Today is Mother’s Day, the official one that comes just once a year, but it’s fair to say we owe every one of our days to mom.
So it’s no big surprise that on “mom’s special day,” as the ads often say, we show our gratitude.
For many moms, a simple call or visit would be fine — moms tend to be more into giving than receiving — but today’s the day when gratitude seems to go gargantuan.
If you deliberated over what to get mom for Mother’s Day, and then ended up just saying, “everything,” you’re not alone.
“Consumers plan to spend record $35.7 billion for Mother’s Day in 2023,” a giddy headline from the National Retail Federation said a few days ago. “Consumers plan to spend $274.02 per person, the highest in the history of the survey and up from the previous record high of $245.76 in 2022.”
Back in 2019, cheapskate kids were only spending a measly $196 apiece on Mother’s Day gifts, according to the National Retail Federation data. Yet that was a record then too.
The most popular gift categories are greeting cards, flowers and special outings. Dinner is always a big Mother’s Day celebration, and jewelry, flowers and electronics also are popular gifts.
And that is all well and good. But are those things that Mom really wants?
Every mom is different, of course, but there is plenty of evidence that says moms most want to feel a connection to their kids on Mother’s Day.
A survey done last year by Lending Tree lends credence to this idea.
“Despite their best intentions, adult children and spouses miss the mark with their gifting plans,” the survey tut-tutted. “Even though 32% of moms are hoping for the gift of quality time together, only 21% of consumers giving a Mother’s Day gift this year intend to provide that.”
A card was the only thing that slightly more moms said in that survey they wanted more than time with their children. A humble card, but again, that also is a personal connection. We must give the kids credit on this one — 57% of consumers said they plan to give their mom a card, showing on that score that most of them were raised right.
And speaking of that, it’s also quite likely that we are spending more on Mother’s Day these days because many of us have more than one person in our lives who we look up to and revere as a mother figure.
Moms aren’t always just those who brought us into this world; they also can be people we meet along the way who had a profound impact on us. They are those who teach us, guide us, nurture us, lead us, protect us and look out for us.
Moms don’t just pick us up when we fall. They dust us off and encourage us to try again, to do better, to keep at it. We can all learn a lot from the best moms.
Even so, somehow, the best moms also make mothering look easy.
It’s no wonder that we kids want to give mom more all the time. And honestly, we don’t blame people who break the bank for mom on Mother’s Day. Most of us can never fully repay our moms for all they’ve done for us.
Yet for most moms, the best gift we’ll be able to give her today is the same thing we’ve given her countless times: Simply saying, “Hi Mom.”
