Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards offer the performance of parents performance

EP, a 48-year-old academicist in Upstate New York, was drawn on the border of a family portrait by their son, then 6. “As someone whose child calls them” Mapa “and does not easily identify himself as a ‘mother’, we try in that frame, clearly uncomfortable, ‘Ep said to use their initials and their initials went to the initials. genderbinary binary.

In Richmond, Ky., Hunter Barker Rogers, a 42-year-old Intensive Care nurse and former paramedic, did not register how much her career had come up with in the imagination of her daughter River until a kindergarten school questionnaire stated her work as a “ambulance girl” (and her age as “74”). Cleary, River, now 8, had closely monitored and today she runs “a small medical center from her Barbie Dreamhouse,” her mother said.

Gratitude is a gift

Katina Papson, a 47-year-old high school teacher, said these holidays were non-inclusive of some of the families with whom she worked in San Francisco. She said that she would rather receive ‘incidental gratitude’ if mother herself was celebrated once a year.

In the United States, 6.5 billion tickets are sold for a year, according to the Greeting Card Association, and Mother’s Day is the second most popular season category behind Christmas/vacation, a spokesperson told The New York Times. Every card that expressed appreciation gives parents “a shot in the arm,” said Mrs. Papson. “Such as:” You’re doing well, keep going. “

Her sentiment touches the undercurrent of fear in parenting. Nancy Reddy, an author and teacher, investigated the origin of scientists’ attempts to measure the performance of mothers in her new book, “The Good Mother Myth: rejecting our bad ideas about how to be a good mother”, who outlined the limitations of research to attachment.