The patriarchal holiday fantasy Is exhausting America’s mothers.
As Americans prep for the holidays and the time off from paid work that comes with them, I suspect many working moms are steeling ourselves for a season that feels anything but restful.
The weight of society’s expectations of working moms on a normal day is crushing. As the mother of two young children, an attorney fighting for due process for immigrants in the second Trump administration and a clinical law professor, I know this firsthand.
Over the holidays, with the added obligation that moms ensure our families experience a quintessential holiday season, this weight feels insurmountable. With school and daycare closed, we are not only required to care for our children, but also decorate the house; juggle work schedules and travel plans; navigate multiple families’ celebration preferences and visits; cook something fabulous; and look and smell good while doing it. Women are expected to break the glass ceiling, then quickly tidy up to protect their children’s bare feet from the shards.
The rising cost of childcare makes it difficult for mothers to devote the time necessary to excel in their careers while also ensuring their children are safe and well-cared for during the workday.
Even when childcare is secured, working women are never completely off-duty. Moms at work are more likely to be interrupted by schools, which default to calling full-time working moms over full-time working dads 60 percent of the time, a 2025 study found. Even when parents express that the dad is the more available parent, school muscle memory reverts to directing 28 percent of the calls to Mom.
Women are expected to break the glass ceiling, then quickly tidy up to protect their children’s bare feet from the shards.
Last week, when I attended an after-hours work event, a rare occasion for me, my husband forgot to pick up our kids from daycare. Whose phone do you think was first to ring? (For the record, my husband is a kind, selfless, feminist and a wonderful father. This anecdote, which I share with his permission, is less about his misstep and more about who’s assumed to be the default parent.)
Seventy percent of American working moms suffer from burnout. Female parents of children aged 0 to 17 years reported significant declines in self-reported mental health, a recent article in JAMA showed. Sociologists at the University of Melbourne argue that burnout leads to declining mental health among women and mothers, and that it is caused by the “mental load” they carry—not in the workplace, but in the home, the carpool line, the shower and even on the pillow.
The mental load is the emotional and cognitive labor that women exert every second of the day to keep their homes operational and their families thriving. This mental load is enormous yet invisible, amplifying the American fantasy that working moms can effortlessly have it all. Admittedly, shows like Canada’s Working Moms have started to provide a less shellacked version of motherhood. But despite more realistic representations of mothers in pop culture, our society seems to remain largely indifferent to professional mothers like me, who feel like we’re failing at each of our jobs.
The reality for working moms is rough, as shown by research from the Gender Equity Policy Institute.
- Women have 13 percent less free time than men.
- Among women aged 35 to 44, when careers and caregiving demands accelerate, that free-time deficit jumps to 23 percent.
Less free time means less space for ourselves. Less time for rest, exercise, hobbies or even basic self care. I am lucky if I manage to bathe twice a week. (Sadly, I’m not exaggerating.) The expectation that mothers can present ourselves as polished and composed is undermined by the simple math: We are spending nearly twice as much time on unpaid household labor and childcare as men, even when both we and our partners work full-time.
To be sure, the last 100 years have improved women’s standing in society dramatically. Indeed, a recent survey from the Pew Research Center demonstrated that the vast majority of people believe women are doing better in securing leadership positions in the workplace, landing well-paying jobs, and obtaining secondary degrees.
These perceptions are supported by facts: Women are significantly outperforming men in obtaining post-secondary degrees and their representation in the workforce has increased. However, women remain underrepresented at every rung of the corporate ladder. Those women who do attain high levels of professional success, often do so to the detriment of their mental health, as they are still burdened by the constant, exhausting, unacknowledged mental load required to keep trains on time at home.
… We are spending nearly twice as much time on unpaid household labor and childcare as men, even when both we and our partners work full-time.
Men are rarely asked, nor expected, to do it all at the same time; they are afforded compartmental spaces that should similarly be afforded to women. Despite immense progress in higher education and the workplace, women cannot escape the reality steeped in the patriarchal narrative that we are still held primarily responsible for childcare and homemaking, and the demands associated with each go into overdrive over the holidays.
We all have work to do to make this season (and every season) more enjoyable for all members of the family. Dads, you must grow to understand that even though you may be doing the work of wrapping a gift, we are working behind the scenes to thoughtfully match gifts with recipients and buy them early enough for timely delivery. Though you might be the one roasting the turkey, we are planning the menu, considering dietary restrictions, and coming up with backup foods that our children might actually eat. This holiday season, every mom deserves the gift of a true day off.
