Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day arose from a desire to acknowledge the importance of parents, the people who guide, protect and care for the Next Generation. They deserve a day of recognition.
You know who else deserves a day of recognition? Step parents. The people who fill empty shoes to guide, protect and care for the Next Generation, but without the natural authority of being a parent, and frequently while being undermined by both natural parents.
When I was a divorce lawyer, I always felt sorry for them. They put up with backtalk from children who say, “you aren’t my parent,” visitation disputes that disrupt holiday and vacation plans, fill the budget gap that child support doesn’t cover . . . and get no credit from natural parents who say “Oh, you wouldn’t understand, you don’t have children.”
Really? Which do you think is easier: to love your own child, or to love someone else’s child as if it was your own?
No, I’m not advocating for another greeting card occasion, or more days off government work with pay. But look around your children’s classroom and count the number of intact families which celebrate natural mother and natural father’s days. All the rest are being raised by unacknowledged heroes.
Joe Doakes
I used to have a real trip on my shoulder about Father’s Day. Not have any personal animus; mostly out of anger for the way so many fathers are treated in Family Court, and for the way fatherhood has been devalued in our society.
But as a father of two, and a stepfather of one, I couldn’t agree more.
Right in time for father’s day – what we need is less fathers! Funny how malthusian angle keeps getting more and more pronounced in the Wuhan Flu conspiracy.
CONFIRMED: Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine Reduces Sperm Count in Men, Another Adverse Affect Of The Forced Vaccine Tyranny
Why stop there? Why not Grandparents… nay, bubbie and grampa days? How about crazy uncle and cheek-pinching aunt days? How about a national holiday for a Coach day – they (sometimes) have more to do with raising kids than parents? Why just step-parents? What this world needs is more national holidays and a 5hr work week (lunch is hard work, dontchaknow?).
Back in CCCP, there were no mother’s and father’s days, just women’s day and red army day. Red army day was the defacto father’s day – since russia ain’t woke, never has been, never will be, it was presumed only non-birthing hominids were serving (not true of course, but it was an equivalent of father’s day nevertheless).
JPA – the only reason Family Court wasn’t included in Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell is he wrote too early: No Fault Divorce wasn’t adopted until 1974. Those of us who spent time there (whether as advocate or as victim) have a different view of the feminisation of society and the destruction left in its wake.
But your idea has merit. Whoever fills the empty shoes deserves society’s acknowledgement and gratitude, because without those people the children of the last three generations – the children whose safe and stable world was shattered by the people who were supposed to protect them, the children whose value to their parents devolved to a percentage-of-income on judge’s chart, the children who became afraid to trust anyone lest that person betray them too – would have been even worse off than they were. And society would have been the poorer for it.
I’m super grateful for my step-dad. After my parents’ divorce, my dad tried to give me various advice, especially regarding the fairer sex, and I wasn’t willing to act on his wisdom because of the circumstances of my parents’ divorce (and it really was, by and large, good advice). It was when my stepdad modeled how to love a woman in a way she’d understand, obviously my mother, that I finally clued in and started to apply that wisdom.
Most days, my wife appreciates that. :^)