Although Mother’s Day is highly commercialized, I like remembering my mom on this special day and I enjoy visiting with my daughters over WhatsApp.

Maybe next year, I’ll be able to travel to Spain again in May. Since my birthday is May 4 and my daughter’s is May 23, we have so much fun celebrating our birthdays plus American Mother’s Day and Spanish Mother’s Day in May in Spain.

The photo is of my mom. It’s her high school graduation photo. She graduated when she was 16.

Mother’s Day spending

Consumers plan to spend a total of $35.7 billion on Mother’s Day this year, nearly $4 billion more than last year’s record high of $31.7 billion, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Federation. Eighty-four percent of U.S. adults are expected to celebrate the holiday.

Consumers plan to spend $274.02 per person, the highest in the history of the survey and up from the previous record high of $245.76 in 2022. The top spenders are those ages 35-44, who are expected to spend an average of $382.26 on Mother’s Day.

As in previous years, the most popular gifts to give are flowers, 74 percent; greeting cards, 74 percent; and special outings such as dinner or brunch, 60 percent. Consumers will spend a total of $7.8 billion on jewelry, $5.6 billion on special outings, and $4 billion on electronics.

On making memories, almost one-third of consumers plan to give an experience and almost half are interested in giving a product subscription box.

Mother’s Day facts

The U.S. Census Bureau offers the following facts on moms for Mother’s Day:

• Out of 76 million Women in the United States ages 15 to 50, 41 million are mothers who’ve had 89 million children.
• Children living with a mother only is the second most common U.S. living arrangement, a number that has doubled since 1968. About 7.6 million, 11 percent, of children lived with their mother in 1968 compared to 15.3 million, 21 percent, in 2020.
• More than three-quarters of working women with children under 18 are between the ages of 30 and 49.
• Forty-four percent of working mothers 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with 38 percent of all workers 25 or older.
• Nearly half of working mothers work in management, business, science, and arts occupations. Some of the most common jobs for women are teachers in elementary and middle schools, 1.3 million, and registered nurses, 1.1 million. 
• Compared to 7 percent of all part-time workers, 19 percent of women with children ages 6 to 17 and 30 percent of women with at least one child under 6 reported caretaking as the reason for working part time.
• Women with at least one child under the age of 6 were more likely to report caretaking, 61 percent, as the reason they experienced joblessness than women with children ages 6 to 17 only, 46 percent.

So, congratulations to moms and families everywhere on this day we remember our mothers. Motherhood is a wonderful and challenging life. I’m grateful to my mother and feel so lucky to have two wonderful daughters.