Being U.S. president isn't the toughest job on the planet. It's being a mom

You've often heard it said that the American presidency is the the hardest job on the planet.

The never-ending stress, perpetual crises and relentless criticism take their toll on everyone who has ever served.

You need only to consider Barack Obama, who strode into office looking young enough to be one of the Jonas Brothers and came outlooking like Mick Jagger.

It's no coincidence that, post-presidency, he's gotten his groove back.

It's reported that William Henry Harrison hated the presidency so much, he knocked off at noon. James Buchanan — one of the worst presidents ever — is said to have told his successor Abraham Lincoln: “My dear sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”

During the war caused by Buchanan's incompetence, a beleaguered Lincoln remarked, "If there's a worse place than hell, I am in it."

With all due respect, suffering the slings and arrows from Fox News and staring down Vladimir Putin is not the hardest job in the world.

Motherhood is.

No amount of money can compensate for it.

Mothers are the first people we fall in love with. When everyone else washes their hands, mothers ride or die for their kids, even when we touch the hot stove, even when we ignore her advice and steer directly into the iceberg.

There's a reason TV commercials for detergents never boast about getting rid of baby spit-up. That's because nothing can get it out of your clothes — not fire, not bleach, not boric acid.

Mothers wear it like a badge of honor. Some men who grow beards and thump their chests while chugging beer practically faint at the site of a loaded diaper, let alone spit-up, which has longer shelf life than nuclear waste.

Too often we take mothers for granted, yet they were deemed so important, even Jesus had one.

It could be even said that Mary was the world's first Christian, enduring the scurrilous gossip about the circumstances surrounding his birth, yet believing in her son's divinity when no one else did.

Mary: "Son, they've run out of wine."

Jesus: "But, Ma ..."

Mary: "They can't be embarrassed. You, servants. Do whatever he tells you."

A lion has nothing on mothers, who scramble and scrape and fight for their children, enduring the worst that the world has to offer.

While some moms fight over Stanley Cups, others walk miles to secure a cup of milk.

Too often, working mothers are made to feel guilty about having a job and and leaving their children in the care of others.

Firstly, kids have to eat. Not everyone has an ideal situation. Relationships and marriages can go awry.

Secondly, if it's any consolation, Hitler and Osama bin Laden had stay-at-home moms.

The world could use more moms in the public sphere. When former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was leading her country, she also was raising kids, which perhaps may be one reason why the Six-Day War lasted six days —not six months — as is the current case.

Though fathers certainly grieve also, moms have a deeper understanding of loss. They bear a double grief when losing a child they carried in their bodies for nine months. There's no greater intimacy than this.

It's why the world could use more people who are less amenable to saber-rattling as a first resort. Mothers innately understand that "casualties" require some woman's child to die.

Mothers experience pride — and yes, a little fear, when their children take flight into the wider world. Forming human beings is a complicated process which never really ends; neither does the worry, no matter how well they do.

The narrative of history is strewn with futile examples of men who have tried to exert a stranglehold on power.

But at some point, a president stops being president.

For moms, the job never ends.

Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Charita Goshay writes about Mother's Day