Marisa Frankum, 45, has idealized Mother's Day since she was a child.
Frankum's mom, who passed away seven years ago, was mentally ill and suffered from substance abuse issues throughout Frankum's childhood. Frankum says she has always had a "longing" for a maternal figure in her life — someone she could celebrate.
When Frankum married her husband and became an instant step-mom, she thought she'd finally experience what she says was her "high, exalted view of Mother's Day."
"It was a letdown," Frankum, who lives in Texas, tells TODAY.com. "I felt sad."
Frankum had hoped things would change when she got pregnant, but says every subsequent Mother's Day has been another disappointment.
"I just started to have this anti-view of it," she says, adding that she has a love-hate relationship with the holiday.
"I long for it, but then it comes and every year it's pretty much a letdown," Frankum says. "If you're a mother you work your tail feathers off. You constantly serve. There is no off switch.
"I don't think you should feel obligated to do Mother's Day," she adds.
'It’s just an extra thing I have to do'
Frankum is not alone. In one 2021 Yahoo and YouGov poll of 1,555 people, 30% of men and 30% of women said they weren't going to celebrate Mother’s Day that year.
The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on moms' mental health and the all-too-common unequal division of labor within the home likely contributed to the results, Stephanie Marcello, chief psychologist of University Behavioral Health Care at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, told Yahoo Life at the time.
Even without a pandemic, for many, Mother's Day is just another item on their never-ending to-do list.
"We end up being the ones having to travel and plan and prepare and rearrange schedules to accommodate multiple family members," Hannah Murphy, 35, tells TODAY.com.
"That's just not how I want to spend a day that is supposed to be about celebrating my role as a mother," she says.
Shelley Brasher, 41, agrees, telling TODAY.com that as "the planner and organizer" of the family, Mother's Day is more exhausting than enjoyable.
"For me, it's just an extra thing I have to do," the Texas mom of two says. "It feels like pressure to me. I'd rather just not do it. It feels like we have all of these holidays ... and it's just more and more."
One 2022 survey of 1,024 moms with children still living at home found that what moms want most for Mother's Day is a nap.
After a nap, moms said they wanted a meal they didn't have to cook and for someone else to clean their home.
Murphy, who lost her mom when she was 9, just wants a day of "mental, physical and emotional rest."
"I don’t want to have to make any decisions or travel — unless it’s to a beach with a tiki bar — or cook or clean or work," she says. "I just want my mind and body to just be."
"I don’t want to have to make any decisions or travel — unless it’s to a beach with a tiki bar..."
Hannah Murphy
In a 2023 TODAY.com online survey in which over 600 moms voted at the time of publication, 60% said they’d rather have alone time on Mother’s Day than time with their family.
The same survey found that 51% of more than 400 voters don’t want their family to do anything for them on Mother’s Day — they just want the holiday to be treated as a normal day.
'How do we define what a mom is?'
Brasher says she's also cognizant of how difficult Mother's Day can be for people with infertility issues or who have lost pregnancies, children or their own mom, which adds to her ambivalence.
"I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings," Brasher says. "And then it's like: 'OK, well what is a mom? How do we define what a mom is?'"
Brasher says there are dog moms, and of course child-free friends, aunts, teachers and community members who become mom-like figures to the children in their lives.
"I think we could be more sensitive to that," she adds.
A quarter of pregnancies end in miscarriage, though that number is likely higher as miscarriages can occur before a person knows they're pregnant. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four women will have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term.
"I have a very dear friend that had some IVF problems," Brasher says. "She posted that (Mother's Day) is the worst day of the year for her."
Dr. Shannon Curry, clinical psychologist and director of the Curry Psychology Group in Orange County, California, previously told TODAY.com that for those struggling to conceive or experiencing infertility, Mother's Day is "an agonizing and isolating roller coaster ride."
“While everyone appears to be carefree and joyful, for the person who is grieving, the absence of someone or something cherished will be even more pronounced," she said.
‘It’s a slap in the face’
Murphy, a Tennessee mom of two, says that the "good intentions" behind Mother's Day don't "translate into actual appreciation for all that mothers do," especially in a country without mandatory paid family leave, access to affordable child care and with the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed nation.
“I think that it’s a slap in the face to claim that mothers are valued when we are so often underestimated, under-appreciated and undervalued,” Murphy adds.
On average, full-time working moms are paid 74 cents for every dollar a working dad makes, per the National Women’s Law Center. Working moms of color are paid even less — Black moms make 52 cents, Indigenous moms make 49 cents and Latina moms earn 52 cents.
According to a 2020 report from Child Care Aware, the national average annual cost of child care is over $10,000.
In addition to more support, Frankum says conflating motherhood with martyrdom needs to end and more moms need to feel not judged but supported when asking for help.
"It's that 'Proverbs 31' woman," Frankum says. "If you go read Proverbs 31, it will talk about the 'virtuous woman' and it lists everything she does.
"Who is that woman? I mean, what on earth?" she continues, adding that a mom doing everything by herself is not realistic. "A mom needs to know that it's safe to say: 'I'm stretched out thin. I need help.'"
