for Father's Day? They embody recreation. Google will tell you bluntly: we buy BBQ sets, beer cans, golf balls, hammocks and car cleaning products. These gifts have a purpose: to improve the activities already practiced by the fathers. (Yes, even cleaning the car.The only men to wax their car are those who like to wax their car.)
Gifts for Mother's Day?
Illuminated Mother's Day gifts – manicure and cleaning services and meal kit subscriptions – are a totally different breed from fathers; their flavor is escape. This is to temporarily lift the burden. The same is true when children manage to do all the housework on a Sunday. Or, a kind husband takes care of the laundry 10 loads of the weekend. For a weekend.
Or maybe there are only three and a half loads of laundry.
Author Darcy Lockman published this month an article in the Atlantic titled "All Rage: Mothers, Fathers and the Myth of Equal Partnerships," which describes the sad state of parity. The bottom line: the parental contributions of heterosexual American men stagnated two decades ago at 35%.
"The reports of the modern and involved father have been greatly exaggerated," writes Lockman. In their place, the so-called "good" male parents have the merit of doing much less than their female partners, because the father's bar is so low that their disappointing results count for an A against their pathetic comrades who can not even not be bothered to lift a finger.
It's not an opinion, it's data. Lockman cites numerous statistics, including that of the United Nations International Labor Organization, which released a report in March indicating that men's share of unpaid domestic and educational activities has increased only eight minutes per day in the last two decades. At this rate, mothers will reach equality in 200 years.
So rather than looking for a present for mom this week, do not do it.
Instead, explain that you recognize the deeply ingrained inequality – whatever that ratio is at home; ask your partner to analyze it for you – and spend the next year working to balance it.
And next May, once you're sure you've solved the problem and your partner agrees, you can go get the chocolates.
MORE THAN LEZLIE LOWE:
[ad_2]
Source link