Apple pie, my eye

BOSTON — I wonder what the founding mothers of Mother's Day would make of it all. Those 19th-century women who organized "Mothers' Work Days" to improve sanitation. Those post-Civil War mothers who tried to bridge the gap between North and South. And that pacifist, Julia Ward Howe, who organized the first Mothers' Day for Peace.

What would they make of a holiday that began with feminism and pacifism and ended up with perfume and flowers? What would they make of a day to change the world that became a day to get breakfast in bed?

Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day a national holiday in 1914 when suffragists were chaining themselves to the White House gates. Instead of the political power, he gave them a sentimental gift. Is this where we are now?

Every year, there seems to be new books about the madness of motherhood in America. Some of them could curdle the milk on your bed tray: many women don't know what to expect when they are expecting; don't know that motherhood is the single greatest risk factor for poverty; that you can't do it alone.

Nearly every one of them has a chapter about what women need to perform this perilous personal and economic juggling act. The policy to-do lists are the unfinished business that one generation has passed on to the next.

The list includes child care and the quality of it. Time and the lack of it. Paid parental leave. Paid sick leave. And the perennial holdover that caused my first mother-rant: Isn't there some way to counter our kid-unfriendly culture?

How do we explain this legacy? How do we explain why the mothers' movement has grown so much slower than our children? That its growth is stunted?

In Thomas Frank's book he asks, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He describes how a populist economic agenda was derailed and overtaken by the culture wars. Do we have to ask now, "What's the Matter with Mothers?" Or if we don't want to blame the victim, what's the matter with the Mother 'Hood? Has the family policy agenda been derailed by the mommy wars?

Today, the scariest part of Social Security privatization is the effect it could have on survivors' benefits for mothers and children. But it's much easier to argue about whether a 13-year-old in Florida should be forced into motherhood. There's no law requiring paid sick leave for private employees in Texas, but the state House of Representatives just passed a law that "empowers parents" by prohibiting suggestive cheerleading.

Our country is one of only five in the world without paid maternity leave, but we are focused on runaway brides. We are in a national state of overwork, but the welfare debate now hinges on getting the poorest mothers of young children to work longer hours.

What's the matter? In an Atlantic Monthly review of mommy books, Sandra Tsing Loh writes: "I would march on Washington but, hey, I can't even get my kid into kindergarten." The scope of her motherhood, she says, "has shrunk to the size of a panic room."

My generation of mothers traded depression for stress, not such a bad bargain. But this generation doesn't have time to lobby for time. It is too busy scrambling for health care to insist on health care.

Should we ask what's the matter with politics? I know this burden can't just rest on mothers and not fathers; on parents and not politicians. But without a successful motherhood movement, the politicians sag. Without political leadership, the movement falters.

In the last election, the Democrats had a family economic agenda and never sold it. In this vacuum, married mothers bought a fearful package of "security" and "moral values." This year, pollster Celinda Lake notes ruefully, she can't name a single politician planning to attend a Mother's Day event. Motherhood is no longer the apple pie of the politician's eye.

There's nothing that public policy can do about the sleep deprivation of new parents, and governments do not provide love. But this year we will spend about $11 billion on Mother's Day in sentimental offerings that last as long as the roses. When do mothers say that help is not a four-letter word and the mother 'hood deserves more than a day?

Ellen Goodman's column appears Friday on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com