There is a writer whose beat is the emotional labor of parenting. Mothering, specifically. Who speaks out against the demands of spirit days and Valentine’s Day cards. This writer does not have children herself, as I understand it. Her insistence that The Moms are put out by these tasks comes in for a fair bit of criticism from actual moms online, whose response to the Am I right, ladies? is basically, No.
I am an actual mom online, and I find the emotional labor conversation a bit overwrought. A lot of it seems to be about demands people imagine are being made of them, but that they could ignore with zero consequences. You didn’t bake cupcakes from scratch and make sure they’re organic? Who cares! And if anything, there’s a sense in which being the mom who doesn’t know that it’s Wear Purple Day is signalling that she is a busy lady whose time is too valuable for such trivialities.
However, there is one exception…
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