McNamara: Forget Mother’s Day cards and flowers. Women want their rights instead

When I was young, my father gave me one piece of advice about choosing a career: Stay away from any occupation with a national “appreciation” day.

As a public high school teacher, he believed that those days were a performative substitute for fair wages and social respect.

So what, by that logic, are we to make of Mother’s Day?

I’ve been a mother for 27 years, and was the child of a living mother for 40, so I appreciate the importance of a culturally enforced day in which...