Every year, my social media feeds are flooded with elaborate and emotive Mother’s Day status updates.
Photos of smiling mothers, heartfelt paragraphs of gratitude, and countless expressions of love with their kids.
It's as if suddenly, for one day, everyone’s mother is the most cherished person on the planet. Don’t get me wrong, celebrating our mothers is incredibly important, but there's a glaring hypocrisy in many of these posts that I just can’t ignore.
I know these kids. I see them every day, they are my friends, classmates, neighbors – and often, they are the same ones who treat their moms with a shocking lack of respect and appreciation for the other 364 days of the year.
The kids in question, only help around the house if coerced, but mostly, they contribute little to the daily grind that keeps the household running smoothly.
It’s frustrating, to say the least, to see someone gush about how much they love their mom in a carefully curated Instagram post or WhatsApp status update, complete with the perfect filter and sentimental hashtag, when I know they don’t lift a finger at home.
Honestly speaking, these are the same kids who leave their dirty dishes on the counter, ignore their moms' requests for help, and treat them as an afterthought.
It’s like a performance, a social media show designed to project an image of the perfect, loving child – but it’s all just a show, maybe for the likes and comments, or for whatever other unfathomable reason.
I guess what bothers me the most is the superficiality of it all! Social media has made it so easy to put on a facade, to show the world what we want it to see rather than what is real. It’s a form of virtue signaling, and in the case of Mother’s Day, it often rings hollow.
Genuine appreciation for our mothers should be shown through actions, not just words typed out on a screen once a year.
How many of these kids actually take the time to understand the sacrifices their mothers make? How many offer a hand with chores without being asked, or simply say a sincere thank you? Actions speak louder than words, yet the noise of these posts drowns out the silence of their inaction, or so they think. Mother knows all! Kids tend to ignore or forget that, as they don't see the pain and complication they rain on Mom with their demands and irrational actions.
I’m not saying that every social media post celebrating moms is disingenuous. Many truly are heartfelt, and some kids do back up their words with real, everyday respect and support, but it’s impossible to ignore the disconnect between online declarations of love and offline behaviors for so many.
Next Mother’s Day, I challenge everyone – myself included – to go beyond the post. Let’s show our moms how much we appreciate them in tangible ways. Help out around the house, spend quality time with them, listen to them, and show respect daily. Let’s make our gratitude a consistent practice, not just a yearly proclamation.
We need to do this because in the end, our mothers deserve more than just a pretty picture and a paragraph(if even that). They deserve our true, ongoing appreciation and support. Let’s strive to make every day a testament to how much we value them, not just Mother’s Day.
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