Yes Virginia, There Really Is a Crass Ceiling

This year, as the passing of April verified my survival of another winter without fear of frostbite and promised revival of halcyon weeks on Golden Pond, my thoughts turned to the apostrophized days ahead which are set aside to memorialize the sexually transmitted status of parenthood.

Mother's Day and Father's Day, while given equal space on calendars, are worlds apart in importance, at least in the view of this ancient scrivener.

Sure, it takes two to tangle at the outset of procreation, but equality of contribution, with few exceptions, tends to become a now-and-then happenstance as life goes on, with good old Mom carrying most of the load, both literally and figuratively, from the moment of conception onward.

Awareness of this came to me both during the gestation period of our eight begats and over the subsequent years when said begats became begetters and even begetters of additional begetters. (The process is seriously and serially contagious.)

Thus, I concluded that if Fathers were entitled to a full day of recognition, Mothers should have months of the same (the number 9 comes to mind as appropriate).

All this is prefatory to my solemn pronouncement that I'm happy to have been born as a father-to-become and I'm in reverential awe of the Moms we're about to ritually honor.

It's one of those old jokes that's too true to be good, but I have no doubt that if the reproductive roles were reversed between men and women, world overpopulation would be no more of a problem than excess profits from playing the lottery.

In balance (of which there is little), nature dealt cards to the human female from an unfairly stacked deck, notwithstanding those solemn assurances of equality from the Good Book and various levels of American legislature.

In reality, much of the modern world is dominated by an "old boy network," which makes it difficult for the gentler sex to get a fair shake of the dice in many fields of endeavor, especially corporate, governmental and (both notably and disgracefully) ecclesiastical.

What has been characterized as a "Glass Ceiling," which women can peer through but not penetrate, is in fact a crass barrier, perpetuated by gross stupidity, prejudice and insensitivity.

The worst manifestation of that crime is, of course, the virtual slavery and cruel debasement of women in the Arab world; one of the most attractive occupational oases is real estate brokerage in the USA, where equal effort brings equal reward, regardless of gender.

(By contrast, reportedly, a woman producing 100% results elsewhere the business world tends to get about 75% of the prevailing male remuneration).

Add to that the further handicap of motherhood, which is borne by a majority of women who, in earlier generations, might have stayed at home and relied on a "him" to haul home the bacon.

Sure, these later models have some hired domestic backup, a tad more husbandly help, day care options and modern conveniences, but, for the most part, it is they who are the glue that holds together families, who see to their feeding, listen to their problems, bind up their wounds, furnish their homes, remember birthdays, allergies and shoe sizes, prescribe home remedies and deal with teen-age tantrums.

These responsibilities are, of course, over and above other female priorities, such as fighting the ravages of advancing age and gravity, advance planning of wardrobes and purse contents, the care, coloring and selective removal of hair, and rituals virtually unknown to menfolk, like "getting ready for bed" (We just "go.")

Please, let's not argue the pros and cons of working Moms. They are as much a part of the American scene as the apple pie with which they are co-revered.

The fact that they have accomplished so much while having been relieved of so little responsibility on the home front is an achievement that puts to shame the guys, who have - hey, let's admit it - been dragged and shamed into taking up some of the slack.

Anyway, as another Mother's Day approaches, I salute the honorees who will again be on temporary pedestals for their apostrophized "Day," then dumped back into the trenches of inequality, wherein even the distribution of rest room facilities is still blatantly prejudicial.

Consider this column, then, as a hymn to the wonderful "hers" whose hands rock the cradle - and whose hearts, I truly believe, would better rule the world - as we, albeit briefly, recognize the "Mayday" of motherhood.