It’s Mother’s Day. I have had a fraught history with this date. First of all, it’s a manufactured holiday. The idea was noble. A woman did it in honor of her mother to celebrate all mothers did for their children. Which, fine. I have no issues with that*. But as with all holidays, it’s become bastardized and commercialized.
Not only that, but it’s become a thing to wish any female-presenting person of a certain age a happy mother’s day. Which means me at this point. Even if we were to get past the whole assuming gender part (because let’s face it. That’s not going to change any time soon), it’s bizarre to me to wish anyone who isn’t your actual mother a happy mother’s day. Why would you wish any older female-shaped person a happy mother’s day? And it seems to happen to female-shaped people more than male-shaped people on father’s day.
It’s like people telling me how smart Chinese people are. And industrious/hard-working. Putting aside the fact that I’m not Chinese, let me remind people that positive stereotypes are still stereotypes. Asian American kids kill themselves at a high rate in college because of the pressure to live up to the model minority stereotypes. I will say that a lot of this is in-group pressure because in East Asian cultures, there is a high value placed on education. And being as ‘good’ as possible. This is how the stereotypes started, and it’s only been perpetuated over the years.
Anyway! I’m at the age where I’ve gotten wished a happy mother’s day at the grocery store. Which is just bizarre to me. Another reason not to do this is because there are people who have had miscarriages, are infertile, or can’t have children for other reasons and deeply mourn the loss.
Of course, the people at the grocery store don’t really care about mothers. I wouldn’t expect them to. It’s probably a mandate from on high, and I’m not sure the purpose. I’ve read that this happens in church and to a much lesser extent, work.
I have always hated the day because my mother gets upset if I don’t send her a card. My brother sends her nothing. He is not a people-person, and he doesn’t get why things ilike this are important. And he’s a dude, so he’s allowed to get away with it. I, on the other hand, am not because I present as a woman. I am supposed to take care of my mother emotionally, and I’ve been expected to do this since I was eleven.
This was waaaaaay before I knew the term parentification, of course. My mother apologized for this when I was in my thirties, but she didn’t stop doing it. Now, she justifies it by saying the parent and child roles have been reversed. And she continues to dump her shit on me. She tries to justify it by saying it’s the way of the Taiwanese culture–that the parent becomes the child. She also tried to justify it by saying that it affected me as well because he was my father.