Sunday is Mother's Day. The rest of May is pure hell for moms like me
As a mom to a first-grader, I find the timing of Mother's Day to be more than a bit ironic — because the holiday celebrates us at the moment when we're stretched the thinnest.
Parenting when you have a full-time job is already a grueling slog of after-school childcare, meal prepping and extracurriculars.
But in May, things get truly nuts.
As the school year draws to a close, a gauntlet of add-ons suddenly arrives requiring even more money, time and careful planning.
As I was typing out notes for this column, I got an email from the 'room parent' of my son's class.
It was a solicitation for donations and volunteers for the school's annual camp-out, a tradition in which families — for some reason — lug camping supplies to the center of the school track to watch an outdoor movie, then sleep in tents, feet from their neighbors.
It's like a more wholesome and less appealing Coachella.
Yes, it fosters a sense of community and offers a low-cost entertainment option. But it also leeches away at the precious little downtime I have. Friday nights are one of the few truly unstructured moments in my family's week. A camping trip — even if it's only eight blocks down the road — means I have to organize, pack and haul everyone back to the school a few hours after we left it.
And this was just the latest of what has become a daily missive requesting supplies, funds and in-person attendance at special school events.
There is Teacher Appreciation Week; it requires homemade cards (don't forget the support staff!) and volunteer baristas for the teacher's lounge coffee bar. And that's just Monday.
There is Spirit Week, a collection of arbitrarily assigned dress-up days that assumes you have an extensive closet of colors and costumes (Thursday is 'Dress Like You're 100 Years Old Day').
At best, these require extra shopping and the gymnastics of cajoling your child to do what's essentially a homework assignment. If you're laughably noncreative like me, they entail hours of trolling Pinterest for ideas.
Dress-up days are now so pervasive that Amazon sells kits specifically for children to play 100-year-olds; for $24.99, you can overnight a mini cane, bow tie, suspenders and graying stick-on beard and eyebrows right to your door.
Then there are the field trips; they require multiple permission slips, 14 snacks per child and the incredibly ambitious assumption that your 7-year-old will successfully apply their own sunscreen.
There is an end-of-year class party, for which 11 veggie trays and six 50-pound bags of rice are needed for the sock bunny craft project. This is separate, of course, from the after-school care program's end-of-year party, which has its own requirements.
And there are elaborate end-of-year thank-you gifts for each teacher (yes, this happens on the heels of Teacher Appreciation Week).
This means rushed trips between work meetings for food and gifts while fielding emails from my phone — all while I debate whether my son's occupational therapist would prefer the 'California sunset' or 'Big Sur coastline' scented candle.
To round things out, the final week of May has just 2½ instructional days; you're on your own for childcare the rest of the time. Hopefully, you didn't burn too much vacation time chaperoning that field trip!
Of course, this onslaught of school activities impacts men who are caregivers, too. But studies show that mothers tend to bear more of their household's mental burden than fathers. Keeping track of all those teacher gifts and snack sign-ups requires significant planning and organization.
'Cognitive household labor represents a form of invisible and often unacknowledged domestic work,' USC researchers wrote in a study published last year.
That study found that mothers are responsible for the lion's share of cognitive household labor and the majority of physical household labor compared with their partners.
And for some, Mother's Day itself can become a chore in and of itself.
Well-meaning attempts to celebrate us often mean we are inadvertently stuck with the logistics of planning that brunch reservation or the massage appointment we were gifted. Others feel torn between their own celebration and ensuring that their mom and their partner's mom feel appreciated, too.
It's an interesting time as a mom, then, to experience President Donald Trump's recent obsession with 'fertilization,' and his publicly floating the idea of incentives that could persuade women to have more children. Among the lures reportedly being considered are a whopping $5,000 'bonus' or a motherhood medal (which, to be fair, would probably be useful on Dress Like an Olympian Day).
If more babies are what they're after, they should perhaps spend a week in May — even a day — in a mother's shoes as she navigates school drop-off while juggling four bouquets for various educators, six trays of strawberries for the class, returns hours later for a midday school picnic and back again when the school day ends.
It would undoubtedly yield more constructive ideas: childcare options that don't cost more than college tuition, a school day that aligns with parents' working hours, guaranteed abortion care and paid family leave.
Moreover, part of the reason moms like me are taking on so much of this work is because schools are hemorrhaging resources and need to rely on an army of unpaid parent volunteers. So, it's unclear how wiping the Department of Education off the map, as Trump has repeatedly said he intends to do, would improve anyone's experience.
As far as Mother's Day goes, I am hoping to relax and make as few decisions as possible. I might crack open a bottle of wine. Because I've earned it, but also because the school recycling drive starts on Monday.
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