Today is Mother’s Day, a day steeped in the long tradition of honoring the Mother for it she who gives life to al of us and it is she who nurtures us and molds our future.

My mother, gone now for many years, instilled in me the importance of acceptance, compassion and love. Her great love for nature, she passed on to each of her four daughters and I too have passed those values on to my own daughter.

As an only parent, I have spent the past nearly 18 years single handedly raising my daughter. Although I frequently refer to myself as a single mother, I am in fact her only parent, as her father passed away before her 3rd birthday. So, in fact, all these years I have been mother, father, sole bread winner, head taxi driver, chief cook and bottle washer and so on, while also over the past 12 years running a small business from home and in the past 4 years doing all of the afore mentioned and somewhere in my “spare” time, blogging about liberal politics. Whew! I’m tired!!!

I’m not alone in being tired as Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner note in The Nation earlier this week, across the nation, “Vast numbers of women are chronically tired and drained.”

But the American credo teaches us to be fierce individualists, with the result that most parents toil in isolation and can’t envision, or don’t expect, help. It’s time to recognize that our common problems can be addressed only by working together to bring about broad and meaningful change in our families, communities, workplaces and nation.

It’s often said that motherhood is perhaps the most important, and most difficult, job on the planet. This cliché hits fairly close to the mark. While we raise our children out of an innate sense of love and nurturing, we also know that raising happy, healthy children who become productive adults is critical to our future well-being as a nation.

But right now, motherhood in America is at a critical juncture. As women’s roles continue to evolve, more women than ever are in the workforce and most children are raised in homes without a stay-at-home parent. At the same time, public and private policies that affect parenting and the workplace remain largely unchanged. We have a twenty-first-century economy stuck with an outdated, industrial-era family support structure. The result is that parents, mothers in particular, are struggling to balance the needs of their children with the demands of the workplace.

As an only parent, I made the choice when my daughter started school to start a business, so that I could be at home for her and available when she needed me. That choice came with many sacrifices and now, today I look back and know that I made the right choice. My daughter is about to embark on her own path in a few months as finishes high school and prepares to leave home and live on campus, 5 1/2 hours away from home to attend college. This may be the last Mother’s Day I will have my lovely daughter at home to celebrate the day with me. I’m so very proud of her accomplishments and thrilled at the choices she is making for her future. But, it is bittersweet as I prepare for the empty nest and wonder what is next for my own life.

Earlier this week, Teresa Heinz Kerry wrote an OP/ED in the Boston Herald about mothers and Social Security. Having been out of the work force a couple of years myself and struggling with a new business and a limited income, I understand fully the implications of what Teresa Heinz Kerry points out:

If we put down our Mother’s Day cards and pick up a Social Security card we learn this: Fairness to women is not a hallmark of our current system.

Social Security benefits are based on average earnings over 40 years. For each year not worked, a zero is entered. The lowest five years of earnings are dropped and the benefit is calculated based on the remaining 35 years.

But women – and mothers in particular – spend less time in the work force. Many join the “mommy track” to stay home to care for preschool children. Others take time off from work to attend to the responsibilities that come with aging parents. It’s hard to believe that women are penalized for these vital contributions, but they are.

Women when they retire will average 13 years of zeroes. That means out of the 35 years used to determine the average income, eight years will reflect no income at all.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what this does to women’s eventual Social Security benefits. More importantly, it doesn’t take an economist to fix the problem: Allow women who drop out of the work force to care for young children or aging parents the ability to drop out five more years of zeroes.

Americans, especially politicians, talk about how the family is America’s most vital institution. And rightly so. Families ensure that our values and social structure are passed down from generation to generation. And the family is the primary source of sustenance – emotional and financial – and the first line of defense against the challenges encountered in daily life.

Talk about family values and the virtues of stay-at-home moms providing family care can be heard from many quarters any day of the week. But when it comes to the first of the month, when Social Security benefits go out, the talk isn’t being “walked.” Instead, women’s Social Security payments are, on average, $250 a month less than men’s – in large part because of the years women spend giving family care full time. All those zeroes add up to a Social Security benefit that doesn’t reflect the importance America ostensibly places on the contributions of women, especially mothers.

Those extolling the virtues of family values should be willing to put their money where their rhetoric is. We should allow women to drop out the “zero years” instead of telling them that their care for their young children and elderly parents is worth zero when it comes time to calculate Social Security benefits.

Over my daughter’s school years, I instilled in her the value of hard work and the importance of going to college. Something I never did. Women, mothers, shape the world’s future by what they instill in their children. And it is that which we honor today.

I’m proud of my daughter and her bright future. I’m proud of the choices I have made that helped to shape her future and I know categorically that being a mother is the toughest job in the world.

So, now I will wish you all a Happy Mother’s Day and step away from my computer and The Dem Daily for the day and enjoy with my daughter, what may be her last Mother’s Day at home.

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