Against Mother's Day and Employee Appreciation Day and Other Representations of Oppressive Expectations as Opportunities for Excellence and Beneficence

Appreciation and gratitude get good press: They are central virtues in many religious and secular ethical frameworks, core in positive psychology research, and they come highly recommended by the self‐improvement set. Generally, appreciation and gratitude feature as good things, in popular consciousness. Of course, on an Aristotelian model, the belief that these are virtues implies they are something people can get right or wrong. This paper examines bad appreciation and bad gratitude, characterizing forms of appreciation and gratitude at the center of some major social norms and practices, and demonstrating that they mask familiar oppressive expectations and power relations.