May 10th arrives, and every mother receives gifts and chocolates from everyone, not just their children, because Mother’s Day has become a symbol. They receive congratulations for being so strong, for taking such good care of their loved ones, and for enduring so much. But now it’s May 15th, and everyone seems to forget that this special day has passed, leaving one lingering question: : who supports mothers beyond symbolic dates?
On commemorative dates the world celebrates. But when disturbing and alarming data is released, nobody seems to care. For example: postpartum depression affects about 25% of Brazilian mothers in the period of six to 18 months after the birth of the baby, and more than 11 million mothers are taking care of their children alone in Brazil, a growth of 17.8% between 2012 and 2022.
The Reality Behind Motherhood
Mother’s Day is a very symbolic date, often portrayed as a magical and perfect for all mothers; however, many mothers face loneliness, overload, and lack of support on a daily basis.
Before fatigue sets in the mother’s body, before sleepless nights accumulate, before the endless crying, there is already an expectation firmly placed on mothers: the expectation that they will handle everything. And handle it well. With love. Gracefully. Without complaint.
This is just the beginning of the romanticization of motherhood. In research for the academic journal from USP (University of São Paulo), a researcher explains that: women are taught from a very young age to care for others, and the idealization of pregnancy, birth, the postpartum period, and child-rearing, all wrapped in the promise of happiness, creates the conditions for profound psychological suffering when reality fails to match the fantasy. The consequences are not abstract. The same article also identified that the romanticization of pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, and raising a child is directly related to the development of psychological disorders in the mother, and that includes depression, anxiety, extreme guilt, etc.
Maternal guilt operates in small moments: the mother who could not breastfeed and felt she had failed her child; the one who cried alongside her newborn, unable to explain why.
Data from IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) confirms what many women already know in their bodies: in Brazil, being a woman adds, on average, ten hours per week to domestic and care work compared to men. In 2022, women dedicated 21 hours and 36 minutes weekly to unpaid household tasks; men, 11 hours and 48 minutes. The difference is not merely statistical — it is the daily structure of a life in which rest, ambition, and personhood are perpetually deferred.
Inequality of care responsibility
When a child is born, two parents exist. However, data and everyday reality show that only one parent takes charge of everything: taking the child to school, helping with homework, organizing routines…
This is not an accident. It’s structural. The sexual division of labor has historically assigned caregiving to women as something “natural” – which makes the problem invisible because it seems normal. 92.1% of women aged 14 or older perform domestic chores in Brazil, regardless of whether they have children,and the double shift is not abstract: it’s the woman who works outside the home and still accumulates 7 more hours of domestic chores per week.
“I was completely exhausted, emotionally unstable.” Says Márcia Tavares, manager at a multinational company and mother for 18 years about her experience with motherhood. “I felt alone, my husband helped me but he got tired very quickly, I spent the whole night awake, my daughter woke up about seven times a night.”
Seven million young women are already out of the workforce and out of education, compared to fewer than 100,000 men. This contrast sums up the argument: it’s not an individual choice. It’s the result of a structure that was never designed for mothers.
Public policies and laws to support mothers
In Brazil, maternity leave exists. It’s guaranteed by the Constitution for 120 days, and up to 180 days for workers in companies participating in the Citizen Company Program. On paper, it seems like protection, in practice, it depends on who you are and where you work.
Self-employed women, MEIs (Individual Microentrepreneurs), and informal workers get the minimum – if they get anything at all. For years, individual contributors needed to prove ten months of contributions to the INSS (National Institute of Social Security) to be entitled to maternity pay. This requirement was only overturned in 2025 by the STF (Supreme Federal Court), after years of silent exclusion of thousands of women. Job stability protects the mother from being fired for up to five months after childbirth. It doesn’t protect her from being forgotten, passed over for promotions, or returned to an empty position when she returns from leave.
Paternity leave, on the other hand, only lasts 5 days. This 115-day difference isn’t just numerical, it defines, from a child’s first days of life, who is responsible for their care. The mother stays home, the father returns to work in a week. And what is established in this initial period, who’s the one that wakes up in the middle of the night, who learns the routine, who reorganizes their own life, tends to remain for years.
And when the 120 days end, what happens? There are not enough public daycare for everyone. There isn’t paternity leave to balance the division of care at home. There’s no safety net. The law says the mother can rest for four months. The system doesn’t say who takes care of it afterwards.
The question that lingers is: what changes need to be made? When will mothers stop being reduced to domestic roles and low wages with little government support?
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The article above was edited by Maria Alice Primo.
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