Opinion piece by Barbara Lee
Every Mother's Day, without fail, someone brings it up. On the school run, in a Facebook comment thread, at a playground — someone asks: "Why isn't Father's Day this big a deal?" Or: "Why don't dads get the same recognition?"
Honestly? I get it. There's something genuinely strange about the way kindergartens spend weeks preparing for Mother's Day, social media floods with tributes and flower photos, and then Father's Day quietly comes and goes with barely a ripple. And I mean this sincerely: parents who love, nurture, sacrifice, and show up deserve to be recognized — regardless of gender.
Good fathers give their children so much — security, attention, love, stability. That deserves to be seen and celebrated.
But here's the part that tends to get left out of this conversation: mothers and fathers are still not held to the same social standards. Not just in May or June — but every single day of the year.
The invisible load that never gets talked about
We talk a lot about equal parenting these days. But in most families, mothers still carry the larger share of the invisible work — the kind that no one sees, no one praises, and no one thinks to celebrate.
She's the one who stays home when the child is sick. She rearranges her entire schedule to make the daycare pickup. She knows when the next vaccination is due, which yogurt her child will actually eat, which pediatrician has Thursday appointments, and when the school shoes stopped fitting.
She reads the parenting books. Books the appointments. Files the paperwork. Keeps track of the birthdays, the spare shoes, the outgrown trousers. She holds all of it in her head, all the time.
Of course, not every family looks like this. There are genuinely involved, equal fathers who are fully present in the daily grind of caregiving. But as a social pattern, that's still the exception — not the rule.
Why Mother's Day carries more weight — and why that's not an accident
Motherhood comes loaded with expectations from the moment a child is born. Actually, long before that. A mother is somehow supposed to be patient, present, emotionally available, health-conscious, creative, professionally successful, and physically put-together — all at once.
And whatever she does, someone will criticize her for it.
Work too much? Bad mother. Stay home? You're "just" a mum. Admit you're tired? Then why did you have children. Want an hour to yourself? Selfish. Can't braid hair or didn't bake homemade muffins for the school fair? Cue the sideways glances.
Meanwhile, we still live in a world where people practically melt with admiration when a dad takes his kid to the playground alone or does the grocery run with them in tow.
And to be clear: this isn't about blaming fathers. It's about acknowledging that the baseline social expectation placed on mothers is simply much higher. Fathers, meanwhile, are often praised for doing things that would never even register as noteworthy if a mother did them.
Equal celebration should follow equal responsibility
I find it hard not to notice the irony when the same people who spend all year treating the mother's management of family life as completely unremarkable suddenly become indignant in June that Father's Day isn't getting the same fanfare.
I absolutely believe fathers deserve the same recognition — when they share the same responsibilities. When they're equally present in the unglamorous, exhausting, daily work of caregiving, not just the fun parts.
But if we're being honest, I don't see nearly as many people fighting for that kind of equality as I see people upset about Father's Day greeting cards.
Maybe that's where the conversation should really start.
