Behind every perfect holiday memory is a mom on the brink

Preparations for the holiday season begin early for Cassi Romanos, a 30-year-old mother in Connecticut — really early, before the leaves even begin to change colors. Romanos starts making lists of possible Christmas presents for her four children and planning which celebrations her family will take part in beginning in September.

By the time December rolls around, Romanos is in full holiday mode — stressing out; buying, wrapping and hiding presents; and cooking and cleaning ahead of family visits. She also does Elf on the Shelf for her kids, a newly popular tradition that entails finding creative hiding spots for a toy elf, purportedly sent from Santa to make sure kids are behaving. “Sometimes I’m like, why am I this crazy?” Romanos says about the added effort of the elf. “But it’s so pressured that you aren’t a good mom if you don’t do Elf on the Shelf.”

In an age where you can compare your Christmas photos with those of millions of others, the efforts parents undertake to make a memorable — and Instagrammable — holiday season are more intense than ever. And in many families, the majority of those efforts fall on the shoulders of overburdened moms.

Perhaps that comes as no surprise to any woman who is in or has any familiarity with modern marriage and family. After all, they’re still bearing the brunt of domestic responsibility in their homes. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2024, women on average did 25 more minutes of housework a day, while men somehow finagled 50 more minutes of leisure time (over the course of a week, that adds up to hours of difference). Another study found that mothers manage some 71% of all household tasks, from scheduling to planning to cooking.

That unequal division of household labor naturally carries through to the holiday season, a veritable marathon of planning, scheduling, decorating and familial upkeep. In a NovemberYouGov/Yahoo poll, 60% of married and partnered women reported doing more of the holiday planning in their household, as opposed to 14% of married and partnered men. Only about a quarter of women (26%) said they and their partner split the holiday work equally (tellingly, 40% of married and partnered men reported an equal division of labor, reflecting how differently men and women gauge their own contributions).

From Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas, moms strain to get everything done, all in the name of making their children’s experiences magical. These efforts are a natural extension of intensive parenting, a style of modern child-rearing that requires parents to pay more attention and spend more time and money on their children than ever before. In 2024, the U.S. surgeon general even issued a warning that the mental health of parents was deteriorating because of the multitude of pressures they face. Indeed, the Yahoo/YouGov poll also found that 21% of women and 15% of men plan to devote four or more hours to holiday planning every week in December.

“It’s only getting harder because there seems to be more and more things to do,” says Danielle Gould, a 38-year-old mother in New Jersey. “I’m getting all the gifts, wrapping said gifts. I’m the room parent for both of my children, so I have to plan a preschool party and a second-grade winter party.”

Gould notes that her husband does have his own specific responsibilities, which include putting decorations on the house, getting the Christmas tree, and bringing seasonal knick-knacks down from the attic. “But my tasks are exhausting,” she says. “Moms need a logistics degree to survive November and December. I always say I have plenty of Christmas spirit, but I also need a lot of caffeine with that spirit to propel me through.”

In the past few years, this state of affairs has led to moms more openly talking about the ramifications of “mental load” — that is, the unending and often invisible effort that goes into keeping a family and household running.

On Instagram, Paige Connell, a 35-year-old mother of four in Massachusetts, talks about being a working mom, managing the mental load and figuring out childcare. “I think women, from a very young age, are conditioned to think about other people and their experiences and how to make other people’s lives easier,” Connell says. “But I think that is also compounded by living in the year 2025 and the pressure that comes from the societal expectations of what you see on Pinterest or on your Instagram feed and what standard you’re being held to.”

There’s a sense from mothers that I spoke to that if they didn’t juggle it all, things just wouldn’t get done — and their children would suffer. “What’s the most important thing is making memories,” Gould says. “So if I don’t plan on going to see Santa, then Santa is not going to be seen.”

Connell, who often makes content about finding ways to share the burden in her own marriage, says that sometimes it just feels easier for mothers to take the lead because they already know what needs to be done. “[Moms] know exactly what to tell the mother-in-law to buy because she already has that running list in her brain or on her phone,” she says. “[But] I always tell people, nothing changes if we don’t say anything about it.” In Connell’s case, she and her husband have created a holiday spreadsheet to keep track of their budget for presents and what they’re choosing to buy their children.

Corinne Low, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the economics of gender, says deeply ingrained gender stereotypes and norms are at play here. “Men don’t think anybody’s going to judge them or evaluate them based on what their house looks like for the holidays or how good of a meal they serve,” Low says.

While American dads today spend more time caring for their children than fathers in past generations, there are still major gaps. “And when it comes to that magic-making behind the scenes, when it comes to making sure we have enough ornaments to go on the tree or that everybody has matching pajamas in the right sizes, moms are the ones who are doing it. For the dads, it would almost not even occur to them. That’s why people call it invisible labor because it’s the labor that it takes to run a household and to make a childhood beautiful and special. But so often it goes completely unnoticed.”

As a relatively new mom, I find this deeply depressing. It’s difficult to contend with the fact that little seems to escape the lopsidedness of gender dynamics and how so much tends to fall on women’s shoulders.

“I remember being up until three in the morning wrapping presents and feeling like I had to get the food done. Like, am I ready for the next day? Did I write the notes from Santa? Are my in-laws happy in the rooms they’re sleeping in? Does everybody have towels?” says Colette Jane Fehr, a couples therapist. “The logistical load [during the holidays] is magnified. It’s quadrupled. Most women roll out of the holidays feeling exhausted, depleted, resentful and anxious.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom, insists Fehr. In her couples therapy sessions, she pushes women to ask for what they need help with. Often moms will bristle at the suggestion — why do they have to ask for help? Why don’t their husbands just know to step in? “But you know what? If you want help, you’ve got to ask,” she says. “We’ve got to make it very clear what we need. And as a therapist, one thing that holds many women back is that we want the help, but we don’t want to let go of control in many cases, or we don’t think it will be executed to our standard.”

Libby Ward, a mother of two and TikTok creator, says things have gotten easier as her children have gotten older and she’s been able to come to terms with what brings her joy during the holidays. “It’s like, OK, the burden of gift-giving is a lot of work, and also I like gift-giving. It takes a lot of time, but it also brings me joy, [whereas] the meal is something important to me, that we all get together. But I don’t actually care that much that it’s perfect. So I can hand that off, and I'm OK with it not being perfect.”

Many moms told me that they’re trying harder to delegate. Sarah Quinn, a 42-year-old mother, asks her husband to take care of the kids on the weekend so she can get Christmas shopping done. She’s also trying to let go of the standards of perfection she’s internalized. “Like, OK, we’re going to bake cookies together and they’re probably going to turn out looking bad, but that’s OK because the process was fun and that’s the memory,” Quinn says. Cassi Romanos’s husband is in charge of wrapping all the presents this year. Paige Connell and her husband are skipping Elf on the Shelf.

Corinne Low, the professor who studies gender disparities, puts it bluntly: “My challenge to moms this holiday season is to get comfortable with having it almost. You’ve got to let some things go. And this holiday season, let’s let it be the aesthetic trappings of perfection.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified couples therapist Colette Jane Fehr.

This story is part of Very, Very Unmerry, Yahoo’s look at the meltdowns, mayhem and misfires that haunt the most festive time of the year. Do you have your own holiday disaster story? Drop us a comment below or fill out this Google form, and we may feature your submission in a future story.