Dingus of the Week: Mother's Day
America doesn't love mothers, it loves forced servitude
This is the Weekly Dingus, the Friday newsletter, where I round up my internet reads, share a drink recipe, and vent about something really dingusy that happened in the news. This week, it’s Mother’s Day. But once it was SCOTUS. Another time it was Joe Manchin. Will it be you? Stay woke.
It’s ironic that the weekend after the draft of a SCOTUS decision rescinding abortion access in America leaked that we have to celebrate Mother’s Day in America.
Mother’s Day has always been a consolation prize to mothers in America, who are overworked, underpaid, and receive little to no help from the government or their partners. Talk all you want about “good men,” but statistically, mothers are doing the bulk of the domestic labor and the childrearing while still maintaining full-time employment. The labor gap only got worse in the pandemic as mothers were forced from their jobs and schools stayed closed.
America doesn’t love mothers, America just loves forced servitude.
This year, as a special fuck you to mothers in America, Congress refused to renew the Child Care Tax Credit and SCOTUS is posed to rescind abortion rights.
Americans are now being priced out of housing and can’t afford childcare or health care. Gas and groceries are unaffordable, and employers are refusing to pay living wages, and Congress won’t increase the minimum wage. And now, women will be forced to give birth in a country where maternity wards are closing and there are huge reproductive-care deserts, where pregnancy care and birth are prohibitively expensive, and where maternal mortality rates are the highest among developed countries.
America doesn’t love mothers, America just loves forced servitude.
Inflation is at a 40-year high and women’s rights are at a 100-year low.
But sure, happy Mother’s Day! Don’t forget to give your mom some shitty jewelry with her kids’ initials on it so she can wear her reproductive status around her neck on a chain.
Just a guess, but this Mother’s Day, maybe get your mother something she really wants—the right to bodily autonomy.
But until then, can we just stop pretending that this country cares about mothers? Because we don’t. We have done nothing to stem the tide of maternal mortality. We’ve done nothing to help mothers afford to give birth or take care of their children. We’ve done nothing to make childcare affordable (except Iowa is legalizing letting 16-year-olds watch babies in a childcare setting, so that should oppress kids on two levels). Hell, we don’t even have a vaccine for children under five.
But sure, a bunch of carnations and a card you bought in a panic from Walgreens Saturday night should do the trick.
What I Am Reading:
Parker Molloy has this good analysis on the language of abortion rights. Smithsonian Magazine has this story on saving art in Ukraine. I am just learning about it now, but I am obsessed with the site McMansion Hell.