The Terrible Stereotypes of Mother’s and Father’s Day Cards
In the lead-up to Mother’s and Father’s Day, the greeting-card aisle presents doors to two alternate universes. One is a wonderland of blooming flora and boats bobbing on tranquil lakes, where grateful baby animals snuggle their protective parents and everyone speaks in heartfelt but generic verse. The other is a cartoon dystopia where crudely drawn characters live out a stereotypical parenting farce. Here, every child is an unmanageable hellion or a perfect angel, mothers are chore-obsessed disciplinarians who must physically hide from the endless demands of their mob of loin-fruit, and fathers are … off golfing. Or grilling. Or on the toilet. It’s basically Family Circus, but with more fart jokes and everybody’s constantly drinking because they hate their kids so much. But in a funny way.
In the week before each parental holiday this year, I visited my local Target and CVS to sample the cards on offer. While there were a few that had expansive notions of mothers’ and fathers’ responsibilities, for the most part, the themes and symbols of both sentimental and funny cards reflected a stark division of gender roles in parenting: In card-world, mothers do everything, and fathers are an afterthought.
The messaging isn’t subtle, either. Some cards are very clear about which parent is considered more important. “Happy Mother’s Day to; it wasn’t that President Nixon made Father’s Day official.)
