Alternative Mother's Day gifts (*updated repost)
Because a silk pillowcase is DEFINITELY not going to cut it this year.
Reposting an updated version of a reader favorite in honor of my least favorite holiday1 — Mother’s Day.
Each year, I think maybe, just maybe, this year might be different. Maybe mothers will be honored for the critical role we play in society. Maybe someone will honor the sacrifices mothers are programmed to accept and follow through on a tidbit of the support we have been screaming into the void for for so long. We don’t need much. Maybe a little more action towards improving paid leave policy? Buoy the overstretched child care system? Throw a little boost of funding towards maternal health research?
Ah, a girl can dream (or at least wake up from the nightmare that is all of the above going in the opposite direction)
Of course, you can probably guess where I’m headed with this. Not only does this country not seem to give a shit about mothers outside of this one Hallmark holiday, but now we’re stuck in the middle of the irrational, vindictive, American political shitstorm of an administration that has spent the last 105 days openly crushing the already-tenuous structures in place to support and protect women and mothers. Oh, and trying to make us glorified breeders.
But sure, yay! Here is ONE day just for us, mamas! 😒
Ok, clearly my tone has an elevated degree of aggressive snarkiness compared to last year. So here we are — one year later with an updated version of Alternative Mother’s Day Gifts*
(*note: Last year was based this on a Good Housekeeping list that has since been updated with a couple new ones, and a couple removed. Goodbye Stanley Cup, hello a few new equally ridiculous ones…)
Alternative Mother’s Day Gifts
I have been getting pummeled with ads and articles claiming to be the “Best Mother’s Day Gift Guide EVER!”
I feel baited. Clearly they want my opinion on this. Right?
After cruising Good Housekeeping’s “58 Best Mother’s Day Gifts”2 and getting mildly agitated by at least 43 of the 58, I pulled a bunch of stand-outs and added an Alternative! for each with a “perfect gift” suggestion3 that is guaranteed* to decrease her stress and improve her health!
*ok, guarantee not guaranteed… but these will sure as hell do more for her than a single product purchased for a single day.
Gift #1 (NEW for 2025!) — Flowers Diamond Dot Painting Kit - “this creative, stress-free hobby will be her new favorite after-work activity…”
“a fun activity to do while watching TV or listening to a podcast” with a high likelihood of staying in the box until next Mother’s Day. Any “fun activity” given in the context of multitasking requires acknowledging that moms are inclined to multitask – not because we are biologically wired or driven to multitask4 but because time is crunched and we find all the ways to squeeze in the extra things. Why not add just one more thing to our list?
Alternative!
Time.
If you want to gift her a “creative, stress-free hobby” maybe also give her the gift of TIME to actually work on it. TIME is gendered – how we value it and how we take it and how we give it. Women (especially moms) have significantly less time (than men/dads) for leisure, exercise, and sleep. This means moms already have less time to access these recommended stress-reducing tools. Maybe gifting her a “stress-free hobby” that requires TIME isn’t the best idea?
So… how about just focusing on the perfect gift: TIME. And not just TIME while “watching TV or listening to a podcast” (chances are, she is already multitasking for the household during those activities), some actual, true, leisure time.
Gift #2 — Temperature control smart mug – “ it'll keep her drink nice and warm, even if she poured it two hours ago and forgot to drink it”
Do you know why she “forgot to drink it”? Maybe because she was chasing a toddler around all morning after the child care center called and said your kid has a runny nose and needs to be home for the next three days… for the 15th time this month. Or maybe it's because she has three million things on her mind at any given point in the day, including an elaborate summer camp Tetris strategy for your eight year old.
But, cool, thanks for the reminder that moms are so “forgetful” 😒.
Alternative!
Have a productive conversation about the division of labor in your home. Try changing default parent expectations. Share the kid-home-from-school responsibility. Source and plan for emergency back up care (it’s a stress buffer!) for the next year. Own the game of summer camp Tetris.
Need something tangible to get started? Go pick up a copy of
’s Equal Partners or Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play for the perfect gift: read it for yourself and have the conversation.Gift #3 — 100% pure silk pillowcase – “Give her a good nights sleep”
I think you can guess where I’m going with this one…
Alternative!
Sleep.
Real, actual, SLEEP. Sleep has its own problematic loop when it comes to stress (stress affects sleep, sleep affects stress, and round and round you go). So what is actually interrupting her sleep? And what are other “gifts” that could help improve it?
A few ideas for determining your perfect gift: new baby waking up every few hours? share the night shift. Checklist of kid sign ups running through her head at 3am? Take over that job, start to finish (see above). Emotional load of parenting a tween weighing on her at midnight? Well, that one is trickier but I do have thoughts.
Need more validation that you could directly impact her health by helping her sleep through the night? Here you go, friend:
Gift #4 — Bonsai tree – “Known to bring good luck, as long as she tends to it, it can thrive for years and years.”
Wait, what? You are really going to give her something else to “tend”? You want to add the thriving of a tiny tree to the load of things she has to worry about when the care burden already disproportionately falls on her shoulders? Did anyone think this one through?
Alternative!
Maybe the goal of gifting a Bonsai tree is to encourage her to stop and slow down or perhaps add a little ‘nature’ to her day…
If so, here’s your perfect gift for the year: go fight for workplace flexibility and a work culture that recognizes family responsibilities extends to men too so that you (dad) and your male counterparts can step into caregiving; set a new standard for the culture that will benefit all caregiving workers around you and beyond.
“If we want to see greater gender equality, we need to not just focus on women’s participation in the professional world — we need to encourage more men to participate in the caregiving world.” - Kate Mangino + me.
This perfect gift will open up more time (Hey, it’s our old friend TIME! Go revisit the painting thing-a-ma-jig!) for mom to tend to whatever other living thing or non-living thing (like, say, her career) that they choose.
Gift #5 — Heating pad for neck and shoulders – because “A mom's life comes with lots of stress, so soothe her sore neck and shoulders with this heating pad”
[insert WTF emoji here]
Alternative! –
Ooooh boy. “Lots of stress” you say? I have a map for you!
Perfect gift: Pick a thing 👆🏼 and fix it.
Gift #6 — The “Weekender” bag – “When she's only going away for a day or two”
Is it fair to wonder why she is only going away for a day or two? Is it because you, father of the same children, are “not keen” on being left alone with your kids (an actual phrase used in an actual conversation when a bunch of friends were trying, unsuccessfully, to plan a girls weekend… nope, I’m not bitter at all)
Alternative!
Give her the WHOLE DAMN WEEK.
And while we’re at it, work towards normalizing that she is taking the whole damn week. Talk it up with friends. Discuss it with your colleagues. Avoid saying that you are “babysitting” while she is away. Do not make her feel guilty for taking a day or two or the whole damn week. Do not call her every day to ask her what to feed your kids for dinner at any point during that day or two or the whole damn week. Do not ask her to “bring the baby” because you cannot handle two children under the age of four by your (big, adult) self5.
Perfect gift add-on: do not add to her mental load (see above) and expect her to prepare everything or anything before she departs for her day or two… or the WHOLE DAMN WEEK.
Gift #7 (NEW for 2025… but only temporarily) — Masterclass Pass – “She could master Creative Writing from Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale...”
When I first saw this one I thought: “is Good Housekeeping in on the joke or just trolling us?!” but then it mysteriously disappeared from the list sometime in the the last week. I wonder why? 😅
Alternative!
Maybe instead of the gift of a creative writing workshop from the prescient wizard herself, how about, I don’t know, fight alongside us for a world that isn’t going to turn into a dystopian, misogynistic hellscape. Just a dreamy perfect gift idea.
EXTRA Alternative! for 2025
VISIBILITY.
Instead of the “Customized Mama Sweatshirt” (#3 on the GH list), get her something that truly shows what the word “mama” means – the person shouldering the bulk of the invisible labor. Choose from some really cool items from The Department of Invisible Labor, an awareness campaign to bring visibility to the unseen work – “To those who know what it is — and perform it — it's a nod of solidarity. To those who don't know, it's a conversation starter.”
Ok, now we have the go-to list for anyone who needs a list to guide buying stuff for the mother of their children (yes, this applies mainly to dads, see footnotes below), should I make a list for the politicians that will inevitably send a “Happy Mother’s Day! I love mothers!” message to constituents but never throw a “yes” vote towards anything that will actually support them?
Yeah. I can’t help myself, here you go.
(quick 2025 note: I haven't changed any of these, except for one small addition. I think it's sweetly nostalgic to think of the simpler times when we thought any of this could be possible in the coming years. One day we’ll get back there, or at least stop making the problems so much worse…)
The perfect gift for mom constituents:
Gift #1 – Legalize abortion (or at least stop stripping every element of body autonomy) – For the mother who cannot have it all… because you have already made it impossible by limiting access to every possible support measure that would make motherhood (or any additional children) at all feasible. We also appreciate that this comes with bonus gifts for any woman who might need access to this lifesaving health care (and that includes mental health) – for respecting her choice, autonomy over her body, and prioritizing her life and health over whatever you expect that ball of cells to turn into. It is Mother’s Day, after all.
Gift #2 – Paid Leave – See gift #1. I know you may not think that women should be working to begin with but the reality is that most women are working or need to work or want to work and they are not able to because, well, see gift #3.
Gift #3 – Fund child care – Reliable, accessible, AFFORDABLE, safe child care. The gift that keeps on giving! It’s amazing what a investment will do for women’s health. Plenty to say about that here and here. 2025 update — Gift #3b: Watch and share the documentary Make a Circle, by the incredible Jen Bradwell and Todd Boekelheide. It is a beautiful view into the world of early childhood education and the fight to keep the system, and the professionals who dedicate their lives to it, from crashing. Lucky for you, Make a Circle will be airing on PBS in September. Mark your calendar!
https://makeacirclefilm.com/about/ Gift #4 – Fund family caregiving support – 75% of family caregivers are women and many of those women have children to care for as well. This is not just the Sandwich Generation, this is the Panini Generation – a whole lotta women being absolutely squeezed on either side of family responsibility because we live in a country that both expects and ignores the unpaid labor required to provide a decent, respectful existence for humans who need any degree of care.
Gift #5 – Make pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery SAFE FOR EVERYONE. Not just that pretty trad wife with the wealthy white husband who donated a shitload of money to your campaign. EVERYONE. Because, right now, it is not safe. Mothers are dying. Or they are nearly dying (that is also an unacceptable outcome). Both results skew heavily towards Black mothers. (An upsetting 2025 update: the link to the CDC page that I used in the 2024 post to go to maternal mortality statistics is now GONE and suggests a page that has been thoroughly scrubbed of the words “race” and “racism”)
Since this one also has a lot to do with Gift #1, 2, and 3, you have some options here for the absolute perfect gift!
Gift #6 – Get over yourself. You are not an expert in this. You are not the ones to be talking about women’s bodies (do you have one?), or caregiving responsibilities (have you ever had to care for another individual?), or returning to work postpartum while you are still bleeding because you cannot afford to not show up.
Are you the dog in the room discussing feline healthcare? If so, give up your seat.
Ok, this may be a snarky way of pointing out the obvious – I’m over the performative nature of how this country celebrates Mother’s Day when every year presents a new opportunity to positively impact mothers in our lives, in our community, in this country. How every year we say “yay, moms!” and then continue to backslide. Applaud for a single day and forget to give a shit the other 364 days.
So, here is my request to those single-day celebrators: Be honest (or do something!)
Don’t pretend to celebrate mothers on Mother’s Day if you actually don’t care about women’s health, mothers’ health, your partner’s health, the health of the person who takes on a disproportionate amount of the care of YOUR children (or the children in your constituency, that you claim to be concerned about).
Don’t pretend to honor mothers or the work they do or make mention of how they are just so “super” when most of them are broken or breaking under the weight.
Don’t mindlessly buy the mom in your life6 something from a list of “self-care” gifts for Mother’s Day as a gesture that “stress relief” is her responsibility. Recognize that there are real stress-reducing “gifts” that you can offer, as a partner. Real stress-reducing “gifts” you can fight for in your community or your workplace. Real stress-reducing “gifts” that you can fight for at a state or federal level.
There are better, more impactful ways to “make Mom feel like she’s on cloud nine this NEXT Mother’s Day” and for the other 364 days of the year.
As noted last year, I want to, again, start by giving space for the very real reasons some folks are especially triggered by a day dedicated to celebrating mothers and motherhood and acknowledge that I do not fall into those categories. My anti-Mother’s Day feelings do not relate to loss but rather my own personal wrestling with the way motherhood is trivialized in this country.
I should also mention that I do love being a mom. I love mothering my two girls. I love getting the random shit they make at school (I still have a ridiculous favorite things list from my daughter’s preK days “she laughs when I do ‘air quotes’”). I will feel appreciated by my husband and my family as a mother on Sunday and that will only add to the ways I feel appreciated throughout the year. And I do love to celebrate my own incredible mother — she's a freaking hero and hopefully she already knows I think that about her.
They downsized to a round 50 this year.
Yes, the language throughout is aimed towards “dad” making purchases for “mom” because 1) children are not the ones buying the $150 self-heating cup and 2) different-sex couples, the mom/dad household, have a worse track record for equality issues in the home.
A majority of people (over 80%) believe that women are better at multitasking. We assume this ability comes from our female biology. It does not.
Gender differences in multitasking are more likely a byproduct of gendered differences in multitasking. Women are better multitaskers because they are the ones expected to multitask. It’s actually science, or rather science reporting, that is to blame for cementing this gender stereotype in our public discourse. Mostly from one case of an elaborate game of science communication telephone slowly broke down hazy findings from a neuroanatomy paper into clean-lines of stereotyped behavioral framing.
All of these sourced from real anecdotal stories of moms leaving (or attempting to leave) town without children in tow. And, no, I have never never ever heard a gender swapped version of these comments.
or encourage her to buy for herself.
I was asked to submit a quote for Forbes on "Why are mothers in need of a day devoted to relaxation and stress relief (particularly right now)?" and thank god they took my "Can we be real for a moment?" response. Mother's Day is almost insulting when women need systemic changes that don't go away even once children are out of the house. Thanks for this much more pointed and apt take on this.
Love love love. My husband asked me if I wanted flowers, jewelry etc. UM no. I said I would actually love help finishing the yard projects that I’ve been working on for months by myself and spending the day hiking as a family. I don’t want a stupid mug or flowers. I should have asked for even more I know realize, thanks for this article 😝