40. The Mom Tax

When people become parents, they get moved into a new tax bracket that is specific to being a mom, dad or caregiver. Parents are able to cash in on the mom tax, a bite of whatever treat you’ve bought your children. 

“It’s Going To Be OK” is a daily podcast from Feelings and Co. Each morning, we bring you a short story, essay, or interview about one thing that makes us (or our guests) feel like it might not all be so bad – even if some things are.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny, and it’s going to be okay.

I have a memory of my childhood that is probably more a montage of memories, a collage in my brain of similar moments that have been pasted over one another to create this: I am in the way back of my Aunt Rita’s brownish gold Toyota Tercel wagon. She is in the front seat with my mother, who is five years her senior. They are driving through the McDonald’s drive-thru and ordering four kids cones: one for me, one for my cousin LIllian, one for her little sister Fuzz and one for my little brother. 

The cones are, in this memory, 25 cents a piece, and they are a treat for us being nice to each other on whatever day this is. The sun is beating in through the hatchback and we are impatient for our treats. When they arrive, they are already melting in the heat, and my mom and her sister lick the melting parts of the cone before handing them back to us. We are obviously incensed. This is embezzling. This is robbery. This is…the mom tax.

The mom tax – or the dad tax – or the parental guardian tax – is a small bite of whatever treat a kid is having. It’s not the whole thing, it’s the part that was ruined in some way. It’s taking a few pieces out of their halloween candy…it’s you know what? It is kind of embezzlement. 

The problem with my aunt and my mom was that they were practicing taxation without representation. I have told my kids since they were old enough to remember that the Mom Tax is up for negotiation. They can decide what I get, but I’m getting something. Maybe it’s a few M&Ms, maybe it’s a bite of ice cream. Maybe it’s the very end of the fro-yo where it’s all soupy and they don’t want it anymore.

And because I told them about it right up front, back when they were little, I hardly even have to ask for it anymore. They’ll get a treat and say “mom tax!” and hold it up to me to give me a bite. And their friends will say “what’s that?” and they’ll say, oh, you give your mom a bite of your treat because she got it for you. And we’re all happy. 

And I do want to apologize for whining at my aunt and my mom about taking a lick of our cones. Because they were two stressed-out moms who had kept a bunch of kids busy all day and still made the time to stop and get us a treat that we would drip all over the car, or maybe even drop. Giving you a lick of that cone was a small price to pay, and I’d pay it all over again to be a little kid in the back of a Toyota Tercel that smelled like melted crayons with no worries except that you were going to take 2% of my ice cream.

I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay.

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