Mothers spend their days making decisions. Small ones, constant ones, invisible ones. What everyone eats. What everyone wears. Where everyone needs to be, and when. They carry it all in their heads, quietly keeping the machinery of family life running.
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Knowing that, take note: She does not want to plan her own Mother’s Day.
To hear some people tell it, motherhood is mostly a story of exhaustion and sacrifice. There’s truth in that. But reducing it only to hardship misses something essential. It’s also deeply meaningful. Both things can be true, often at the same time.
Which is exactly why the work mothers do deserves recognition.
Our modern Mother’s Day is meant to honor the way mothers keep families running. The day itself may be arbitrary, but the sentiment behind it is not. In fact, the holiday didn’t start as a day for brunch reservations or last-minute gifts. Early efforts to establish Mother’s Day were rooted in women’s effort to build community, tend to the sick, promote public health and even advocate for peace in times of war. It was meant to recognize care work, not market it back to mothers. That distinction has gotten a bit lost. What was once about recognizing care has, in many cases, become another obligation.
Ask most mothers and they’d tell you to ditch the trappings and trimmings. They just want to know you appreciate them. And perhaps to enjoy a few minutes to themselves.
Many Chicagoland moms need a break, especially during this busy month, often dubbed “May-cember,” when end-of-year obligations, sports schedules and the approach of summer break collide. But what they truly want is to know someone sees the things they do for their kids and their partners, many while juggling full-time work themselves.
Dads today are more involved than ever. Still, in many households, mothers carry more of the invisible work, the “mental load” of keeping a household running. It’s not just what gets done, but remembering that it needs to be done at all. It’s knowing the permission slip is due Friday and the cleats no longer fit. It’s remembering which child likes their sandwich cut diagonally and which one hates macaroni and cheese. It’s tracking the dentist appointment, the class party, the birthday gift that still needs to be bought and wrapped. None of it is monumental on its own. All of it adds up.
That’s why Mother’s Day shouldn’t be another item on her list.
Do not make your wife or mother plan her own Mother’s Day. She does not want to tell you where to take her for brunch. She does not want to tell you what trinkets would bring her joy. She does not want to make any decisions. None at all. For just one day.
That means not asking, “Where do you want to go?” Not asking, “What do you want to do?” Not turning the day into another series of choices she has to manage. The whole point is to remove the decisions, not hand them back to her.
If you do nothing else in the next two days, go buy a bouquet of flowers. Write a note. Offer to give her a couple of hours to herself on Sunday, to read or plant the garden or do something else she enjoys. Keeping it simple is, in fact, exactly what most mothers want. Not pressure and panic and rushing, but a moment of calm before another hectic week begins. One mother of four from the northwest suburbs told us, dreamily, she’d be happy if she just gets to sleep in, and if the hardest decision she has to make all day is where to get takeout.
What most mothers want isn’t a production. It’s relief, and the feeling that someone else is paying attention. Better yet, don’t limit that to one Sunday.
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