The one day a year when we honor our mothers is once again upon us. On Sunday, millions of moms will get flowers and candy, a gift or two, along with sticky pancakes or burnt toast lovingly prepared by husbands and kids turned cooks-for-a-day.
As individuals, we're pretty fond of our mothers. But as a nation we don't value motherhood all that much. We lag far behind Europe in granting leave for the birth or adoption of a child, for example. Our system of unpaid leave applies only to those who work for the largest corporations, and most new mothers (or fathers) can't afford to take it anyway. CEOs and their lap-dog lawmakers say paid leave, the norm in most of the rest of the developed world, would cost too much. Guess it would. After all, we have to save money -- for wars, corporate bailouts, and tax breaks benefitting the same employers that don't provide any family benefits.
No president has had the guts to propose a comprehensive, federally subsidized child care program since Richard Nixon vetoed such a plan, calling it the "sovietization of American children."
President Obama's proposed Fiscal Year 2017 budget does include $2.2 billion to support the creation of state paid leave programs and $1 million for state paid leave research. 
Even if it were $50 billion and had a snowball's chance of getting through a hostile Congress, why should paid leave depend on the state where you live? We need a federal program, period.
Hillary Clinton has upped the ante, calling for universal preschool and promising to unveil a comprehensive child care program. She knows most moms are now in the paid work force out of economic necessity -- but still make only 79 cents to a man's dollar -- so they can't afford private child care that can run $5-$16 thousand per year per child. The result is that we're going on three generations of children characterized by a phrase unknown to our grandparents -- latch-key kids.
On the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump says he "loves women," but never mentions the problems of working mothers. And why should he? He has a ten-year-old son at home, and a stay-at-home wife. They no doubt also have servants to provide a 24-7 backstop for the times neither parent can be home. No worry about their kid, no financial stretch to pay for care, no scrambling for somebody to provide love and chicken soup in case of illness.
Would that all working moms could have such marvelous help to take up the slack when they can't be with their children. Or at least be able to take a day off when somebody is sick, or find decent day care at a price that doesn't rival the mortgage payment. But it's not likely to happen in the good ol' U. S. of A. unless we can elect a president that will lead on the issue, and a Congress with the courage to put their support behind it.
If Trump really loves women and is serious about getting their votes, let us hear his plan to fix a system that doesn't work for moms. The majority of mothers, like fathers, now work outside the home -- they need the money to support their families. The country needs national policies and workplace practices that reflect that reality. June Cleaver doesn't live here anymore.