If you want to know the real value of a good mother, just look at the cost society pays when parents fail to become positive influences on their children's lives.
Drug use, crime and drop-out rates are high and there aren't enough foster homes to hold all the children who come from dysfunctional homes.
Some of those kids, either on their own or through the help of social programs, will right themselves and become productive members of society. But those cases are the exception rather than the rule. Once children come out of homes damaged, they usually stay damaged and pass it along to their children and the cycle repeats itself.
Social programs are necessary and important, but it would take a stretch to think they're ever going to compensate for a lack of parenting.
Part of the problem is that being a good parent is tough and getting tougher. It's harder to make a living and that often means parents spend more time at work and less time at home. At the same time, for the children there's trouble and temptation seemingly lurking in every shadow.
Against all that, it would be easy for parents to take the path of least resistance when it comes to raising children.
And that's why on this Mother's Day we salute all of those mothers - and that's most of them - who do just the opposite.