Witness a sample "tidbit" from the MomsRising.org website:

"A recent study found a widespread scarcity of quality, affordable infant-toddler child care in all communities."

In truth, there is NO shortage of quality, affordable infant and toddler care in any community - it's called "parents."

All of MomsRising’s economically untenable prescriptions are supposed to be motivated by our recognition that motherhood is terribly important. I personally think that motherhood is the most important profession, and our culture doesn't even give lip service to it anymore. But as a mother, I also think we do a terrible disservice to our children by farming them out all day long. More to the point, it's pathologically hypocritical to claim some moral high ground for motherhood while advocating ad nauseum for policies favoring mothers who are everywhere except with their children.

Very little at MomsRising.org celebrates being a mother. What it does attempt to do is use having a baby as a moral bludgeon to trumpet for government control over childrearing. I cannot think of anything worse. It is no substitute for mothering (or parenting in general), psychologically and emotionally catastrophic for children, and economically disastrous for the country.

There are plenty of things that make it harder to be a mom these days than in the past – easy divorce, the pervasiveness of pornographic sexuality directed at children, and our culture’s antagonism towards women who choose to raise their own children (witness Linda Hirshman’s infamous insults), for starters. But government’s failure to control television commercials, mandate higher wages for sales clerks, or provide infant-to-college child care isn’t among them.

If MomsRising.org is any indication, a real appreciation for mothering in the United States is falling, not rising. None of this should surprise me, however. The Left’s concept of “motherhood” seems to consist largely of women’s constitutional “right” to destroy their own offspring, and to demand that everyone else pay to raise their children if they deign to have them.

This Mother’s Day, I am offering special thanks to all the mothers – and fathers – who understand the value of real parenting – and the price we all pay when we don’t.