STUDENT'S STUDY FINDS SURPRISING DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN MOTHER'S, FATHER'S DAYS

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass.—On average, Mother's Day celebrations last two hours longer than Father's Day celebrations, yet mothers tend to be less satisfied with their special day, according to a study comparing the two holidays that illuminates what society values in motherhood and fatherhood.

In "Flowers for Mom, a Tie for Dad: Doing Gender on Mother's and Father's Day," Nicole Gilbert, a graduate student in the department of psychology and education at Mount Holyoke College, interviewed 53 couples to learn how the two holidays are celebrated, and what those celebrations say about the expected roles of mothers and fathers.

What Gilbert found was that, in activities and the giving of gifts, families underscored the traditional notions of mothers as nurturers and fathers as providers, even when both parents work outside the home and advocate an equal division of domestic labor. Her study is one of few to compare the holidays.

Gilbert found that most of the ways Mother's Day is celebrated—taking Mom out to dinner, releasing her from household chores for the day, and visiting other family members—are tied to the traditional notions of mothers as parents and nurturers. Fathers, on the other hand, were less likely to be taken out to dinner or to visit family, and their gifts revolved around either work—neckties—or individualistic personal pursuits—golf clubs and fishing rods. Mothers were far more likely than fathers to report that household chores were done differently for the holiday. Her study found, too, that Mother's and Father's Day gifts are much more likely to be stereotypically masculine or feminine than the gifts given to those same mothers and fathers on their birthdays.

Disappointment was more common among mothers than fathers, with the cause usually family-centered: an inappropriate gift, a fight, a cranky child. "Clearly these mothers felt that their families were not fulfilling their expectations of how the day should be spent," Gilbert said.

Gilbert's work is grounded in the idea that "gender is not something you are, but something you do," and she notes that Mother's Day and Father's Day are rare among holidays because they are "occasions through which gender is created." The two holidays are events in which society's "normative conceptions of masculinity and femininity" play out in the family home, even among families that might disagree with those conceptions.

"It is true that Mother's and Father's Day interrupt our routine; however, I will argue that, instead of ridding people of 'everyday roles,' they are reminded of their positions as mothers and fathers and as a result may even behave more stereotypically on these two days than on nongendered occasions," Gilbert says. "I am certainly not arguing for a movement to abolish Mother's and Father's Day, but I am hoping that one day these celebrations will not be as gendered. Perhaps in the future when children think about gifts to give on these occasions they will not be so eager to give Mom flowers and Dad a tie."

Gilbert was advised by professor of psychology and education Francine M. Deutsch, the author of Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works (Harvard University Press, 1999), the result of her qualitative study focused on how couples transformed parental roles to create truly equal families.

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