Mother's Day is a celebration steeped in cliches, silly songs and store-bought cards.
But beyond the corsages and phone calls, it is a time to remember that the life of Utah moms has gotten more complicated in the 1990s as they balance family, work and home.As Utahns commemorate Mother's Day, here is a sampling of statistics about moms' contributions, changing lifestyles and modern-day challenges.
Still underpaid after all these years
Even for women who work, the burden of keeping house and cooking meals is still largely their domain. Most national studies show that men still don't do their fair share of the household chores.
Women's unpaid labor at home acts as a substantial subsidy to the wage of male bread-winners and indirectly as a subsidy to business by providing the work force and then keeping it alive and well in good times and bad, said Rajani Kanth, a University of Utah economist.
His research showed that Utah women as houseworkers put in an average of 15 hours per day, seven days a week completing 37 separate chores. Their average leisure time amounts to 2.5 hours per day, and the time is usually spent watching television while ironing and finishing up some other task.
If the women were paid minimum wage, they would make just over $24,000 per year. If the same services had been purchased from a maid or other cleaning professional the cost would be nearly $35,000 per year.
The state of birth
Based on statistics from recent years, Utah mothers give birth to about 36,000 children each year, with 21 births to every thousand Utahns in 1990. Utah's fertility rate is among the highest in the nation.
In 1990, one-third of babies born in Utah were the first for their mothers, according to the State Data Center. Nationally, four in 10 births were the mothers' first.
In 1990, more mothers gave birth in July than any other month. May came in second. In 1991, the most babies were born in May followed by July. Spring and summer both years accounted for 53 percent of total births those years.
Women are waiting longer in Utah and nationwide to bear children, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and Utah Department of Health Center for Health Statistics. In 1990, the average age of women in the United States having their first-born was 24 years. In 1960, the average was 22 years.
Mothers in the labor force
The 1990 Census showed that some 57 percent of Utah mothers with children under age 6 were in the labor force, up a whopping 20 percentage points from the 1980 Census.
Similarly, Utah mothers of school-age children led the nation in joining the labor force between 1980 and 1990 and remained at about the national average.
According to analysis of 1990 Census data performed by the Utah Office of Planning and Budget, the percentage of Utah women in the work force with school-age children jumped from 64.5 percent in 1980 to 76.2 percent in 1990. A state-by-state ranking of such trends shows that Utah had the largest jump in working mothers of school-age children, followed by Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico.
Single mothers worse off
Among all of Utah's mothers, single moms are the worst off. Of households headed by single moms with children under age 5, 57 percent live under the poverty line. That's compared to 14.6 percent for all Utah families with children under 5.