May 8, 2013 • 32 mins
On Sunday, Americans will spend more than $16 billion dollars celebrating Mother's Day. Cristen and Caroline discuss why we treat moms to brunch and flowers every second Sunday in May, and why the founder of Mother's Day regretted how popular it became.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and happy upcoming Mother's Day to
all of our mother's listening and to my mother even
though she's not listening yet. Same here. Um. I was
(00:27):
so surprised that even though Stuff Mom Never Told You
has been in existence in podcast land since two thousand nine. Wow,
we've never done an episode on Mother's Day? Crazy, I know. So,
no time like the present, right, because Mother's Day is
right around the corner. And let's start with just a
(00:49):
snapshot of mother's day to day and then talk about
where Mother's Day came from, because it's fabulous. It's yeah,
really interesting origins and a really grumpy originator. Yes, So,
just to give you an idea of how big Mother's
Day is today. In two thousand eleven, in the United
States alone, spending was expected to reach sixteen point three
(01:14):
billion dollars, with the average adults spending more than a
hundred and forty dollars on gifts, according to the National
Retail Federation, which one forty dollars on gifts makes me
feel like a very cheap daughter. Yeah, I I go
big on her birthday and Christmas. Mother's Day is more like,
let's just get together. Yeah, more the more the quality
time kind of gift. Yeah. And two thirds of Americans
(01:37):
will celebrate Mother's Day with flowers, and more than thirty
percent will celebrate with jewelry. And I'm like, who are
these people who can afford to five jewelry? Maybe it's
like crafty jewelry that they get it a local shop,
like macaroni noodle bracelets. Right, as a twenty nine year old,
I'm sure I could do that for my mother and
she'd appreciate it. It is also, in addition to being
(01:57):
very popular for Flora's, it is the year's most popular
holiday for dining out. Because that's the whole thing about
Mother's Day. Don't let mom cook right, someone else cook
right one day off, lady. It won't be dad. Nope,
it's going to be somebody at a restaurant. Because about
seventy five million US adults were expected to dine out
in according to the National Restaurant Association. And what else
(02:20):
do we do her mom on Mother's Day? We give
her a card because you know, we want to let
someone else express some kind sentiment. It's the number three
holiday for card exchange, behind Christmas and Valentine's Day, according
to a Hallmark. And just to give you a hint
at how grumpy the Mother's Day founder was about all
(02:42):
of this stuff that we do for Mother's Day these days,
she once said, a printed card means nothing except that
you are too lazy to write to the woman who
has done more for you than anyone in the world.
And a Jarvist, founder of Mother's Day, thankes. I mean,
I guess I could break out the crayons and make
my own with construction paper, yeah, and stickers. Sally would
(03:07):
be super excited if I did that. She she kept
my baby teeth, so she'd probably keep a construction paper card.
You could work the baby into the card, or tape
them on or some kind of yes. Now, the US
is not the only country, of course, to celebrate Mother's Day.
Different countries around the world have their own forms of
(03:29):
Mother's Day celebrations. Yeah. On the Arab calendar, Mother's Day
falls on March one, to loosely come inside with the
start of spring. And in Panama it's on December eight,
when the Catholic Church honors the Virgin Mary August twelve
in Thailand is the birthday of Queen Syricit regarded as
the Mother of all ties, and that is when they
(03:50):
celebrate Mother's Day as well. Yeah, and there are a
number of countries that deem International Women's Day as their
default Mother's Day and do all sorts of nice things
for mother's and women alike. Now, for our British listeners, though,
Mothering Sunday is when it all goes down. This is
a centuries old celebration on the fourth Sunday of Lent,
(04:12):
and it began as a spring Sunday designated for people
to visit their area's main cathedral or mother church, which
led to family reunions, which led to the British version
of Mother's Day. In this Christian tradition was revived by
Constance Smith, who was inspired by Anna Jarvis, who started
(04:33):
Mother's Day in the United States. And one of the
traditions um associated with Mothering Sunday slash Mother's Day and
Britain is giving a simnal cake to your mom. And
Simnal cakes look delicious. They're a light fruit cake with
marzipan layer. Oh no, I think Marzapan is like it's
(04:59):
got to be the worst thing in the universe. I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But my mother, you know, I've said,
she flies to Germany and she'll bring me marzipan candy
from Germany, and it's like the most disappointing thing because
it's like, oh chocolate. Yeah, you bit into it, You're like,
oh god, it tastes like furniture polish. I've never had
marcy pan. A lot of people like it. I my
palate cannot handle the marzipan. Perhaps I should not make
(05:20):
my siminal cake from my mother. I don't want to
stop you. I'm just saying, maybe taste at first. All right, Well,
I have a feeling we're gonna get a lot of listener.
I'm sorry. No, it's okay to eat your own marzipan
or not. But let's get back to the United States
and to the origin of Mother's Day, which you can
(05:42):
also call a tale. Up to Anna's I coined that
I think I'm gonna write a book about it. Um
In eighteen sixty eight, Anna Jarvis the Elder organized a
Mother's Friendship Day in Grafton, West Virginia to reunite family
separated during the Civil War. It was not intended as
a celebration of your mother, but as a vehicle for
(06:03):
organized social and political action by all mothers. So it
wasn't so much like let's sit down and eat brunch
and talk about how awesome you are for raising me,
but it was like, you know, let's get together and
build our community. Jarvis and other women organized picnics and
other events to go along with Mother's Friendship Day as
pacifist events to unite former foes. And on top of this,
(06:26):
Anna Jarvis the Elder, who was a pacifist obviously and
an activist, also organized Mother's Work Days to improve sanitation
and prevent deaths from disease bearing insects and seepage of
polluted water. And her early Mother's Day work clubs also
tended to wounded soldiers of both sides during the Civil War,
(06:46):
and Mother's Day connections with war is going to come
up yet again. And another notable woman who helped kick
off this Mother's Day movement was Julia war How, whose
name might ring a bell because she wrote Battle Him
of the Republic, And in eighteen seventy two, that Boston poet,
(07:07):
pacifist and suffragist established a day for mothers and peace
not long after the Franco Prussian War. So from the
very beginning Mother's Day before it really crystallized when Anna
Jarvis the younger started it, it was really rooted in
peace efforts. Yeah. In eighteen seventy, Julia Ward Howe wrote
(07:29):
the Mother's Day proclamation. Shall I read a little bit
of it? We women of one country will be too
tender to those of another country to allow our sons
to be trained to injure theirs from the bosom of
a devastated earth. A voice goes up with our own.
It says, disarm, disarm. So good dramatic reading, thank you,
(07:50):
uh so, yeah, very pacifist ruth. And when Anna Jarvis
the elder dies, Anna Junior picks up the tour and
she decides that her mother obviously was quite a lady
and deserved some honor. Right. Anna Junior persuaded churches in
Grafton and Philadelphia to dedicate their services to mothers on
(08:13):
the second Sunday in May of nineteen o eight. And
she had really decided back a year before that a
special day was needed to honor mother's sacrifices. Um. It
was quickly adopted people, people got behind it relatively quickly
for a new holiday, and in nineteen fourteen President Woodrow
Wilson recognized Mother's Day. In the first decades of the holiday,
(08:37):
it was celebrated by a church service, and during a
church service, you'd wear carnations read from a mother who's
alive or white for one who has passed. They would
even hand out awards for the oldest or newest mothers
and for the mother of the most children. But Jarvis
really wanted it to be something personal where you celebrate
(08:58):
your mother, which is why Mother's Day is mother apostropheus,
not Mother's Apostrophe. Yeah. She clearly thought her mother was
wrong on that count. Let's not celebrate all. Let's just
celebrate ours, celebrate yours. Yeah, she you know, just something,
just a quiet day with your mom. And the reason
why it's in May, it's because she originally wanted it
(09:21):
to happen on her mom's birthday, I believe, But they
couldn't get together a special church service soon enough, so
they had to push it, and Father's Day lagged way
behind behind um. It was not officially recognized f Y
I until nineteen seventy two, when all Richard Nixon signed
it into law. People weren't pushing that quite as hard
(09:45):
as Mother's Day, but so, you know, we mentioned that it.
It gained a lot of traction early on and and
really picked up speed. But the evolution of Mother's Day
did not make Anna happy. She was horrified the rapid
commercialization of the holiday and spent years writing letters to
the President about how Mother's Day retailer should be stopped. Yeah.
(10:08):
One of the reasons why Mother's Day quickly became so
popular was because retailers were like, whoa, we just got
a new holiday that people are going to need to
buy a lot of things for. And Jarvis had none
of that. In for instance, she crashed a confectioner's convention
in Philadelphia, right, And two years later she crashed a
(10:29):
crushed the convention of the American War Mothers who used
Mother's Day to fundraise, and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Oh,
just disturbing the peace, pacifist woman, Oh dear um. And
in nine four she succeeded in keeping the Post Office
from using Mother's Day on a three cent stamp in
(10:50):
honor of the painting whistlers. Mother. I mean, Jarvis really
did not want Mother's Day going so big. Yeah, And
in ninety four she went so far as to distribute
thousands of celluloid flower buttons to churches and schools, asking
that they'd be sold or given away in the hope
that it would decrease the Mother's Day demand for fresh
cut flowers and reduce the floral industries profits. She was like,
(11:15):
you know, you were going to stay home, You're gonna
go to church, You're gonna gonna wear your car. Nation
are gonna sit around the table, and you're gonna tell
your mother how much you love her. And by God,
if you buy her anything, I will bring the wrath
of Anna Jarvis down on you if that card is
not homemade, my goodness. But the thing is, it's interesting
that it spun out of control in a way so quickly.
(11:39):
Why why did it catch on? Because you know, it's
just it's a holiday. I mean, it took until nineteen
seventy two for Father's Day to be officially recognized, but
all of a sudden, from nineteen o seven to you know,
a decade later, people are going wild about it. Well,
you know, we live in a big world, Christen. It
(12:00):
can be scary sometimes and when changes happen, people tend
to hold on to old things from the past that
make them feel comfortable, like their moms, right, literally, like
their moms. Not that moms are old things. Yes, we
don't mean to make anybody upset, but during this changing world,
(12:22):
Mother's Day appeal to profoundly conservative values around women's roles
in the family at a time when they're being challenged
by the new woman. This new woman who drank alcohol
and war makeup. Yeah, I mean that was flying directly
in the face of Victorian era cult of motherhood that
(12:43):
really built up a woman's entire identity in her role
as a mother. And lee Eric Schmidt, who wrote Consumer
Rights the Buying and Selling of American Holidays, wrote that
in the nineteen tens and twenties and often thereafter, Mother's
Day served as a kind of solace for many American Christians,
Protestants and Catholics alike who feared that that new womanhood
(13:06):
was threatening the very institution of motherhood, domesticity, and the family.
So basically, this was a way that you know, some
more conservative people saw to bring focus back to this
role of the woman in the home, taking care of
the kids in her rightful place they would say yeah.
(13:27):
And at the time, a lot of people were saying,
you know, this was as people were moving to cities,
clustering in in urban locations away from their families. And
at the time, in nineteen fifteen, Susan Tracy Rice in
her book get Ready for It Mother's Day it's history, origin, celebration, spirit,
and significance as related in pros and verse, so that
(13:47):
the holiday is needed because of the growing lack of
tender consideration for mothers among worldly minded, busy, grown up children.
So if that wasn't a guilt trip, I don't know
what was. Well. The ultimate irony with a lot of
this and and how it really gains team is that
even though it roots back to these women and their pacifism,
(14:11):
it's ultimately war propaganda in World War One that helps
launch it into this huge national thing. In World War One,
mothers were organizing for peace and they were not very
interested in helping the war effort. And this is something
historically with women, um, you know, being more active in
(14:32):
peace movements and especially moms who don't want to see
their children going off to war and possibly being killed.
But the government ended up using propaganda to show that
real mothers quote unquote knew the true love for their
country and their sons meant sacrificing their children. And in
nineteen eighteen, General Pershing said he wanted every soldier an
(14:52):
officer to write a letter home on Mother's Day to
quote carry back our courage and our affection onto the
patriotic women whose love and prayer inspire us and cheer
us on to victory, which I'm sure Anna Jarvis would have.
I don't even know what she would have. Should have
burned Pershing's house down or something and sprinkled it with
the celluloid flower button um, highly flammable. Yeah, they melt it,
(15:18):
would cover it in a weird coating anyway. Yeah, so
Mother's Day, you know, relatively new holiday. Father's Day did
not catch on as quickly. One holiday that people tried
to get instituted that ended up fizzling out was Parents Day,
and it's something that fizzled out and continued to fizzle
out throughout the twentieth century. Yeah, people have tried really
(15:40):
hard to Grandparents Day down our throats. Nope, we are
not having it for whatever reason. In the early nineteen twenties,
it's New York Radio personality. Robert Spiro, who I think
was called Uncle Bob, sponsored the first gathering, but it
ended up fizzling out after ninety nine when he retired
from Oregon. I sing it, and one of the big
(16:03):
reasons why Parents Day never caught on was because it
didn't have much support among retailers, because they're like, hey, listen,
we got Mother's Day and we're gonna have a Father's Day.
That's two days people have to buy things. If you
cram it in a one day, we lose some profits.
So they weren't having it, and it just never caught
on enough to become a true social movement. But Anna Jarvis,
(16:27):
oh yes, might have been one of the reasons why
Spiro kicked it off to begin with. Yeah, Spiro's New
York Committee for the Celebration of Mother's Day not Parents Day.
Mother's Day was prevented from sponsoring a Mother's Day parade
and meeting at the City College of New York. Why
because Anna Jarvis, the younger by then widely recognized as
(16:51):
the founder of Mother's Day and the president of the
Philadelphia based Mother's Day International Association, put a halt to
his festivity, saying that Spiro had no right to hold
a parade or even celebrate because it was her holiday.
Yeah it was, I mean, because she was seriously trying
to keep it from getting any bigger. And so Spirit
was like, oh, okay, you don't want me to have
(17:13):
this Mother's Day celebration, I'm gonna make my own holiday
called Parents Day. And he wasn't alone. Um. Henry Woodward
Hulbert had urged a Home Day in nineteen sixteen to
honor the whole family, and then the publisher of Parents Magazine,
George Hecked, pushed for Parents Day as well. Um and
(17:34):
back then, interestingly, for Parents Magazine, the readership was both
men and women. But when in Spiro started to step
down from organizing Parents Day, the Parents Magazine publisher ended
up citing more with Mother's Day because by that point
the readership was skewing female. Right, So what I really
(17:55):
got to do for circulation? Hecked? So the Parents Day
movement gain moment hi in the nineteen thirties after a
New York State assemblyman introduced a bill to establish the holiday.
But like we said, it just never gained traction. They
never got more than about twenty thousand people coming to
these big events in New York. And it's interesting to
look at whether it's an attack on mothers because at
(18:17):
different points in history, mothers have been accused of making
sons soft and for smothering their children. And oftentimes, like
around World War One, if soldiers weren't very successful, mothers
were blamed for, you know, making them too soft as
they grew up. The Parents Date campaign actually reached its
zenith during the Depression, when women were regularly blamed for
(18:39):
men's problems. Yeah. A lot of times, the high unemployment
among the guys was you know, blamed on women for
I guess, costing too much money, having too many children,
all those shoes. Yeah. Um. In a n one, Spiro
announced that the annual celebration of Parents Day would be
held in Central Park on Mother's Day on Spireau. Yeah,
(19:02):
he said, it's a reminder that both parents should be
honored and you shouldn't divide love and affection because it
weakens the home. You should honor both parents and even
how to slogan a kiss for mother, a hug for dad. Yeah.
But even though they had a catchy slogan and indecent
turnouts at Central Park. Um, it just like we said,
it never really caught on once he stepped down in
(19:24):
nine nine, the entire thing just sort of fizzled out. Notably,
President Clinton did declare the last Sunday in July two
be Parents Day, um, and he didn't use any kind
of gendered rhetoric. But again I don't I don't think
I've heard of anyone who celebrates parents Day. No. And
then it's it's just interesting to see how something that
(19:45):
seems so innocent, like a holiday where you celebrate your parents,
can be so political. Because they were with Clinton, who
didn't use any gender rhetoric, like we said, and you know,
made it a very inclusive holiday that you know, could
celebrate any number of types of families. And then George W.
Bush used a Parent's Day declaration to promote quote unquote
traditional families and all of the political hullabaloo that comes
along with that. So because by traditional you mean heterosexual
(20:10):
mom plus dead and right, it was definitely used as
a platform of sorts for his views. So I guess
we might as well just stick with Mother's Day and
Father's Day so that nobody gets angry. Now, I did
like how in the article for Bitch magazine called parent
trapped by Erica freak Or, she traces the history of
(20:30):
Mother's Day. She points out that in nineteen sixty, the
Society for the Appreciation and Preservation of Spouses, which that
sounds like a fun society, called for Mother's Day to
be moved to February and extended to a whole week.
I'm not sure why they wanted it to be in February.
I don't know if they were like, let's just coincide
it with Valentine's Day and take a week off when
(20:53):
it's cold anyway, but yeah, they were like, the husband
should do all of the chores that the that the
wife normally does during that week. Well, okay, that is
a great point about the whole thing of you know,
we celebrate Mother's Day by relinquishing her chore duty in
a lot of ways. And so there was a study
published in Gender Issues in two thousand and eight that
(21:13):
looked at how Mothers Day in Father's Day tend to
reinforce these traditional there's that word again, gender roles. Yeah,
on Mother's Day, families spent more time celebrating Mothers are
more likely to receive gifts than fathers to you on
Father's Day, and families are more likely to celebrate and
go out. But why is it more recognized? Perhaps they
(21:36):
write the greater importance placed on motherhood, or because of
the centrality of motherhood to women's identity, or maybe the
family perceives that mothers want more attention or are more
willing to accept and are even more appreciative of that
attention because they point out like you know, like like
I just said that idea that motherhood is central to
women's identity, but Father's Day isn't important and didn't catch
(21:58):
on it's fast because father their hood is not essential
to men's identities, right, And whereas Mother's Day is associated
with giving mom a day off from her chores, Father's
day is more associated with dad getting a day off
from work so that he can hang out with his kids, right,
or go fishing or whatever whatever it is that men do.
(22:19):
Who knows, um, But so, like you said, you know,
mothers are more likely to report they're relieved of chores
on the holiday, which is a good thing, right right,
kind of Well, it does highlight the fact that they
are normally the woman's responsibility. And then the whole eating
out thing you know we mentioned at the top of
the podcast that everybody goes out to eat on Mother's Day.
That just emphasized that the fact that cooking is again
(22:42):
part of this gendered identity as a mother. They also
point out the fact that maybe women aren't doing really
rewarding work around the home that they're being relieved from,
so it's They also point out that the routine nature
of women's daily chores might make it easier for someone
to take them on in her place for a day, like, Okay, well,
women can't take on men's work, but men can sure,
(23:06):
you know, load the dishwasher one night. Kristen wouldn't let him.
Y'all know how I'm particular about my dishwasher being organized.
It's sadly true. Um. But the sad thing was that
these researchers found was that mothers did not enjoy their
Mom's Say celebrations as much as dads did. And their
(23:27):
theory was that maybe it's because motherhood is still considered
the woman's primary identity and vocation, and mother's expectations might
be too high for this one magical day off, whereas,
like you said, the man's identity is not so closely
tied to whether or not he has kids, so he's
less invested in father's say it's like, oh, yeah, okay,
(23:49):
that's cool, And so his expectations might be a little
bit lower for that fishing trip or playing catch, or
working on the car, mowing the lawn, being sweaty. Hey,
brownie man. Anyway, So looking at chores, though traditional mothers
quote unquote traditional mothers who weren't relieved of chores on
Mother's Day, we're unhappier than those who were. Okay, makes sense.
(24:13):
But relief from chores did not affect quote unquote modern mothers.
And they write that it could be that traditional mothers
have a heavier chore burden to begin with, or the
chores are becoming less tied to the identities of non
traditional women, so the acknowledgement might be less important. It
might be like, we're all chipping in around the house.
(24:33):
It doesn't matter so much that you're filling the dishwasher
for a day. Yeah, And they and they used traditional
versus modern. These researchers did to delineate between women whose
work was really just central to the home and women
who worked more outside of the home. And they also
looked at um couples that were more egalitarian to see
(24:55):
if that had any influence on their the gendered aspects
of their Mother's versus Father's Day celebrations. And it really
didn't seem to make any difference. So what would Anna
Jarvis think about all this? If you leave the house
on Mother's Day for anything but church? No good, God
help you wonder she likes Seminal Cake and Marcy Pan
(25:18):
Marsy Pan. She probably thinks that Seminal Cake and Marzi
Pan is too happy, too indulgent. Yeah, it's tied to
too many bakery profits perhaps, um, but okay, so we
there's some people have some trouble with those, uh you know,
those those generals being just reinforced and reinforced every year
on Mother's Day and Father's Day. Although I gotta say,
(25:40):
if I had kids, I look forward to Mother's Day.
I look forward to any day that someone wants to
take me out for food. You know, yeah, I just
look forward to food in general. Speaking of a low expectations,
all you have to do is food in front of
my face, and I'm pretty happy about it. Just bring
me like a stack of sandwiches on crunchy bread. Leave
(26:04):
me alone. So you're you're a little more cut up
for Father's Day. Yeah, probably sounds like they're working on
the car. I'm working on the sandwich. But yeah, I'm sure.
And none of this is a call to end Mother's Day.
But it is fascinating to see how the holiday began
and how it's really saddened. It's founder and a Jarvis.
(26:24):
She would be horrified at the fact that it is
now a sixteen billion dollar holiday. Oh yeah, and she
would be so angry with me because I'm going to
go buy my mothers some flowers. I'm making the macaroni
pasta bracelet. I don't know what you're talking about, but
what do mothers want? Because the thing is Jarvis might
have been onto something about the whole not spending money
(26:47):
on mom because according to a poll conducted by Mother Company,
Yes that is a business. They found that what women
want for Mother's Day, it's just well behaved children. Yeah.
Of the women polled said well behaved kids is what
they wanted. Only three percent said they wanted to purchased
(27:09):
gift like roses, chocolate, or brunch. And I'm like, who
are you people buy me brunch any day of the
week for any meal. Yeah, they wanted the well behaved kids,
followed by time to themselves, a homemade card or then yeah,
the stuff that you can spend money on. So maybe
you should pay more attention to old Jarvis. I guess
I don't know. I'm looking at this. I think this
(27:31):
applies more to people with young children, because I know
my mother wants me to move back in with her,
like that's how much she wants me to be at
the house. So I don't think she wants more time
to herself on Mother's Day. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true.
I'm sure. I'm sure the the entire experience of Mother's
Day is much different when you when you have smaller
children in the house. Well, so let's hear from listeners
(27:53):
now about your best Mother's Day or maybe your worst.
What do you really want that you never get? Are you?
Are you in search of time to yourself, some quiet time?
Are you looking for reference alert? Are you looking for
like a Claire Huxtable room to yourself like what her
husband built her on the Cosby Show? Is that what
you want in your life? I would just like to
be friends with Claire Huxtable. Yeah, that would be a
(28:14):
good Mother's Day present. Brunch with Claire Huxtable for a
Mother's Day I'd be pretty cool. Well, right to us,
mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
send your emails. You can always Facebook us or tweet
us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And now back to our letters.
I have one here from Anne about our Administrative Assistants episode.
(28:39):
She says, Hello, Hello, Anne. I'm a fairly new fan
of your podcast, and after listening to your show on Secretaries,
I felt the need to chime in. My very first
grown up job out of college was as an executive
assistant at a local advertising website. So far, it has
been my only experience in a secretarial position, and so
far it has also been the only job where I
saw sexism in action. However, I feel like that particular
(29:02):
brand of sexism had more to do with the industry
I was working in nightlife advertising than with how I
was treated as not only the sole employee in a
secretarial position, but also the only female staff member for
at least half the time I was employed. There. Some
examples of the sort of sexism I ran into were
one time when my boss decided the winner of tickets
to a water park Memorial Day party by looking only
(29:24):
the female entrance up on Facebook and picking the one
who looked best in a swimsuit or how Answering the
office phone became my responsibility because the same boss said
it would be better to have a woman's voice answering
the phone. Apparently it was supposed to be more friendly.
There was also no shortage of clients asking for scantily clad,
busty ladies to adorn their event poster, many of which
(29:46):
I had to approve and pick up at the printers.
Though for the record, I never was asked to get
anybody coffee. So thanks for the story. Anne. Well, I've
got one here from Madison and she is studying in
Morocco right now. She's a gender studies major, and she writes,
I know this is digging way back into the past,
(30:07):
but I wanted to write you about your cat calling podcast.
I was really listening to it because I'm in Morocco
right now and the cat calls are out of control here.
It's a sign of masculinity to be able to cat
call in at least three languages, and men seem to
have nothing better to do than make some kind of
comment or just leer at you as you walk by.
I have been cat called as I walked through the market,
from bicycles, cars, while walking home, and once from a
(30:29):
dump truck by men of varying ages as in age
eight up to about sixty. Although it's predominantly young men
that do it, it has nothing to do with being Western.
It happens to Moroccan women as well. It really boils
down to women being second class citizens here. I've talked
to Moroccans about it, and if you have acknowledged that
it's wrong, and certainly none of the women appreciate it.
(30:50):
One man had the audacity to tell a room full
of women that he cat calls because women like it.
He however, did say that if someone cat calls his
sister or girlfriend, he thinks it's wrong. There's an interesting
disconnect here. We can in no way respond to the
street harassment here. That's just not done, and we are
more likely to get aggressive responses. This is also not
(31:11):
something that is a matter of public discourse, and it
has such deep rooted cultural ties that it's hardly thought
of as an issue. So thanks for writing in from
Morocco and um, yeah, I can imagine that that would
get very exhausting getting around there. Um. So thanks to
everyone too who has written into mom Stuff at Discovery
(31:34):
dot com. You can email us, you can find us
on Facebook, where we're up to all sorts of fun
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And last, it's certainly not least. You can watch us
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(31:54):
has a brand new YouTube channel. It's YouTube dot com
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you should check out our podcasting pills Josh and Chuck
from Stuff You Should Know because they're on YouTube as well.
They're at YouTube dot com slash stuff You Should Know.
So lots to do. Check us all out, and if
(32:15):
you still have time, head over to our website, it's
how stuff Works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and happy upcoming Mother's Day to
all of our mother's listening and to my mother even
though she's not listening yet. Same here. Um. I was
(00:27):
so surprised that even though Stuff Mom Never Told You
has been in existence in podcast land since two thousand nine. Wow,
we've never done an episode on Mother's Day? Crazy, I know. So,
no time like the present, right, because Mother's Day is
right around the corner. And let's start with just a
(00:49):
snapshot of mother's day to day and then talk about
where Mother's Day came from, because it's fabulous. It's yeah,
really interesting origins and a really grumpy originator. Yes, So,
just to give you an idea of how big Mother's
Day is today. In two thousand eleven, in the United
States alone, spending was expected to reach sixteen point three
(01:14):
billion dollars, with the average adults spending more than a
hundred and forty dollars on gifts, according to the National
Retail Federation, which one forty dollars on gifts makes me
feel like a very cheap daughter. Yeah, I I go
big on her birthday and Christmas. Mother's Day is more like,
let's just get together. Yeah, more the more the quality
time kind of gift. Yeah. And two thirds of Americans
(01:37):
will celebrate Mother's Day with flowers, and more than thirty
percent will celebrate with jewelry. And I'm like, who are
these people who can afford to five jewelry? Maybe it's
like crafty jewelry that they get it a local shop,
like macaroni noodle bracelets. Right, as a twenty nine year old,
I'm sure I could do that for my mother and
she'd appreciate it. It is also, in addition to being
(01:57):
very popular for Flora's, it is the year's most popular
holiday for dining out. Because that's the whole thing about
Mother's Day. Don't let mom cook right, someone else cook
right one day off, lady. It won't be dad. Nope,
it's going to be somebody at a restaurant. Because about
seventy five million US adults were expected to dine out
in according to the National Restaurant Association. And what else
(02:20):
do we do her mom on Mother's Day? We give
her a card because you know, we want to let
someone else express some kind sentiment. It's the number three
holiday for card exchange, behind Christmas and Valentine's Day, according
to a Hallmark. And just to give you a hint
at how grumpy the Mother's Day founder was about all
(02:42):
of this stuff that we do for Mother's Day these days,
she once said, a printed card means nothing except that
you are too lazy to write to the woman who
has done more for you than anyone in the world.
And a Jarvist, founder of Mother's Day, thankes. I mean,
I guess I could break out the crayons and make
my own with construction paper, yeah, and stickers. Sally would
(03:07):
be super excited if I did that. She she kept
my baby teeth, so she'd probably keep a construction paper card.
You could work the baby into the card, or tape
them on or some kind of yes. Now, the US
is not the only country, of course, to celebrate Mother's Day.
Different countries around the world have their own forms of
(03:29):
Mother's Day celebrations. Yeah. On the Arab calendar, Mother's Day
falls on March one, to loosely come inside with the
start of spring. And in Panama it's on December eight,
when the Catholic Church honors the Virgin Mary August twelve
in Thailand is the birthday of Queen Syricit regarded as
the Mother of all ties, and that is when they
(03:50):
celebrate Mother's Day as well. Yeah, and there are a
number of countries that deem International Women's Day as their
default Mother's Day and do all sorts of nice things
for mother's and women alike. Now, for our British listeners, though,
Mothering Sunday is when it all goes down. This is
a centuries old celebration on the fourth Sunday of Lent,
(04:12):
and it began as a spring Sunday designated for people
to visit their area's main cathedral or mother church, which
led to family reunions, which led to the British version
of Mother's Day. In this Christian tradition was revived by
Constance Smith, who was inspired by Anna Jarvis, who started
(04:33):
Mother's Day in the United States. And one of the
traditions um associated with Mothering Sunday slash Mother's Day and
Britain is giving a simnal cake to your mom. And
Simnal cakes look delicious. They're a light fruit cake with
marzipan layer. Oh no, I think Marzapan is like it's
(04:59):
got to be the worst thing in the universe. I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But my mother, you know, I've said,
she flies to Germany and she'll bring me marzipan candy
from Germany, and it's like the most disappointing thing because
it's like, oh chocolate. Yeah, you bit into it, You're like,
oh god, it tastes like furniture polish. I've never had
marcy pan. A lot of people like it. I my
palate cannot handle the marzipan. Perhaps I should not make
(05:20):
my siminal cake from my mother. I don't want to
stop you. I'm just saying, maybe taste at first. All right, Well,
I have a feeling we're gonna get a lot of listener.
I'm sorry. No, it's okay to eat your own marzipan
or not. But let's get back to the United States
and to the origin of Mother's Day, which you can
(05:42):
also call a tale. Up to Anna's I coined that
I think I'm gonna write a book about it. Um
In eighteen sixty eight, Anna Jarvis the Elder organized a
Mother's Friendship Day in Grafton, West Virginia to reunite family
separated during the Civil War. It was not intended as
a celebration of your mother, but as a vehicle for
(06:03):
organized social and political action by all mothers. So it
wasn't so much like let's sit down and eat brunch
and talk about how awesome you are for raising me,
but it was like, you know, let's get together and
build our community. Jarvis and other women organized picnics and
other events to go along with Mother's Friendship Day as
pacifist events to unite former foes. And on top of this,
(06:26):
Anna Jarvis the Elder, who was a pacifist obviously and
an activist, also organized Mother's Work Days to improve sanitation
and prevent deaths from disease bearing insects and seepage of
polluted water. And her early Mother's Day work clubs also
tended to wounded soldiers of both sides during the Civil War,
(06:46):
and Mother's Day connections with war is going to come
up yet again. And another notable woman who helped kick
off this Mother's Day movement was Julia war How, whose
name might ring a bell because she wrote Battle Him
of the Republic, And in eighteen seventy two, that Boston poet,
(07:07):
pacifist and suffragist established a day for mothers and peace
not long after the Franco Prussian War. So from the
very beginning Mother's Day before it really crystallized when Anna
Jarvis the younger started it, it was really rooted in
peace efforts. Yeah. In eighteen seventy, Julia Ward Howe wrote
(07:29):
the Mother's Day proclamation. Shall I read a little bit
of it? We women of one country will be too
tender to those of another country to allow our sons
to be trained to injure theirs from the bosom of
a devastated earth. A voice goes up with our own.
It says, disarm, disarm. So good dramatic reading, thank you,
(07:50):
uh so, yeah, very pacifist ruth. And when Anna Jarvis
the elder dies, Anna Junior picks up the tour and
she decides that her mother obviously was quite a lady
and deserved some honor. Right. Anna Junior persuaded churches in
Grafton and Philadelphia to dedicate their services to mothers on
(08:13):
the second Sunday in May of nineteen o eight. And
she had really decided back a year before that a
special day was needed to honor mother's sacrifices. Um. It
was quickly adopted people, people got behind it relatively quickly
for a new holiday, and in nineteen fourteen President Woodrow
Wilson recognized Mother's Day. In the first decades of the holiday,
(08:37):
it was celebrated by a church service, and during a
church service, you'd wear carnations read from a mother who's
alive or white for one who has passed. They would
even hand out awards for the oldest or newest mothers
and for the mother of the most children. But Jarvis
really wanted it to be something personal where you celebrate
(08:58):
your mother, which is why Mother's Day is mother apostropheus,
not Mother's Apostrophe. Yeah. She clearly thought her mother was
wrong on that count. Let's not celebrate all. Let's just
celebrate ours, celebrate yours. Yeah, she you know, just something,
just a quiet day with your mom. And the reason
why it's in May, it's because she originally wanted it
(09:21):
to happen on her mom's birthday, I believe, But they
couldn't get together a special church service soon enough, so
they had to push it, and Father's Day lagged way
behind behind um. It was not officially recognized f Y
I until nineteen seventy two, when all Richard Nixon signed
it into law. People weren't pushing that quite as hard
(09:45):
as Mother's Day, but so, you know, we mentioned that it.
It gained a lot of traction early on and and
really picked up speed. But the evolution of Mother's Day
did not make Anna happy. She was horrified the rapid
commercialization of the holiday and spent years writing letters to
the President about how Mother's Day retailer should be stopped. Yeah.
(10:08):
One of the reasons why Mother's Day quickly became so
popular was because retailers were like, whoa, we just got
a new holiday that people are going to need to
buy a lot of things for. And Jarvis had none
of that. In for instance, she crashed a confectioner's convention
in Philadelphia, right, And two years later she crashed a
(10:29):
crushed the convention of the American War Mothers who used
Mother's Day to fundraise, and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Oh,
just disturbing the peace, pacifist woman, Oh dear um. And
in nine four she succeeded in keeping the Post Office
from using Mother's Day on a three cent stamp in
(10:50):
honor of the painting whistlers. Mother. I mean, Jarvis really
did not want Mother's Day going so big. Yeah, And
in ninety four she went so far as to distribute
thousands of celluloid flower buttons to churches and schools, asking
that they'd be sold or given away in the hope
that it would decrease the Mother's Day demand for fresh
cut flowers and reduce the floral industries profits. She was like,
(11:15):
you know, you were going to stay home, You're gonna
go to church, You're gonna gonna wear your car. Nation
are gonna sit around the table, and you're gonna tell
your mother how much you love her. And by God,
if you buy her anything, I will bring the wrath
of Anna Jarvis down on you if that card is
not homemade, my goodness. But the thing is, it's interesting
that it spun out of control in a way so quickly.
(11:39):
Why why did it catch on? Because you know, it's
just it's a holiday. I mean, it took until nineteen
seventy two for Father's Day to be officially recognized, but
all of a sudden, from nineteen o seven to you know,
a decade later, people are going wild about it. Well,
you know, we live in a big world, Christen. It
(12:00):
can be scary sometimes and when changes happen, people tend
to hold on to old things from the past that
make them feel comfortable, like their moms, right, literally, like
their moms. Not that moms are old things. Yes, we
don't mean to make anybody upset, but during this changing world,
(12:22):
Mother's Day appeal to profoundly conservative values around women's roles
in the family at a time when they're being challenged
by the new woman. This new woman who drank alcohol
and war makeup. Yeah, I mean that was flying directly
in the face of Victorian era cult of motherhood that
(12:43):
really built up a woman's entire identity in her role
as a mother. And lee Eric Schmidt, who wrote Consumer
Rights the Buying and Selling of American Holidays, wrote that
in the nineteen tens and twenties and often thereafter, Mother's
Day served as a kind of solace for many American Christians,
Protestants and Catholics alike who feared that that new womanhood
(13:06):
was threatening the very institution of motherhood, domesticity, and the family.
So basically, this was a way that you know, some
more conservative people saw to bring focus back to this
role of the woman in the home, taking care of
the kids in her rightful place they would say yeah.
(13:27):
And at the time, a lot of people were saying,
you know, this was as people were moving to cities,
clustering in in urban locations away from their families. And
at the time, in nineteen fifteen, Susan Tracy Rice in
her book get Ready for It Mother's Day it's history, origin, celebration, spirit,
and significance as related in pros and verse, so that
(13:47):
the holiday is needed because of the growing lack of
tender consideration for mothers among worldly minded, busy, grown up children.
So if that wasn't a guilt trip, I don't know
what was. Well. The ultimate irony with a lot of
this and and how it really gains team is that
even though it roots back to these women and their pacifism,
(14:11):
it's ultimately war propaganda in World War One that helps
launch it into this huge national thing. In World War One,
mothers were organizing for peace and they were not very
interested in helping the war effort. And this is something
historically with women, um, you know, being more active in
(14:32):
peace movements and especially moms who don't want to see
their children going off to war and possibly being killed.
But the government ended up using propaganda to show that
real mothers quote unquote knew the true love for their
country and their sons meant sacrificing their children. And in
nineteen eighteen, General Pershing said he wanted every soldier an
(14:52):
officer to write a letter home on Mother's Day to
quote carry back our courage and our affection onto the
patriotic women whose love and prayer inspire us and cheer
us on to victory, which I'm sure Anna Jarvis would have.
I don't even know what she would have. Should have
burned Pershing's house down or something and sprinkled it with
the celluloid flower button um, highly flammable. Yeah, they melt it,
(15:18):
would cover it in a weird coating anyway. Yeah, so
Mother's Day, you know, relatively new holiday. Father's Day did
not catch on as quickly. One holiday that people tried
to get instituted that ended up fizzling out was Parents Day,
and it's something that fizzled out and continued to fizzle
out throughout the twentieth century. Yeah, people have tried really
(15:40):
hard to Grandparents Day down our throats. Nope, we are
not having it for whatever reason. In the early nineteen twenties,
it's New York Radio personality. Robert Spiro, who I think
was called Uncle Bob, sponsored the first gathering, but it
ended up fizzling out after ninety nine when he retired
from Oregon. I sing it, and one of the big
(16:03):
reasons why Parents Day never caught on was because it
didn't have much support among retailers, because they're like, hey, listen,
we got Mother's Day and we're gonna have a Father's Day.
That's two days people have to buy things. If you
cram it in a one day, we lose some profits.
So they weren't having it, and it just never caught
on enough to become a true social movement. But Anna Jarvis,
(16:27):
oh yes, might have been one of the reasons why
Spiro kicked it off to begin with. Yeah, Spiro's New
York Committee for the Celebration of Mother's Day not Parents Day.
Mother's Day was prevented from sponsoring a Mother's Day parade
and meeting at the City College of New York. Why
because Anna Jarvis, the younger by then widely recognized as
(16:51):
the founder of Mother's Day and the president of the
Philadelphia based Mother's Day International Association, put a halt to
his festivity, saying that Spiro had no right to hold
a parade or even celebrate because it was her holiday.
Yeah it was, I mean, because she was seriously trying
to keep it from getting any bigger. And so Spirit
was like, oh, okay, you don't want me to have
(17:13):
this Mother's Day celebration, I'm gonna make my own holiday
called Parents Day. And he wasn't alone. Um. Henry Woodward
Hulbert had urged a Home Day in nineteen sixteen to
honor the whole family, and then the publisher of Parents Magazine,
George Hecked, pushed for Parents Day as well. Um and
(17:34):
back then, interestingly, for Parents Magazine, the readership was both
men and women. But when in Spiro started to step
down from organizing Parents Day, the Parents Magazine publisher ended
up citing more with Mother's Day because by that point
the readership was skewing female. Right, So what I really
(17:55):
got to do for circulation? Hecked? So the Parents Day
movement gain moment hi in the nineteen thirties after a
New York State assemblyman introduced a bill to establish the holiday.
But like we said, it just never gained traction. They
never got more than about twenty thousand people coming to
these big events in New York. And it's interesting to
look at whether it's an attack on mothers because at
(18:17):
different points in history, mothers have been accused of making
sons soft and for smothering their children. And oftentimes, like
around World War One, if soldiers weren't very successful, mothers
were blamed for, you know, making them too soft as
they grew up. The Parents Date campaign actually reached its
zenith during the Depression, when women were regularly blamed for
(18:39):
men's problems. Yeah. A lot of times, the high unemployment
among the guys was you know, blamed on women for
I guess, costing too much money, having too many children,
all those shoes. Yeah. Um. In a n one, Spiro
announced that the annual celebration of Parents Day would be
held in Central Park on Mother's Day on Spireau. Yeah,
(19:02):
he said, it's a reminder that both parents should be
honored and you shouldn't divide love and affection because it
weakens the home. You should honor both parents and even
how to slogan a kiss for mother, a hug for dad. Yeah.
But even though they had a catchy slogan and indecent
turnouts at Central Park. Um, it just like we said,
it never really caught on once he stepped down in
(19:24):
nine nine, the entire thing just sort of fizzled out. Notably,
President Clinton did declare the last Sunday in July two
be Parents Day, um, and he didn't use any kind
of gendered rhetoric. But again I don't I don't think
I've heard of anyone who celebrates parents Day. No. And
then it's it's just interesting to see how something that
(19:45):
seems so innocent, like a holiday where you celebrate your parents,
can be so political. Because they were with Clinton, who
didn't use any gender rhetoric, like we said, and you know,
made it a very inclusive holiday that you know, could
celebrate any number of types of families. And then George W.
Bush used a Parent's Day declaration to promote quote unquote
traditional families and all of the political hullabaloo that comes
along with that. So because by traditional you mean heterosexual
(20:10):
mom plus dead and right, it was definitely used as
a platform of sorts for his views. So I guess
we might as well just stick with Mother's Day and
Father's Day so that nobody gets angry. Now, I did
like how in the article for Bitch magazine called parent
trapped by Erica freak Or, she traces the history of
(20:30):
Mother's Day. She points out that in nineteen sixty, the
Society for the Appreciation and Preservation of Spouses, which that
sounds like a fun society, called for Mother's Day to
be moved to February and extended to a whole week.
I'm not sure why they wanted it to be in February.
I don't know if they were like, let's just coincide
it with Valentine's Day and take a week off when
(20:53):
it's cold anyway, but yeah, they were like, the husband
should do all of the chores that the that the
wife normally does during that week. Well, okay, that is
a great point about the whole thing of you know,
we celebrate Mother's Day by relinquishing her chore duty in
a lot of ways. And so there was a study
published in Gender Issues in two thousand and eight that
(21:13):
looked at how Mothers Day in Father's Day tend to
reinforce these traditional there's that word again, gender roles. Yeah,
on Mother's Day, families spent more time celebrating Mothers are
more likely to receive gifts than fathers to you on
Father's Day, and families are more likely to celebrate and
go out. But why is it more recognized? Perhaps they
(21:36):
write the greater importance placed on motherhood, or because of
the centrality of motherhood to women's identity, or maybe the
family perceives that mothers want more attention or are more
willing to accept and are even more appreciative of that
attention because they point out like you know, like like
I just said that idea that motherhood is central to
women's identity, but Father's Day isn't important and didn't catch
(21:58):
on it's fast because father their hood is not essential
to men's identities, right, And whereas Mother's Day is associated
with giving mom a day off from her chores, Father's
day is more associated with dad getting a day off
from work so that he can hang out with his kids, right,
or go fishing or whatever whatever it is that men do.
(22:19):
Who knows, um, But so, like you said, you know,
mothers are more likely to report they're relieved of chores
on the holiday, which is a good thing, right right,
kind of Well, it does highlight the fact that they
are normally the woman's responsibility. And then the whole eating
out thing you know we mentioned at the top of
the podcast that everybody goes out to eat on Mother's Day.
That just emphasized that the fact that cooking is again
(22:42):
part of this gendered identity as a mother. They also
point out the fact that maybe women aren't doing really
rewarding work around the home that they're being relieved from,
so it's They also point out that the routine nature
of women's daily chores might make it easier for someone
to take them on in her place for a day, like, Okay, well,
women can't take on men's work, but men can sure,
(23:06):
you know, load the dishwasher one night. Kristen wouldn't let him.
Y'all know how I'm particular about my dishwasher being organized.
It's sadly true. Um. But the sad thing was that
these researchers found was that mothers did not enjoy their
Mom's Say celebrations as much as dads did. And their
(23:27):
theory was that maybe it's because motherhood is still considered
the woman's primary identity and vocation, and mother's expectations might
be too high for this one magical day off, whereas,
like you said, the man's identity is not so closely
tied to whether or not he has kids, so he's
less invested in father's say it's like, oh, yeah, okay,
(23:49):
that's cool, And so his expectations might be a little
bit lower for that fishing trip or playing catch, or
working on the car, mowing the lawn, being sweaty. Hey,
brownie man. Anyway, So looking at chores, though traditional mothers
quote unquote traditional mothers who weren't relieved of chores on
Mother's Day, we're unhappier than those who were. Okay, makes sense.
(24:13):
But relief from chores did not affect quote unquote modern mothers.
And they write that it could be that traditional mothers
have a heavier chore burden to begin with, or the
chores are becoming less tied to the identities of non
traditional women, so the acknowledgement might be less important. It
might be like, we're all chipping in around the house.
(24:33):
It doesn't matter so much that you're filling the dishwasher
for a day. Yeah, And they and they used traditional
versus modern. These researchers did to delineate between women whose
work was really just central to the home and women
who worked more outside of the home. And they also
looked at um couples that were more egalitarian to see
(24:55):
if that had any influence on their the gendered aspects
of their Mother's versus Father's Day celebrations. And it really
didn't seem to make any difference. So what would Anna
Jarvis think about all this? If you leave the house
on Mother's Day for anything but church? No good, God
help you wonder she likes Seminal Cake and Marcy Pan
(25:18):
Marsy Pan. She probably thinks that Seminal Cake and Marzi
Pan is too happy, too indulgent. Yeah, it's tied to
too many bakery profits perhaps, um, but okay, so we
there's some people have some trouble with those, uh you know,
those those generals being just reinforced and reinforced every year
on Mother's Day and Father's Day. Although I gotta say,
(25:40):
if I had kids, I look forward to Mother's Day.
I look forward to any day that someone wants to
take me out for food. You know, yeah, I just
look forward to food in general. Speaking of a low expectations,
all you have to do is food in front of
my face, and I'm pretty happy about it. Just bring
me like a stack of sandwiches on crunchy bread. Leave
(26:04):
me alone. So you're you're a little more cut up
for Father's Day. Yeah, probably sounds like they're working on
the car. I'm working on the sandwich. But yeah, I'm sure.
And none of this is a call to end Mother's Day.
But it is fascinating to see how the holiday began
and how it's really saddened. It's founder and a Jarvis.
(26:24):
She would be horrified at the fact that it is
now a sixteen billion dollar holiday. Oh yeah, and she
would be so angry with me because I'm going to
go buy my mothers some flowers. I'm making the macaroni
pasta bracelet. I don't know what you're talking about, but
what do mothers want? Because the thing is Jarvis might
have been onto something about the whole not spending money
(26:47):
on mom because according to a poll conducted by Mother Company,
Yes that is a business. They found that what women
want for Mother's Day, it's just well behaved children. Yeah.
Of the women polled said well behaved kids is what
they wanted. Only three percent said they wanted to purchased
(27:09):
gift like roses, chocolate, or brunch. And I'm like, who
are you people buy me brunch any day of the
week for any meal. Yeah, they wanted the well behaved kids,
followed by time to themselves, a homemade card or then yeah,
the stuff that you can spend money on. So maybe
you should pay more attention to old Jarvis. I guess
I don't know. I'm looking at this. I think this
(27:31):
applies more to people with young children, because I know
my mother wants me to move back in with her,
like that's how much she wants me to be at
the house. So I don't think she wants more time
to herself on Mother's Day. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true.
I'm sure. I'm sure the the entire experience of Mother's
Day is much different when you when you have smaller
children in the house. Well, so let's hear from listeners
(27:53):
now about your best Mother's Day or maybe your worst.
What do you really want that you never get? Are you?
Are you in search of time to yourself, some quiet time?
Are you looking for reference alert? Are you looking for
like a Claire Huxtable room to yourself like what her
husband built her on the Cosby Show? Is that what
you want in your life? I would just like to
be friends with Claire Huxtable. Yeah, that would be a
(28:14):
good Mother's Day present. Brunch with Claire Huxtable for a
Mother's Day I'd be pretty cool. Well, right to us,
mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can
send your emails. You can always Facebook us or tweet
us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And now back to our letters.
I have one here from Anne about our Administrative Assistants episode.
(28:39):
She says, Hello, Hello, Anne. I'm a fairly new fan
of your podcast, and after listening to your show on Secretaries,
I felt the need to chime in. My very first
grown up job out of college was as an executive
assistant at a local advertising website. So far, it has
been my only experience in a secretarial position, and so
far it has also been the only job where I
saw sexism in action. However, I feel like that particular
(29:02):
brand of sexism had more to do with the industry
I was working in nightlife advertising than with how I
was treated as not only the sole employee in a
secretarial position, but also the only female staff member for
at least half the time I was employed. There. Some
examples of the sort of sexism I ran into were
one time when my boss decided the winner of tickets
to a water park Memorial Day party by looking only
(29:24):
the female entrance up on Facebook and picking the one
who looked best in a swimsuit or how Answering the
office phone became my responsibility because the same boss said
it would be better to have a woman's voice answering
the phone. Apparently it was supposed to be more friendly.
There was also no shortage of clients asking for scantily clad,
busty ladies to adorn their event poster, many of which
(29:46):
I had to approve and pick up at the printers.
Though for the record, I never was asked to get
anybody coffee. So thanks for the story. Anne. Well, I've
got one here from Madison and she is studying in
Morocco right now. She's a gender studies major, and she writes,
I know this is digging way back into the past,
(30:07):
but I wanted to write you about your cat calling podcast.
I was really listening to it because I'm in Morocco
right now and the cat calls are out of control here.
It's a sign of masculinity to be able to cat
call in at least three languages, and men seem to
have nothing better to do than make some kind of
comment or just leer at you as you walk by.
I have been cat called as I walked through the market,
from bicycles, cars, while walking home, and once from a
(30:29):
dump truck by men of varying ages as in age
eight up to about sixty. Although it's predominantly young men
that do it, it has nothing to do with being Western.
It happens to Moroccan women as well. It really boils
down to women being second class citizens here. I've talked
to Moroccans about it, and if you have acknowledged that
it's wrong, and certainly none of the women appreciate it.
(30:50):
One man had the audacity to tell a room full
of women that he cat calls because women like it.
He however, did say that if someone cat calls his
sister or girlfriend, he thinks it's wrong. There's an interesting
disconnect here. We can in no way respond to the
street harassment here. That's just not done, and we are
more likely to get aggressive responses. This is also not
(31:11):
something that is a matter of public discourse, and it
has such deep rooted cultural ties that it's hardly thought
of as an issue. So thanks for writing in from
Morocco and um, yeah, I can imagine that that would
get very exhausting getting around there. Um. So thanks to
everyone too who has written into mom Stuff at Discovery
(31:34):
dot com. You can email us, you can find us
on Facebook, where we're up to all sorts of fun
things all the time. You can follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast. You can even find us on
tumbler Stuff I've Never Told You dot tumbler dot com.
And last, it's certainly not least. You can watch us
now on YouTube. That's right, Stuff I've Never Told You
(31:54):
has a brand new YouTube channel. It's YouTube dot com
slash stuff Mom Never Told You. And while you're at it,
you should check out our podcasting pills Josh and Chuck
from Stuff You Should Know because they're on YouTube as well.
They're at YouTube dot com slash stuff You Should Know.
So lots to do. Check us all out, and if
(32:15):
you still have time, head over to our website, it's
how stuff Works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is that how Stuff Works dot
com
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