Several years ago, I read a book about “group intelligence that said that groups (families, political parties, countries, companies, etc.) are more intelligent and effective when they are led by a majority of the female persuasion. The author presented research and examples.

However, I didn’t have any problem accepting his thesis. It seemed pretty obvious to me from the women I’ve known, notably my mother, my wife, and my daughter. They are the reasons I’ve never been disturbed that Mother’s Day has always been a bigger deal than Father’s Day. I believe that the mothers had a greater effect on their families than the fathers. Most of the time, we were running around trying to make a living.

My mother was the first big influence on my life, and because Daddy had been drafted and we lived in a three-room apartment, she had plenty of time to exercise that influence. Mother was very young, but more importantly, she had ideas beyond our station. I was learning to read before I got to school, and it’s probable that I was learning to be overly proud of skills like that before I had any real reason to be. However, partly because of Mother’s insistence, I grew into what I was pretending to be.

My brother asked me one time how one family in Benson, NC (an area not really famous for its literary output) could turn out two people who were able to make decent livings as writers. I told him it was Mother. He agreed.

I  moved from the influence of my mother to the influence of my wife. My marriage to Linda is the longest relationship I’ve ever had with anyone, and it has probably had the most profound effect. Although I was voted “Most Dependable” in my Senior class, everybody knew that was mostly a consolation prize, because we had almost as many superlatives as seniors. It was to laugh, because my head was generally somewhere else. Linda helped me focus on important things, and the same person who had stayed up all night in the college newspaper office planning the reenactment of a battle that had never occurred learned to get up in the morning and go out to the job, how to (mostly) act like an adult and be a family man.

Together we raised two children who grew up to be good people and who married good people. That’s about the best trophy anybody could ask for.

One of those children was our daughter, Leslie. She, like Linda, will be honored on Mother’s Day this Sunday. She and David have four children, two of whom are grown, and two are rapidly getting that way. She has provided the same strong guidance to her children that my mother did to me and that Linda did to her. I’m sure that it will continue from generation to generation.

Once a year, we declare a day to honor Mothers, but we all know that’s not enough. They’re doing their job every day, even when that job is being done while they do another job or even two or three more. Hallmark doesn’t have a card that does justice the work of mothers. Nor do I.

But I do agree with the guy who wrote the book on group intelligence. This world would probably be better run if we dialed back the testosterone and paid more attention to the gender that has been keeping families going for millennia.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, and especially to the ones who’ve had so much influence on my life.