It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday and you have hopefully had a think about what it is that you’re getting to say a massive thank you to the mothers in your life.
Will it be an experiential thing, like a dinner or paintballing? Will it be a thing-gift, like a scarf or a vintage Star Wars figure? The options seem endless!
Here’s the absolute worst gift, though: those voucher things saying Mum can get “one (1) back rub” or “will take the garbage out”. You know the ones.
If you’re handing them to your partner, then at least ensure that there’s one voucher in there saying “valid for one (1) solid kick in the groin for giving such a deeply insulting gift”.
Worse still, for the love of god don’t give them to kids to give to mum.
It seems cute, sure, but basically it’s teaching kids to trivialise women’s largely-unpaid work.
“This stuff is beneath you, kids” these vouchers say, “and it makes you a good person to do this dumb work one time when only a jerk would do it.” And then you’ll wonder why junior doesn’t won’t clear the table, after reinforcing that domestic stuff is all Mum Work.
As we’ve gotten a bit more astute about inequality there’s been a slow realisation that domestic work is actual work, only that the people that do it are disproportionately female and don’t get compensated for it.
This is such a pervasive, if often unconscious, idea: that some things are women’s work and therefore invisible to men. And also odourless, which explains why there are dudes who have not been 14 for a long, long time and yet somehow maintain That Teenage Bedroom Smell.
But back to the vouchers: stuff like unpacking the dishwasher, or cooking a meal, or hanging the washing? Not to put too fine a point on it, that should be shared household labour, not something which is assumed to be mum’s job and therefore left to the mumsiest inhabitant.
(That’s not least because one of the tricks that men learn very, very early on is to take something that they don’t want to have to do – ironing, for example – and do a shit job so that the nearest mum/sister/wife/girlfriend will go “oh god, fine, I’ll do it”, thereby making it their responsibility from then on in. Hey, they volunteered! And I’m just bad at it! It’s perfectly reasonable!)
So: vouchers. No.
Burn those stupid things and get mum something nice. You’ve known her a while, you should be able to pick what booze she’d like.
After all you’ve put her through, it’s the least you can goddamn do.
