DADVENTURE: Mother's Day Declared Lame, Substitutes Offered

Mother’s Day.  Give mom a card, breakfast in bed, handmade presents from the kids – all cute as a button.  But let’s face it.  This day just isn’t getting the job done.  It’s a sweet day, a cuddly day, but motherhood has changed, moms have changed, and it is time for the holiday to change with it.  I humbly submit the following national holidays to be offered in addition to, or in substitution for the current Mother's Day.

Mommy Armistice Day

For this one day each year, a truce would be declared between Stay at Home Moms and Working Moms.  No publishing houses would be allowed to release books like Leslie Bennett’s new tome “The Feminine Mistake.”  Message boards on Urbanbaby.com and elsewhere moms regularly flame each other would be shut down for the day.  No one is allowed to write or discuss what stay at homes salary equivalent would be, or what harm daycare does to kids for twenty-four straight hours.

National Have a Dirty House Week

Who is not for this one?  A recent study at the University of Delaware showed that despite the fact that the number of hours that men contribute to housework has doubled in recent years, mom’s hours have actually increased in that same time.  That means that either the men are hurting more than helping in the housework, or that our houses are just too damn clean!  Lower the bar people!  At least give it a try for a week.

National Mommy Guilt-free Morning

Like being a mom isn’t hard enough without all the morning TV programs playing your guilt like Ravi Shankar picks a sitar.  The major outlets seem to have a competition going over who can whip mom into a biggest paranoid maternal spazz attack.   A recent swing through the websites for the Today Show, Good Morning America, and This Morning indicated that moms should be very worried that: their toddlers watch too much TV, their teens are “tanorexic,” and they could harm their children by giving them the wrong kind of compliments.  What?  WHAT?! All three networks would instead be required to run a piece headlined “Study Shows Moms Doing Great Job: Everything Less Dangerous Than First Thought.”

Better Father’s Day

In case you men thought that we had “arrived” as fully participatory co-parents, and that a New Fatherhood has swept this nation, I have two words for you: Baldwin, Hasselhoff.  No doubt we’re improving.  The flowers are great and all, but what dads really need to be doing, in addition to expressing gratitude for all that mom does, is to take a day to focus on fatherhood.  Not a day to get thanked for it.  A day to get better at it.  To do more around the house.  To do more with the kids.  Then do it again the next day.

If any of these holidays strike you as promising, I urge you to contact your congressman.  Together, we can address the glaring inadequacies of a holiday pasty its prime.  Not that moms are past their prime.  No, no.  That’s not what I’m saying.  You misunderstand.

Happy Mother’s Day to Baba and Mommy Kimmy.  You deserve the best.

Clay Nichols, Health Correspondent:
Clay’s column, Dadventure, published twice monthly to Gather Essentials: Health, is a sure-fire guide to raising flawless, perfectly behaved, and always obedient children.  Yeah, right.
 
Clay is the co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts, an award-winning playwright, and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, a fatherhood website.

You can find all of Clay’s Dadventure articles at http://gather.com/dadventure

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