Personally, I can take it or leave it, my children know me well enough not to get carried away with sentimentality, I like my sentiments more edgy - it's a family trait.

Yes, holidays and days with special recognitions do flip triggers in people and are their reason d'etre. My mother and her younger brother were given up by their mother, my maternal grandmother. When she remarried, they were evidently in the way and they were raised by her grandparents. In my mind and her's she got the better deal and led a better life. Motherhood is not created equal, obviously. However it is a special vocation and responsibility, as is fatherhood. Not to be glorified for the physical act of reproduction, but the willing acceptance of the responsibilities and nurturing involved so basic and univeral when done as it should be done.

On Mother' Day, I think of one of her friends Bette who was childess and my spinster teachers and all the other women who made my growing-up years happy and special, even though some wanted kids and couldn't have them, or chose not to have them. Mothering and nuturing is a state of the heart and procreation isn't a necessary part of it.

I agree about the commercial aspect of Mother's Day. It grates on me and is unneccesary. Ditto for weddings and any other holiday or celebration. My children are my reward, as our my step children, and the differences I may have made in my foster children's lives. They are my reward as they are also the rewards in people like Bette and those teachers.

And there are mothers that should never be allowed to raise children.

Just an opinion. Don't mean to rub anyone the wrong way, but I know too many people that would have done better in a orphans home than in the home with the woman that gave birth nine months after the Deed was done.