THE average British mother will prepare almost 20,000 meals for each child by the time they reach 18, according to research.
Ahead of Mother’s Day on March 15, greetings card firm Clintons has number-crunched the vital statistics of motherhood.
They reckon that before each child reaches adulthood, his or her mother will have:
* Spent 547 days of wearying and largely fruitless negotiation over everything from TV watching to haircuts
* Prepared 19,710 meals
* Asked 2,340 times: “Have you done your homework?”
* Vacuumed a football pitch-sized area of bedroom floor
* Cleaned an area equivalent to Buckingham Palace ten times over
Other startling statistics include the fact a typical mother washes 6,500 pairs of socks, makes 5,290 beds and drives her child half way around the world to school.
This work, claims the firm, puts mothers in technical breach of several provisions in the European Working Time Directive.
This states that employees should work no longer than 48 hours per week and that workers should enjoy a rest period of eleven consecutive hours in every 24-hour day.
Spokesman Tim Fairs said: “When you start to work through the checklist of tasks carried out by mums over just the first 18 years, the list is mind-boggling.
It’s so easy to take mums for granted.
Mothers’ Day is an opportunity to reflect on all the hard work mums do every day and to say thank you for being there for you. Arguably we should be celebrating Mothers’ Month, not just Mothers’ Day.”
The modern tradition of Mother’s Day originated in the United States in 1908 when Anna Jarvis from West Virginia held a memorial for her mother.
