By LISA BELKIN
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/what-i-dont-want-for-mothers-day/
The National Retail Federation tells us — surprise — that Mother’s Day spending is going the way of Christmas spending and most other spending this year, namely, down.
The group’s annual Mother’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey tells us that Americans will still spend more this Sunday ($14 billion) than we did on Easter, but less on Mom this year (an average of $123.89 per person) than we did last year (when we spent an average of $138.63).
What will we be buying? Flowers, of course (66.8 percent of us will spend a total of $1.9 billion). Lunch or dinner out (54.8 percent, spending $2.7 billion). Jewelry ($2.3 billion). Gift cards ($1.5 billion). Clothing and accessories ($1.2 billion). We will also be sending a lot of cards; the Greeting Card Association says this is their third biggest holiday, after Christmas and Valentine’s Day. We will also be making a good number of phone calls — it’s the number-one day of the year for that.
And how does Mom feel about our choices? Wishlist.com did a survey they called “Moms, What do you REALLY want?” and found that mothers would be fairly content with a family gathering (23 percent), dinner out (13 percent), jewelry (12 percent), flowers (12 percent) and some extra sleep (12 percent.) Of the 300 mothers who responded to the online poll, four percent said they “would love to receive a car, money or a weekend away,” according to the Web site, while “one mom requested a response from movie star Mel Gibson, to whom she claims to have written four times with no answer.” (Given his recent troubles, perhaps she should raise her sights a bit.)
Then the Web site got to the important part, and asked mothers to rank the WORST gifts they have gotten in the name of Mother’s Day. Household appliances were named by 11 percent, followed by cooking and cleaning supplies (7 percent), socks (6 percent) and clothes that didn’t fit (6 percent.) The top of the list though was “nothing” (16 percent). In other words, socks are better than nothing, but not by much.
This is the time of year when everyone who sells anything tries to position their wares as the perfect Mother’s Day gift. Suggestions from retailers have been filling my mailbox for weeks, and I read most of them with the thought “For pity’s sake, NOT for Mother’s Day.”
There was the pitch titled, “This Mother’s Day, Give the Gift of A Good Nights Sleep,” followed by a description of the Silent Snooz snore remedy. Yep, that will endear you to your wife or mother on this warm and fuzzy day.
And there was this suggestion made by columnist Terry Savage of the Chicago Sun-Times, who urged readers last week to join with their siblings and chip in “for a Long Term Care Insurance policy for your mom – and one for your dad, which you can present of Father’s Day next month.”
Yes, long-term care insurance is important. And would be a wonderful thing to talk to Mom about on a random Tuesday afternoon. But go down this road this Sunday and you might well find your gift immortalized on a poll next year, ranked somewhere lower than socks. As long as we are pretending that Mother’s Day is about more than merely selling greeting cards, let’s use it to say “thank you,” not “someday you might well be a burden to your family, so we bought you this insurance policy.”
What do I want for Mother’s Day?
To have someone else cook dinner. To get hugs from my boys — even the youngest who doesn’t like giving them so much anymore. And to take a long afternoon nap — without anyone noting whether or not I snore.
