Kids’ birthdays are big events in most families. Even once the kids are grown, many parents still send cards or gifts, bake a cake or leave a special birthday voicemail for them. But one mom has added something to her kids’ birthday celebrations that isn’t a part of most people’s standard birthday traditions. A woman on Reddit says that since childhood, she and her three siblings have been forced to buy expensive gifts for their mother on their own birthdays, and she is fed up with her mom taking over their special days.
“Every year on every single one of our birthdays, we’re expected to celebrate my mom as well,” the Reddit poster writes. “We’ve done it since we were little. It was taught to me as ‘giving thanks for carrying and giving birth to us,’ which I am all for. I am grateful, as we wouldn’t be here without her. The issue is it becomes less of our birthdays and more an anniversary for the day our mom gave birth.”
The daughter is now 25, but she and her 12-, 16- and 18-year-old siblings have been expected to give their mom gifts since they were very young. Over the years her mom’s demands have only gotten more and more extreme. “As we got older, we’re now expected to get her monetary gifts (not cards or homemade stuff),” she writes. “Just recently was my birthday, and I was gifted some much needed clothes and dish ware for my new apartment. My dad, however, got my mom a new Macbook. My siblings all got her gifts, too.”
The mom’s wish list items were so expensive this year that the Reddit poster’s 16-year-old sister had to apologize for not having much money leftover to buy birthday presents for the actual birthday girl. “She wanted to get me more, but our mom was pressuring her to get a certain necklace,” she explains. “Apparently my mom had been dropping hints for months, and my sister was worried our mom would be upset and feel under-appreciated if she didn’t get [the necklace]. I asked how much it was, and my sister said it was $300.”
That was the last straw for this grown-up daughter. “I honestly lost it on our mom and chewed into her later that afternoon when my mom opened her gifts after me,” she writes. “I think she’s ridiculous for even wanting my sister to spend so much on a gift!
The woman says her mom started crying after her outburst, her dad kicked her out of the house, and then, to top it all off, the mom’s sister also called to tell the daughter she is “a selfish, narcissist child” for being “jealous” of her mom’s presents. Two weeks later, she says her mom still won’t answer her calls, members of their extended family are shutting her out as well and she wants to know if she was truly in the wrong for calling her mom out.
Reddit’s commenters were stunned by the mom’s behavior and many of them told the original poster that she has nothing to feel guilty about. “The mom is like those toddlers who on anyone’s birthday feel entitled to a gift and cake,” one person writes. “It’s so weird that the family indulges this behavior.”
Others wondered why the mom takes over her children’s birthdays when holidays like Mother’s Day exist specifically to celebrate moms.
“Does she give you gifts on Mother’s day to thank you for making her a mom? Didn’t think so,” one person points out. “I could understand the birthday person giving a small token to their parent, not that I’ve ever heard of such a tradition… The idea that one must buy an expensive gift for Mom because it’s [their] sister’s birthday? that’s crazy.”
One person even did the math on the staggering amount of gifts the mom gets while celebrating herself during every birthday and holiday that comes up.
“With four children and a husband who all get her gifts eight times a year, saying the average gift is $300 (since we know they get more expensive, as with the MacBook, and she thought this was a reasonable price for her young daughter to pay), this woman is expected to get ~$12,000 worth of gifts every single year,” they write. “That’s a gently used car, every year. That’s local politician bribery money. That’s one-third of the median salary for everyone in the U.S. It’s like she has a part-time job where she makes passive income just by getting gifts!”
The idea of celebrating moms on their kids’ birthdays isn’t totally unheard of. As some on social media note, moms are the ones who have to go through pregnancy, give birth and often do the majority of the hard work of raising kids.
But, as others point out, there’s a difference between patting yourself on the back for getting through another year and making someone else’s celebration all about you. “I treat myself to a cocktail and maybe let housework drop so I can chill on my kids’ birthdays as a way to celebrate birthing them,” one mom of three writes. “What I sure don’t do is act like their birthday is also about me. Everyone deserves to be celebrated (alone) sometimes.”
This Reddit poster’s mom may have her own unique interpretation of what the word “birthday” means, but most people seem to agree that this daughter had every right to call her mother out. Birthday cakes are made to be shared, but the day itself is not up for grabs.
