“Once you sign on to be a mother, it’s 24/7, that’s the only shift they offer.” - Jody Picoult in My Sister’s Keeper
When compared to the qualifications and job description that goes along with being an effective mother, the fact that business tycoons are paid millions of dollars per year would be laughable were it not such a pathetic reflection of how badly we’ve screwed up our culture’s values.
My thinking along such lines was prompted recently by reading Elizabeth Badinter’s controversial new book The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women while aboard an aircraft flying along the Gulf Coast of the southeastern U.S. Two years after the disastrous BP oil spill, its merciless impact on the vegetation and wildlife in the bayous of Louisiana is enough to make a grown man cry.
And that’s merely the result of observing the superficial damage. “We saw the short-term impacts of the BP spill such as oiled birds and blackened marshes,” said Larry McKinney, head of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“Two years later, we are starting to get information on the real cost. Oil disappeared from sight, but it did not disappear. It’s impacting things in the deep water.”
When all is said and done, I’m inclined to think that such is an apt depiction of the role of millions of responsible mothers in our world – their impact at the deeper levels of human development cannot and should not be underestimated.
Thankfully, as dozens of readers can attest, that impact was/is profoundly positive thereby enabling you to be able to say this week “yes, thank God for Mom!”
My own mother represented that phalanx of devout women who worked inside the home. Almost 20 years of observing her daily routine scarred me to the point where I still detest the expression “she works outside the home,” which some myopically interpret to imply that working inside the home doesn’t really count, is of lesser importance or renders women less capable of coping with the real challenges of life. Bunk.
Whether or not we care to admit it, those business executives we consider worthy of the seven-digit salaries learned their most important lessons long before they ever took a college course or, for that matter, even entered elementary school.
The most appropriate thing the business icons of our day might do is to set up a foundation in their mother’s name.
Most of us may not have the requisite dollars to do that, but if your mother is one of those who would bankrupt you if she ever billed you for “overtime,” please treat her accordingly this Mother’s Day.
Tim Callaway is pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church, Airdrie He can be contacted at [email protected]
