Every Mother’s Day, we buy flowers, flood social media with tributes, and gather around with our families for shared meals. A day dedicated to celebrating mothers for the love and sacrifice they pour out each day. These gestures, repeated year after year, have come to define how appreciation is expressed.

In Filipino culture, we call mothers ilaw ng tahanan. Mothers are a warm, illuminating presence who sustain the household. We admire this image, but it also means that the light must remain on, unwavering and undiminished.

The ideal mother who never rests

(Screenshot from Dekada ‘70 (2002))

The mother, as a constant light, radiates love and the expectation that she should never dim or rest. Filipino culture honors and normalizes maternal sacrifice. In doing so, rest becomes a luxury mothers cannot afford, further romanticizing resilience while overlooking their needs.

Expectations surrounding motherhood take on different forms, yet they remain anchored in a common standard of selflessness. A hermeneutic-phenomenological analysis of Filipinos' views on motherhood reveals a traditional image of a mother at home.

She is responsible for managing her children's and husband's needs while carrying the full weight of domestic responsibilities. They also assume the primary role of nurturance and emotional support within the family, attending not only to their children’s physical needs but also to their emotional well-being, guidance, and sense of security in everyday life.

Modern movements for women’s rights have challenged the idea of women as confined solely to the household, but progressive reforms did not entirely dismantle existing expectations. Instead, they expanded them. Economic realities have pushed many mothers into the workforce, not as a replacement for their domestic roles, but as an addition to them, to provide supplementary income for the family.

Mothers simply provide. Many Filipino mothers work overseas, facing the strain of distance, where physical absence complicates their presence in their children’s lives. Yet despite these conditions, the expectation persists: a mother must continue to fulfill her role, regardless of exhaustion or circumstance.

The image of the ideal mother evolves, but its demands remain unchanged. She is expected to give, to produce, and to endure. Rest becomes incompatible with the curated image of the ideal mother.

Invisible labor, endless sacrifice

(Screenshot from Caregiver (2008))

The light that is not expected to dim is expected to shine even brighter—stretching itself across multiple roles beyond that of a mother or wife. She becomes a teacher, a mediator, a planner, a motivator, and more. In fulfilling these roles, mothers take on forms of labor that remain largely invisible, unacknowledged in everyday life, and instead taken for granted as inherent to motherhood.

A study on invisible household labor found that a significant majority of mothers feel primarily responsible for organizing the family’s schedule, maintaining routines, and monitoring their children’s emotional well-being. These overwhelming responsibilities led to lower life satisfaction and strained relationships. In carrying this weight, the mother’s needs are often sidelined.

The labor mothers endure is continuous and unpaid, within the home where it is overlooked and outside it, where it remains unseen. Over time, this constant familiarity breeds expectation. In that normalization of restlessness, a quiet disregard begins to take shape.

Celebration without relief

(Screenshot from Tanging Ina (2003))

Mother’s Day comes once a year, but mothers show up every day. The single day of celebration does not compare to the weight of expectations they carry year-round. While grand gestures offer recognition, they do not necessarily translate into meaningful change.

A deeper shift is needed—one that acknowledges that mothers, too, are navigating life for the first time with their own passions, ambitions, and needs.

Praising mothers for their strength, without asking whether they need support, only reinforces the invisibility of the labor they carry. What begins as an act of love can gradually turn into routine, performed out of obligation rather than freely given, especially when it is not met with equal care and understanding.

If motherhood continues to be defined solely by sacrifice, then appreciation will remain superficial. To truly honor mothers goes beyond celebration by asking why they are expected to endure so much in the first place and by beginning to redistribute the weight they have long carried on their own.

If mothers are to be called ilaw ng tahanan, then that light must be allowed to dim, to rest, and to be restored. Otherwise, what is celebrated as devotion becomes depletion.