""'s Day

In the US, we celebrate all sorts of "days" - for example, today is "Mothers" day - soon it will be "Father's" day and it goes from there. What is amazing is that there is no "Childrens" day - when I mention that, I am usually told "every day is children's day" - yea, fair enough, upto a point. The atrocities against children committed by their parents or other caretakers is something a society cannot and should not tolerate. The many children who wait for adoption or foster parents suffer while society argues about how to deal with such children. In the US, "celebrities" travel thousands of miles to adopt children - nothing wrong with that, but why they would not concentrate on children in their backyard is a mystery. I also have a difficult time accepting the argument that race and ethnicity should be a criterion while deciding on who can adopt who. A child needs a home and the security of a parent/parents - it should be as simple as that. Nothing else should matter, yet it does. We have too many hurdles for children to be adopted and supported - it is time we put that on the front burner. I wish this would be a battle that Newt Gingrich can take up - as an adopted child, he should understand. Dave Thomas, who led Wendy's for many years did a great job about adoptions - he died all too soon. We are also witnessing enormous changes in our society - the term "Mother" does refer to a "female" - yet "mothering" can be gender neutral - and I suppose so can "fathering". The difference between an XX and an XY is enormous - add to that the influence of all those sequences/genes/whatever that lie between what we know are exons (expressed sequences) and we realize that there is much we do not know. I never much cared for Howard Metzenbaum (late Senator from Ohio) -except for his fight against using race/ethnicity in adoption. Hope we see new leadership emerge.