Not to sound overly dramatic, but for the women I treat as a physical therapist, exercise can mean the difference between quality of life and practically no life at all.

Patsy Shropshire, the physical therapist who won the “Fit After 50 Member Challenge” hosted by the American Physical Therapy Association.

I run a health and wellness group in Dallas for 20 women who primarily are in their 50s and 60s. They have survived breast, uterine, and thyroid cancer as well as leukemia and MS.

They are women with balls. Stability balls, that is.

These “Women With Balls” do weight training while balancing on stability balls. They also run, speed-walk, stretch, and do yoga. Every year they compete in the Dallas Marathon Relay and a Christmas Fun Run that we host for a charitable cause.

The physical challenges for most of these women have been a wake-up call to change their lives. One of our members, a professor with leukemia, underwent a bone marrow transplant and credits exercise for her survival. Another is several weeks out from a double mastectomy. While she waits to see what her next treatment will be, she’s doing fast walks and some easy runs.

I’ve been a physical therapist for more than 25 years and believe the more one learns about the human body, the more motivated she or he will be to exercise. That’s why I teach women about anatomy, posture, proper nutrition, and injury and disease prevention. This is where physical therapy makes all the difference — designing a program based on evidence that takes preexisting conditions into account and teaching people what they need to know to get better and stronger.

For me, exercise has been a part of my daily routine for most of my life. It doesn’t just provide physical health, but mental and emotional health as well. I love competitive runs, lifting weights, yoga, and teaching these concepts to others. I also have a veggie and fruit garden so I can feed my family fresh, organic food. My husband and I have four kids who are becoming more and more health conscious themselves. Exercise has been, and always will be, the answer for me.

As for Women With Balls, many have been a part of this program for more than ten years. One WWB participant told me, “This is the first sorority I’ve ever been in.” When it means something to you, you stick with it.

The post Fit After 50 Challenge – Exercise As If Your Life Depends On It appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

One of the more unfortunate changes occurring in my body as I age, and my husband’s, is kidney capacity, or more accurately, our lack of it. This loss of “kidney fortitude” over the years modifies travel plans. Years ago … actually, decades ago … the time-span between pit stops could be hours. Such stops were dictated by the need for gas. Not anymore.

The main reason we stop nowadays is because someone has to pee.

Last week, for example, we braved a ten-hour drive home after visiting our son. We wanted to make the trip in one day, arriving home long before midnight. I suggested we drive at least two hours before the first stop.

Bad idea.

We drove only an hour when my better-half had to pee. He could not wait. At this rate, I figured, we would get home in the middle of the night, or more accurately, the next morning. But once it gets dark, neither one of us wants to undertake hours of driving; this too changes with age (at least for us). As summer turns into autumn, then winter, we lament the seasonal onset of shorter days. Dark by five o’clock, and before eight o’clock the last thing we want to do is continue driving.

Meryl Baer

If I ever write a book, it is going to be an informational one about where and how to locate places to pee while traveling. Decades back, gas stations were the number one choice, but long ago they became less than satisfactory. In recent years the rise of gas/convenience stores with fairly clean rest rooms has been a boon to travelers.

Especially travelers like us!

My husband often decides to get a cup of coffee before taking off again. That is fine, except it decreases even more our drive time between breaks.

I remember an infamous car trip when our boys were about 6- and 8-years-old. My sister-in-law, six months pregnant, joined us. Our adventure began in San Francisco and ended at a relative’s house in Los Angeles. It was a long trip, and we were hoping to complete it in one very long day of driving — we were much younger then!

We would stop and ask several times, “Anybody have to go? We’re stopping now.” Not everyone would take advantage of the opportunity. We all piled back into the car with drinks and snacks, and sometimes less than ten minutes would pass before a small, sheepish voice— usually one of the boys or the pregnant mom — piped up: I have to pee NOW.

I thought those days were over.

I was wrong.

As we baby boomers age, the time between stops gets shorter and the length of our car trips gets longer. Soon we will either have to take a portable potty along with us or plan on spending more time, and money, on motels.

And so our journey continues.

The post Boomer Dilemma – Are We Traveling Together … or is it Potty Time Yet? appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

The quaint town of Tepoztlán (place of abundant copper in the indigenous Nahuatl language) has grown rapidly to more than 40,000 inhabitants in recent years. Some of the growth can be attributed to the Pueblo Mágico (magical town) designation bestowed by the Mexican Secretariat of Tourism. This award recognizes selected towns for their scenic beauty, cultural heritage, and/or their historical significance.

Mike strolls the market.

Tepoztlán comes to life on Market Days, every Wednesday and Sunday. That is when food vendors, craft persons, and local farmers set up awnings around the main square. People come from Mexico City and surrounding towns to enjoy the live music, shop for fresh produce, dine, and perhaps seek out their favorite flavor of ice cream; this town is famous for that!

Our first visit to Tepoztlán was on a Sunday. We chose a nearby restaurant for lunch before filling several grocery bags with fresh fruits and vegetables including pineapple, strawberries, bananas, mangos, mandarin oranges, tomatoes and avocados, all for about $15. We would have looked into the 16th-Century Dominican cathedral, The Parish of the Nativity, except that Sunday mass was just getting out, and the area in and around the cathedral was too crowded.

Our return visit to Tepoztlán a few weeks later allowed us time to visit the cathedral. Access to its grounds from the marketplace is through an arched gate. The face of the portal is exquisitely decorated with a mosaic scene portraying in fine detail the agricultural imagery of the region. The whole picture is portrayed solely with the use of seeds, beans, and organic materials. Even though the image is preserved by a thick layer of varnish, we learned that the entire mosaic is redesigned and redone from scratch every year.

The cathedral itself is a tribute to the ingenuity of the artisans of the 1500s who carved the intricate stonework on the façade. The local history is also superbly displayed and described at the adjacent former convent, now a museum. We were as impressed with the stunning architectural detail of the building as we were with the museum’s exhibits.

For the more adventurous visitor, an invigorating hike up the neighboring peak of Tepozteco offers spectacular vistas of the town, the surrounding hills, and the distant central valley of Morelos. To this day, there are remains of an Aztec-era temple high on the cliffs of Tepozteco, probably a site for priests from an earlier era.

Whether you like to shop or if you simply prefer a beautiful drive in the country, Tepoztlán is worth a visit. Tourists staying in Mexico City can take one of the many comfortable buses to Cuernavaca for 200 Mexican pesos per person ($16) and then catch a local bus or a taxi for the 15-mile ride to Tepoztlán. Taxis from Cuernavaca can be hired for 160 pesos ($13) pesos each way, which saves the hassle of looking for a parking place.

Follow Florence and Mike online … click here.

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The oldest baby boomers have already turned 65, and the older population of the U.S. is beginning to swell. The age-65-and-older population grew 18 percent between 2000 and 2011 to 41.4 million senior citizens, according to a recent Administration on Aging report. And these numbers are expected to further balloon over the coming decade as baby boomers continue to reach traditional retirement age. Here’s what retirement looks like for the typical person age 65 or older in the U.S., reports US News and World Report.

Low incomes.

Most retirees have very modest incomes. The median income for people age 65 and older was $27,707 for males and $15,362 for females in 2011. The typical household headed by someone age 65 or older had a median income of $48,538. The median income increased by 2 percent between 2010 and 2011 after adjusting for inflation. Almost 3.6 million elderly people (8.7 percent) lived below the poverty level in 2011.

Reliance on Social Security.

The most common source of retirement income is Social Security, and 86 percent of people age 65 and older receive monthly payments. And Social Security is responsible for 90 percent or more of the income received by 36 percent of beneficiaries. Only about half (52 percent) of retirees receive income from their assets. Even fewer retirees receive monthly payments from private (27 percent) or government (15 percent) pensions. “The boomers will be the first generation to overwhelmingly not receive some sort of guaranteed benefits from employers,” says Ken Dychtwald, president of the consulting firm Age Wave and author of “A New Purpose: Redefining Money, Family, Work, Retirement, and Success.” “We now live in a 401(k) world where people are responsible for our own savings, and baby boomers have not done a very good job. It’s a generation that is going to struggle in old age in the absence of reliable anchors and support systems.”

Continuing to work.

A growing proportion of the older population is continuing to work during the traditional retirement years. Some 18.5 percent of Americans age 65 and older were in the labor force in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including 24 percent of men and 14 percent of women. Young retirees between ages 65 and 69 are the most likely to be working. “For a lot of people, they literally need to work. Work has also increasingly become connected with the sense of the meaning of life and the purpose of life,” says Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, director of the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College. “The same person might have reasons from each of those categories.”

Making it to Medicare.

The older population is much more likely to have health insurance coverage than younger counterparts. Almost all Americans (93 percent) age 65 and older were covered by Medicare in 2011. And 86 percent of retirees also have supplementary coverage that fills in some of the gaps and cost-sharing requirements of traditional Medicare.

Click here for the full story.

The post The Baby Boomer Retirement Crunch is Starting appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

I-phones, I-full, I-pads, I-sores, I-hop, I-scream, I-shop, I-roar, I-tweet, I-connect, I-95, I-refresh …

Okay, I admit it -– I never want the last of our kids to move out

I’m busy.

Why? Answer me this: How many times, between six- and twenty-years-old, did you have to re-learn your Princess phone? Your alarm clock? TV set or stereo? A thermostat? Laundry machine?? Your damn watch??? Sorry, I’m just flippin’ mad, ‘cause how do we keep up without a kid in our house?! How do we not lose our precious grip on electronic relevance?

Being a boomer’s not easy, is it?!

That’s why Caroline’s and my strategy shifted 180-degrees. Instead of grooming chicks for eventual release, we’re now doing everything to keep them home. Luckily, my background’s in construction, and although there’s plenty of affordable housing nearby, we’re building an “adult child suite” in the basement. I’ve read articles about preventing adult children from returning to the nest, and they leave me stunned. Are they nuts? Tell me, what kind of firm would fire its entire IT department? Same thing!

Doing everything to keep them at home … We love and pamper our children still living at home.

My wife’s doing her part to keep our kids from shopping apartment rentals. How? She’s out buying much better food. We’re more aware than ever that our kids prefer a totally different menu than the one we served for years. Gone are casseroles, white breads, frosty cakes and soft drinks. She’s not printing calorie cards or anything, but we now offer ‘smart’ water, sugarless organics, homemade crusts for pizzas and vegan pot-pies, super-foods, nuts, vegetables, and fresh fruit.

Carrier Slocomb, father for life.

Why, just last week my son wanted to install something I’d never heard of so that my laptop could harvest things better, and help me do some other things that I don’t yet get. After this new program’s installed, we’ll be able to chat with another son in the Air Force abroad, puree blueberries in the blender when we’re not even home, track mail deliveries, count socks in the laundry, and combine checking, savings, and our stock portfolio (what remains of it) into one easy-to-fathom number. Naturally, I was quite impressed!

Sure, there’s a big pricetag to maintaining adult children at home but, negatives aside, there isn’t much we can do anyway. That is, until they make robots that can understand us the way our kids do. And having a robot around probably wouldn’t be any cheaper than having an adult kid.

Follow Carrier online … click here.

The post Discouraging Maturity Despite Boomer Power and Influence appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

There’s nothing like nostalgia. And when it’s by a boomer, and bittersweet, even better. That’s what this excerpt evokes. It’s from Boyd Lemon’s new book, “Retirement: A Memoir and Guide.”

I remember sitting in my beach chair a hundred steps from my front door, fine, cream-colored sand caressing the bottoms of my feet. My field of vision drifted from the stark silhouette of Anacapa to the purplish browns of Santa Cruz, two of the Channel Islands off the coast of California, 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

I was officially in the city of Oxnard, a place with an ugly name that fails to hint at this serene beauty, in a neighborhood that hadn’t been discovered by the hoards from Los Angeles. Serene as the scene was, and despite the loosening warmth of a half-imbibed gin martini in my right hand, I felt a tightness in the pit of my stomach, radiating up to my chest. I was almost 63 and thinking about retirement at some future time.

I visualized my father 40 years earlier, sitting in his forest green easy chair in the living room of my childhood home as I studied a book on torts during my first year of law school. The Los Angeles Herald Express, an evening paper that he had read six evenings a week since I could remember, was in his lap, still folded up.

Author and writer Boyd Lemon.

He stared into the space between him and the front window. After working for the Southern California Edison Company for 35 years, Dad had grudgingly retired at the mandatory age of 65. Three years later he had developed no new interests. Once in a while he went to the horse races at Santa Anita or the poker parlors in Gardena, as he had before retirement, but afterwards he didn’t have the income to go often. Mom had told me that she was worried about him. “He just mopes around the house,” she said.

A few days later I was in my bedroom putting on a clean shirt before leaving to visit my girlfriend. Dad’s bedroom door, across the hall from mine, was partly open. I saw him reach into his dresser drawer, pull out a whiskey bottle, unscrew the cap and take a long swallow. It was ten in the morning. I had never seen my father take one sip of an alcoholic beverage. I turned my head away. I didn’t want him to know that I saw, and I never told my mother. Less than a year later he died.

Boyd Lemon is online … click here.

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Imagine a future when thanks to genetic manipulations, you would look young all your life until you drop dead. A blessing or a curse?

Author Claude Nougat

This question has been haunting me for several years now — no doubt because, as so many boomers, I am facing my own aging and have to take care of my elderly mother who will be 100 years old this year.

She is doing remarkably well with her mind intact, she enjoys reading one new novel every week on her Kindle, butdaily life is not easy. What is routine to us is a chore for her. So I began to dream of a future where medical science had solved the problem of aging, saving us from the discomforts and diseases of the elderly.

It’s a safe bet that 200 years from now we’ll have a fully-functioning technology for staying young. And it is also likely that it will be tremendously expensive. With our current economic system, technical advances, even when they cost little to produce (like contact lenses or aspirin), reach the market at very high prices. And stay that wayeven when the cost of production has dropped dramatically. Because, so the Big Corporations tell us, of the need to finance research. Whatever the reason,this means that only the ultra-rich will have access to the benefits of scientific progress.

It means you will have a few people looking young all their lives while the rest of humanity continues to age visibly and suffer the indignities of old age. How will Society address such differences that will appear as inequities at best, as tragedies at worst?

This is the world that 2213:Forever Young, a serial novel explores. In Part One, I Will Not Leave You Behind, the main character, a beautiful 122-year-old woman who is a member of the Age Prevention Program and doesn’t look a day older than twenty, discovers she only has 12 hours to live. But she’s madly in love with a young and dashing ski instructor who doesn’t know how old she is because she never dared tell him, lest their love would vanish. What will she do now?

In Part Two, You Will Not Take My Place, the inequities resulting from the Age Prevention Program are further explored— in this case, a dramatic fight explodes as one member of the Program tries to pass on his place to the woman he loves at the expense of his own daughter, the rightful heir.

The book is listed by Amazon as “hard science fiction,” an accurate category for a tough, emotion-laden story based on a highly probable projection into the future of current trends in science and society.

——————————————-

For your free copy of Part One, I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU BEHIND click here.
To get for just 99 cents Part Two, YOU WILL NOT TAKE MY PLACE click here.

Since it is a serial novel, each part may be read independently although it is preferable to read them in sequence. Each episode explores different facets of our future, in the vein of 1984, Clockwork Orange or WOOL, as a way to examine the issues we are facing today.

The post What if Boomers Were to Live Forever? Blessing or Curse? appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

My wife and I are leading edge baby boomers but we are not, repeat NOT, looking for a place to retire. We live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and still love to ski; need I say more?!

Moonrise over the desert at Mirabel.

But we did just spend the last couple of weeks visiting a few different friends who have retired to a few different parts of one of America’s retirement havens, Arizona, where the only time you hear “ski” comes at the end of a hot day when someone offers you a “brewski.”

For five of our days in the desert, we stayed in the gorgeous home of some old friends who live within the boundaries of a beautiful golf course in northern Scottsdale called Mirabel; here’s the view from the back of their house. The trouble is, unlike a lot of baby boomers looking for a sport they can play to the grave, we don’t play golf, which is at the heart of people’s lives there. And no wonder it is: if you have a golf cart with a little roof, you always have a spot of shade.

Shade, in Arizona, is a good thing, but you have to be clever to find it. Not many shade trees in those parts, and you won’t get shade by leaning up against a Saguaro cactus. The only thing you’ll get if you do that is a world of hurt.

A swimming pool in the “backyard.”

But back to golf. While I myself don’t play, I did ride along one day with three friends who do. And what I learned was, I like the game more than I thought I would. Not the part about the ball, the clubs, and those gritty sand traps, not to mention the perils of hunting for a wayward drive amidst the patches of cacti that border the fairways. My friends actually carry around mechanical ball-snatchers on a long pole to beat through the desert brush in the hunt for a lost ball; reach in with your bare hand and if a cactus doesn’t draw blood, a snake’s fangs might.

But back … again … to golf, and what I liked about it. Well, there were two things. First, the “comfort stations” at the end of the 4th and 13th holes. They are like the best snack bars you ever saw … on steroids. Chocolate bars, energy cakes, homemade cookies, homemade chocolate-covered bananas in the little frig under the counter, and all the cold beverages you could consume.

But that’s not even the best part, because what I liked even more was Alberto! Who’s he? Just the most important guy on the golf course, because he’s standing there over a silver chafing dish before you reach the 8th tee, offering whatever scrumptious hot daily concoction he has prepared for your pleasure. On my day, it was a roast beef wrap generously smeared with mayonnaise and peppered with sliced dill pickle. I could really get into this golf thing!

Self-portrait in the desert … Greg takes a break from his bicycle.

However, when I wasn’t on the course, hunting down chocolate-covered bananas or roast beef wraps, I was out riding my bike. That’s me by the side of the road in this second photo, a self-portrait taken with my amazing iPhone5’s “turn the lens around and take your own picture” feature. I might look a little better if only my arms were longer.

Anyway, biking’s not such a bad thing to do in the desert, if you don’t play golf. Sure, it’s hot, but for once those cacti might serve some purpose higher than bestowing their beauty … namely, if your Camelback water-carrier leaks as mine did, you can carve into a cactus and, like the pioneers who came before us, survive in the middle of the desert … which of course I didn’t do because by the time my water was gone, I was close enough to my friends’ house to return without incident. Not to mention my lurking suspicion that all those stories about people surviving from the water in a cactus are claptrap. I mean, have you ever looked at a cactus? Wet, it’s not!

That said, the other reason biking is fine in the desert is, no sweat. I don’t mean “no sweat” in the sense of not working hard; I mean, you don’t sweat. One day, I did a 20-mile ride at a flat-out pace, meaning, pushing myself as hard as I could. Yet when I reached the end of the ride, there wasn’t a drop of sweat on this baby boomer’s brow. That’s not because it wasn’t hot; the fact is, the temperature was 97-degrees and believe me, with no golf carts for shelter, I was in the direct line of the sun for every second of the ride. But there is no, repeat NO, humidity.

The weather extremes of the West – early Spring snow at Mirabel near Scottsdale, AZ.

So if you’re a baby boomer and thinking you might want to retire some day to the sunbelt of our fine country, you could do worse than to end up in Arizona. If you play golf, you’ll be happy. If you ride a bike, you’ll be happy. And if you fear you’ll miss the fresh crisp phenomenon of snow, you’ll be happy too… as you’ll see in this photograph, shot by my friend from his backyard, the same backyard in Scottsdale you saw before, just two months earlier.

Back home in snowy Colorado from the heat of Arizona … and a mess to clean from bicycles.

Mind you, I hardly needed snow in Arizona, because almost the moment my wife and I drove back into Colorado, we got enough to satisfy us … which as this final photo shows, encased our bike rack, and the bikes hanging on it in the hot sun for 2,700 miles, in slush,which turned to ice, most of which I melted off with hot water from our green jug before thinking I should take a picture of it all first because I knew I’d write this story. About the heat in Arizona. Now, back in Colorado, it’s merely a memory.

The post BoomerCafé’s Greg Dobbs Tours Boomer Paradises in the West appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

By Greg Dobbs

You might be right to wonder, what’s the big deal? The United States and Russia announced (on May 7th) that they are going to work together to try to end the fierce civil war in Syria, which threatens to destabilize the whole region … as if it’s otherwise a wellspring of stability. And as if these two world powers can succeed in the wake of nothing but failures so far. Well, the one thing we can count on is, if we don’t get in the game, we can’t possibly come out with a winner.

The U.S.-Russia plan? It’s hardly novel. The goal is to convene an international conference with the combatants themselves at the table. So if you say “Good luck” in a cynical tone, you might be right. First, because one side or another is likely to refuse to sit at a table and talk with its mortal enemies— and remember, one of the big obstacles is that there are more than just two sides in this war. Second, because if there’s one thing to which no one in Syria has proved responsive, at least to this point, it’s diplomacy.

Greg Dobbs reports from Moscow.

But this is a big deal anyway, because in this poker game on a global scale, the chips are being bet on a bigger battlefield than Syria. They fall on the fragile and sometimes hostile relationship between the brokers themselves: the U.S. (which half-heartedly supports Syria’s rebels), and Russia (which unsmilingly supports Syria’s President Assad).

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that our friendship these days is just one matchstick warmer than it was in the days of the Cold War. We accuse each other of everything from disrespect to malfeasance to brutality to espionage. They say we’re “Russophobic;” we say they’re “anti-American.”

Maybe we’re both right. But that’s why the outreach is so important. And well-conceived. Because for a change, American foreign policy isn’t premised primarily on providing incentives that we’d want if we were in our counterparts’ shoes; we keep trying that approach and it rarely works. This time, although still in the interest of American national security, it is premised on what the counterpart wants which is, in Russia’s case, respect.

I’ve covered news on that side of the world over a span of 35 years — both when Russia was the hammerhead of the Soviet Empire and since it became independent. Back in the day, when the Soviets spoke, the world trembled. They liked that. They called it respect. What President Putin and his populace want today, even crave, is a place again on the world stage. Respect. Don’t forget, they still have a nuclear arsenal, and some alliances we’d like to alter. They want to be taken seriously once again. They are nationalists; they believe they deserve it.

I’ve seen signs of that when covering a wide spectrum of stories there in just the past few years, from thugs breaking heads to support Putin’s aggressive pro-Russia presidency, to teens promoting the adoption of abandoned orphans to keep them in Russian hands, to the Russian space program, which has an honorable heritage and, ever since the latter part of the Cold War, a record of cooperation with ours. Although such stories are vastly different in theme, they’re all about nationalism.

Maybe something will come of this new joint effort to finally get the combatants in Syria to talk about ending the war. Maybe not. But at least if the U.S. and Russia follow through on their intent to work together diplomatically on a big issue for the first time in a long time, then there will be benefits, even if ultimately they’re not felt in Syria. Maybe Russia will see the value of a global partnership between two great powers, rather than reflexively and nationalistically opposing much of what we set out to do to build a better world, or at least to avert a worse one.

Then again, since it’s still a game of poker, maybe not.

The post Boomers Still Follow Mainstream News and See a World in a Mess appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.

With Mother’s Day, I feel compelled to speak up for the underappreciated dads of the world. Ever since we baby boomers were little kids, Mother’s Day has been as big as the Super Bowl. So, why is Father’s Day more like a junior high scrimmage? Consider this: last year Americans spent $8-Billion more celebrating Mom than Dad.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no beef with Mother’s Day. Being a mom is a tough job. Mothers deserve their “Hallmark Holiday” replete with a mandatory family brunch, where the price of admission is a non-Cubic Zirconia bauble or at least a fragrant (and costly) bouquet of red long-stemmed roses. We ignore Mom’s big day at our peril. After all, we have to make sure our Mom has bragging rights when she and her girlfriends compare notes. Still, I question why moms have been elevated to a status just below sainthood … while dads haven’t.

Lorie Eber and her father, Manuel “Manny” Eber.

Compare Mother’s Day to Father’s Day. Dads didn’t even get their own day until some of us boomers were coming of age in 1972, some 58 years after Mother’s Day was enshrined. What’s the most noteworthy stat about Father’s Day? Historically, it’s been the busiest day of the year for collect calls. Technologically updated, the cellphone satellites will be overwhelmed by three-word texts sent to dads from smartphone accounts paid for by … dads!

The thing is, if you forget Father’s Day entirely — no worries. Your chances of a reprimand are low. Those of us who take the time to shop for a pair of socks or a garish tie feel like we’ve gone above and beyond. If Dad’s Day is commemorated with a dinner, chances are Dad’s paying. Luckily, men don’t compare notes about their Father’s Day with their golf buddies.

I offer my opinion that dads are getting short shrift from my unbiased position as a daughter who is not a mother. As a boomer, I’ve seen dads take on more and more responsibilities over time. In the “Father Knows Best” era, role expectations were clear. Dad’s job was to bring home the bacon, while Mom was tasked with raising well-adjusted, adorable children.

Hallmark card.

With the advent of The Feminine Mystique, traditional marital roles were upended. Mom was free to enter the workplace, while Dad was expected to continue to work hard, but also to take on his fair share of parenting and domestic chores. While some women thrived in the workplace while juggling family responsibilities, I saw many women dabble as lawyers, only to give it up after a year or two once they realized that practicing law was stressful and often tedious. Men don’t enjoy the luxury of quitting when they’re no longer having fun.

In my own 23 years of lawyering, I observed my male colleagues put in their 80-hour workweeks while trying to meet their wives’ unrealistic expectations that they be home in time for dinner every night. Many a dad felt obliged to sneak away mid-afternoon on Friday to fulfill his obligations as soccer coach. If little Susie landed the coveted role of lead elf in the school play, dad was front and center in the audience cheering her on, even if he had to sprint from a meeting to bethere on time.

At an average cost these days of $300,000 per child, supporting kids is a veryexpensive proposition. And that doesn’t even include the cost of college. Dads still bear the brunt of this monetary outlay. My dad struggled valiantly tosupport five kids. I watched him expertly manage payments on two dozen credit cards and write post-dated checks to cover the bills.

It’s time that dads get their due. How about a website, www.DadsAreGreatToo.com, where people can brag about what they did to make their fathers feel special on Father’s Day? Anyone willing to set it up … and write the first post? (At this point, the domain name is available at NameCheap.com.)

The post In Observance of Mother’s Day, We Ask — Isn’t Dad Important Too? appeared first on BoomerCafé.com.