Photo: TikTok
Moms really do it all.
By Alexandra Blogier — Written on May 15, 2023
Mother’s Day is supposed to function as the one day when moms are celebrated for everything they do for their families and get a brief respite from their daily routine. Offering moms recognition for the role they hold in their family’s lives is valuable, especially in a society that doesn’t always support them. But not all moms get the break they deserve, even on a holiday designated specifically for them.
One mom got up at 7 am to prepare her own Mother’s Day brunch.
Mikayala Matthews filmed her Mother’s Day for TikTok, starting with the preparations she made before the actual holiday began.
“I’m putting together a Mother’s Day brunch tomorrow and I have absolutely nothing,” Matthews explained from the car, while her daughter sat in the backseat. “We got one gremlin with us, we’re running into Target, because we gotta be quick.”
Matthews recorded the labor she completed to get ready for the Mother’s Day celebration she organized herself. She ran multiple errands at various stores, highlighting the amount of work that goes into planning and executing a party.
She ended the video by filming herself unloading everything she bought to execute her Mother’s Day brunch, but that wasn’t nearly the end of the work she did to get ready.
Matthews posted a second TikTok, filming herself waking up at 7 am to get ready for Mother’s Day while her husband lay asleep beside her.
Half-asleep and bleary-eyed, she looked into the camera to declare, “Happy Mother’s Day. I’m throwing a brunch. It’s 7 am, so I have to get up and clean and get stuff ready.”
Matthews not only prepared her own Mother’s Day celebration while her husband slept, but she also took care of her young daughter while getting ready. She recorded the process of creating a floral arrangement for the table, saying, “I should have done this yesterday, honestly, because this is already really overwhelming.”
Yet one might wonder when Matthews would have had time to complete the flower arrangement earlier, as she spent the day before shopping for everything she’d need to pull off brunch. She showed her finished product, explaining, “I’m stressed. I’m not in love with it, but I don’t have any more flowers, so. It looks so pretty on the table, though.”
Matthews then filmed herself slicing fruit, explaining, “Luckily, I didn’t take on any food this time, because normally I do all the food, for like, our Christmas breakfast… I cut up this orange and grapefruit to put inside of our little drink to make it pretty.”
She then vacuums and mops the floor before setting up a kids' table, complete with markers and coloring paper to keep the young children occupied. Matthews clearly considered and anticipated the needs of everyone who would attend her brunch.
She put aside her own needs to care for others, an act that too many moms find themselves doing, as evidenced by another related TikTok post that educator and activist Laura Danger stitched from a mom named Hayley Rawle.
Another mom on TikTok questioned why women are left to plan their own Mother's Day.
“So, Mother’s Day is coming up on Sunday, and I’m a mom of one-year-old twin girls,” Rawle explained. “My older sister is a mom, my mother is the mother of us two and our two other siblings. I was Facetiming my mom and sisters last night, and we are planning Mother’s Day dinner."
The trio was organizing who would cook what and all the other details for their own celebration. “Why is it this way?” She asked. “Why can men not be better than this?”
Rawle qualified her statement, explaining, “Yes, I love my husband, he’s a great guy. He’s really trying, I actually think he’s trying. And we’re like, progressive, we’re like, working on this, but yet still, like, this is how it is.”
She explained that, because her husband and stepdad can't be relied on to plan things, she is bearing the weight of it all.
“I just feel so frustrated right now, because I feel like, not only do women bear so much more of the emotional labor, women also have to bear the emotional labor on behalf of other women, when their men in their lives don’t show up for them.”
“I know if my stepdad doesn’t do something for my mom for Mother’s Day, I have to step in and do something even more, because he’s not, like, taking care of her. And my mom knows that if my husband’s gonna drop the ball on Mother’s Day, then she wants to like, take care of me, because we want to take care of each other and we want each other to be happy.”
The teary-eyed mom says she knows she could ask for help but even having to ask is emotional labor.
Laura Danger, who posted the stitch video, cut to her own take, saying, “Spiral with me for a moment.”
“Women are often discouraged from advocating for themselves. Part of that is because it’s a woman’s job to make other people comfortable. We’re told we shouldn’t be too needy. We are encouraged to adapt rather than advocate for ourselves and often that looks like thinking our needs are too much,” Danger explained.
“So, there’s emotional labor in advocating yourself, despite the story that you’re telling yourself about your needs being too much. There is emotional labor in being let down by men who often haven’t had the same practice anticipating needs or noticing how to show up for people. Women often take responsibility for that.”
Danger captured the catch-22 women often find themselves in—the dilemma of whether to voice their needs or not because to do so is more work, and we don’t want to be disappointed when our needs aren’t met.
“Then, there’s even more emotional labor in deciding if you’re gonna speak up and possibly make your partner uncomfortable, or being met with defensiveness, which confirms that your needs were too much. It feels easier to do it yourself.”
Danger’s explanation of why it feels easier for moms to take on the majority of emotional and practical labor provides context for Mikalaya Matthews’ TikTok, where she does all the work on the one day designated for her to have a break.
All three women’s posts exemplify the vicious cycle of imbalanced, gendered labor, and how hard that can be to break. The first step forward in creating social change is to put a voice to what’s happening for moms. The next step is to hope—and even demand—that they’re being heard.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. As a former postpartum doula, she covers parenting issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.