mothers day

IMAO » Blog Archive » 23 Fun Facts About Mother’s Day

Forget flowers, candy, perfume, cards and brunch. All you REALLY need to make mom happy is to show her how much you know about the specialest, motherest day of the year by sharing these:______________

Fun Facts About Mother’s Day

For just this one day a year, be a sweetie and don’t say anything about her jeans, ok?

1) the Mother’s Day holiday was first conceived by an American woman named Anna Jarvis in 1907, but didn’t become an official holiday until 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson’s mom finally managed to guilt him into it.

2) Mother’s Day is celebrated in 43 countries around the world. the other 153 celebrate the more traditional “Is Dinner Ready Yet Day”

3) Mother’s Day is officially designated the 2nd Sunday in may, rather than on a fixed calendar day, because if you want something fixed, you should call your dad.

4) Mothers secrete large amounts of a hormone called “oxytocin” during childbirth, which is responsible for the feeling of love a mother has for her offspring. it also spikes on those rare occasions when your clothes make it into the hamper instead of landing on a nearby patch of floor.

5) Although different languages have different words for “mother”, all of them start with the letter “M”. except on Jerry Springer, where they usually start with “B”.

6) Mother’s Day ranks as the third most popular holiday in the world, after Christmas and Easter. it would rank higher were it not for the fact that there’s no such thing as leftover Mother’s Day candy.

7) in many Christian countries, Mother’s Day is associated with the Feast of Virgin Mary, except in America where it’s associated with the Binge of Ben & Jerry’s.

8) in Arab countries, the highlight of Mother’s Day is the “Burka Breakdance Contest.” If you’ve ever done a headspin in sand, you know how hard it is to win this thing.

9) Although mother chimpanzees, like human mothers, enjoy long-lasting relationships with their babies, they don’t celebrate Mother’s Day because their offspring are too busy plotting the Monkey Apocalypse to pick up a phone and call.

10) Maria del Carmen Bousada Lara from Spain gave birth to twin boys when she was 66 years old on December 29th, 2006, making her the world’s oldest birth-mother. On Mother’s Day 2007, she was presented with a solid chocolate rocking chair.

11) the most popular gift-flower on Mother’s Day is the red carnation. If you don’t have red carnations, most mothers will be just as happy with a nice red cabernet.

12) the Nazi government in Germany used to present an award called the Mother’s Cross on Mother’s Day to encourage women to have more children. Allied governments handed out maids & babysitters. Guess which one worked better?

13) in Paraguay, Mother’s Day is celebrated on may 15th, the Independence Day of the country, when many mothers enjoy a special treat of waking up to fireworks in bed.

14) Long ago, people in England honored their mothers with a wild, drunken day of celebration called “Mothering Sunday,” which was followed immediately by “Shhh! Mommy’s got a Hangover Monday”.

15) the average number of children born to women over a lifetime in the US is 2.03. Coincidentally, the average number of disappointing Mother’s Day gifts a woman receives over a lifetime is… somewhat higher by several orders of magnitude.

16) there are 17,124 florists in the US. On Mother’s Day, all of them will have nothing but black-spotted, wilty, petal-dropping flowers left. why didn’t you plan ahead, you thoughtless, ungrateful child!

17) On average, 43,000 births each year in the US occur someplace other than a hospital, which can only be blamed on the negative influence of ratings-hungry television dramas.

18) Ancient Egyptians believed that “Bast” was the mother of all cats on Earth, and that cats were sacred animals, possibly explaining why the traditional Egyptian Mother’s Day gift is a dead mouse.

19) many of the sweaters worn by mr. Rogers on the popular television show, mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, were actually knitted by his real mother. every year on Mother’s Day, he would give her a pair of scissors and beg her to cut the apron strings.

20) Having 4 official languages, various regions of Switzerland celebrate either Muttertag, La Festa Della Mamma, Fête des Mères, or Gimme Some Damn Chocolate Day.

21) Mother’s Day is the largest card-sending day of the year. It’s also the day postal sorting machines are most likely to become jammed with macaroni and glitter.

22) in Ethiopia, Mother’s Day is celebrated by having mothers anoint themselves with butter. just my opinion, but if they added flour, sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, and 10 minutes at 350 degrees, it’d be a much better holiday for everyone.

23) according to the most recent census, there are 85.4 million mothers in the United States. Despite all of them fondly recalling the birth of their children, all of them have, at one time or another, asked their non-door-closing offspring if they were born in a barn.______________

Ya know, all 85.4 million mothers have also said, “some day you’ll thank me for this.”

And all 85.4 million of them were right.

UPDATE: Linked by I’m a Man, I’m 41

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Stay-at-Home Mothers’ Work Adds Up to Significant Worth

“She’s a stay-at-home mom”

“Oh, she doesn’t work?”

So the conversation often goes. but recent comments questioning Ann Romney’s ability to address economic issues because she “hasn’t worked a day in her life” reignited the debate about the value of stay-at-home mothers. Romney stayed home to raise five sons.

Does raising children full time count as work? does it add anything to the economy? does making the household budget, paying bills, shopping and preparing taxes count as financial knowledge?

Stay-at-home mothers often grapple with the little recognition they get. according to U.S. census data, there were 5 million stay-at-home mothers and 154,000 stay-at-home dads in 2010.

Society tends not to view staying home to raise the children as work because there is no paycheck involved, said Debbie Garvin, master lecturer at Fisher School of Accounting at University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business Administration.

“I think that’s an erroneous assumption that the fact that you don’t get a paycheck means you aren’t providing any economic value,” she said.

To assess the contribution of a stay-at-home mother, Garvin said, the marriage should be looked at a business partnership. just like in a business, the economic contribution of a stay-at-home mother would be half of what she and her spouse produced together.

Salary.com’s general manager, Abby Euler, described a stay-at-home mother’s work as a “hybrid job description.”

A stay-at-home mother is a housekeeper, a cook, a day-care center teacher, a facilities manager, a computer operator I, a van driver, a janitor, a psychologist, a laundry machine operator, a chief executive officer, a staff nurse, an event planner, a nutritionist, a logistics analyst, an interior designer, a bookkeeper, an administrative assistant, a plumber, a general maintenance worker and a groundskeeper. according to Salary.com, stay-at-home mothers work 94.7 hours per week.

“You can never put a dollar value on what moms do,” Euler said.

But the website, she said, has a salary estimator that allows one to understand the value of the parent who stays home as if they had a paycheck. A stay-at-home mother of four children younger than 5 would receive between $64,148 and $164,684 per year.

‘CONSTANTLY WORKING’

Melissa Witmer, a mother of two, quit her job in public health education four years ago to raise her children. She said the difference between what she would make on her job and what she would pay for child care wasn’t worth it.

Based on her Bartow ZIP code, Witmer would earn $87,138 on the low end and $124,082 on the high end for raising two children. The estimator provides the ability to customize the calculation by number of children and location.

Contrary to the idea that stay-at-home mothers are just out shopping, many are active in their communities and children’s schools.

Witmer organizes Mothers of Preschoolers, a program that brings different speakers to talk to mothers on different topics.

Volunteering with the community, she said, allows her to interact with different people affected differently by the economy.

“I think I work a lot harder,” she said. “We don’t really get lunch breaks. We’re constantly working.”

Terri Goleno, a certified public accountant and financial planner with Lakeland-based Cheatham, Goleno, & Ferguson, P.A., said there is a significant dollar value in that volunteer time.

Through their involvement with their communities, in such activities as fundraising for organizations or feeding needy families, she said, stay-at-home mothers witness the changes in the economy and see firsthand how it affects families.

If you were to take away all of the volunteer time that stay-at-home moms put into the communities, Goleno said, the communities would lack more and would need more government assistance.

Unlike stay-at-home mothers, Goleno said, stay-at-home fathers tend not to be as involved with the community. They also tend to be more laid-back and less likely to sweat the details, she said. Mom may still have to return from her outside job and tidy the house up or do the laundry. still, she said, these fathers tend to be even more discounted, and deserve just as much recognition as their female counterparts.

Mothers who choose to home school save the public education system between $12,000 and $27,000 per year, based on what average public schools spend per child nationally, according to the Cato Institute, a public policy research organization. Polk County public schools spend $8,416 annually per child.

OFTEN MORE IN TUNE

But even with all this, is it enough to qualify as being knowledgeable about current affairs? are stay-at-home mothers ignorant of the economy and financial issues?

“Heck, no,” Garvin said. “If anything, often, they’re more cognizant of what’s going on in the economy because they are going out shopping, budgeting.”

From helping the children with homework and term papers, she said, stay-at-home mothers are often more in tune with what’s going on than someone occupied with a full-time job.

“Nobody knows everything, but to say that someone who’s not working outside the home is not aware of economic issues is an ignorant statement,” Garvin, who’s also a certified public accountant and a lawyer, said.

Shawn Arnold, a stay-at-home mother who runs PolkMoms.com, said the ability to educate oneself on current affairs is an individual issue.

“I don’t think that’s a stay-at-home-mom topic. It’s a personality topic,” she said. “I like to stay very educated and maybe being a stay-at-home mom affords me the opportunity.”

And those working outside home are not necessarily more in touch with what’s going on, Goleno said. in fact, she said, the person working a regular job may even know less because most jobs don’t require knowledge of the economy or they are too wrapped up in their work to read the newspapers.

“I think it’s your involvement in the community and processes that makes you aware of what’s going on,” she said.

Raising the children and preparing them to learn, she said, is better for the economy in the long run because these children will be running the country in the future.

“Stay-at-home moms aren’t given enough credit for their knowledge and hard work,” Goleno said. “Bottom line, women, whether working outside the home or inside the home, are working.”

[ Elvina Nawaguna can be reached at Elvina.Nawaguna@theledger.com or 802-7515. ]

Spa Week Launches Mother’s Day Gift Card Sale

New York, NY (April 23, 2012)