It’s Mothering Sunday in the UK again today and with it, as has become customary, the usual mealy-mouthed platitudes that distance the event from a celebration of mums.

Arguably it’s just the case on social media, and not in the world of real interactions with people, where we are are still wishing each other Happy Mothers’ Day with a lovely hug. (This is where I think the apostrophe should go and it’s my blog.) On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram though, people are extending their Mothers’ Day wishes to people who aren’t mothers.

Now, as you’d expect, I’m all for inclusion and breaking traditional norms. I accept the need for modern terms, though I’m not yet accustomed to “chestfeeding.”

Of course we should consider the feelings of  women who wish they were mothers. Of course we should spare a thought for people who are estranged from their mothers. Of course. But, yet again, I have come across this excrescence:

I’m sorry but that last one “Those that have chosen not to be mums” infuriates me. Why do they get a look-in on Mothering Sunday, if they have chosen not to be a mother? It’s cakeism, as far as I can see, and so many of this group of people seem to spend a lot of time disparaging those of us who are parents and those whom we are trying to wrangle. If you’re not a mum, you’re not a mum.

On International Women’s Day we have to spare a thought for men, bless their cotton socks, even though there IS such a thing as International Men’s Day, as comedian Richard Herring has heroically spent years pointing out. There are Valentine’s Day alternatives for those without sweethearts. When did we become so fragile?

The gradual marketing manipulation of commemorative days annoys me, too. I am enraged by “Black Friday Week,” especially in a country where we don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving Day. The day AFTER St Patrick’s Day a horde of marketing emails with a tenuous relationship to the Irish Patron Saint arrived in my inbox, promoting inter alia green hair clips; knitwear; Hong Kong networking groups; food processors. Go away.

St Valentine’s Day is no longer a day for bashful would-be sweethearts and anonymous profession of unrequited love. No. It’s now become a marathon slog of hours waiting for an exorbitant set meal in an overcrowded restaurant and feeling obliged to buy extortionate red roses, which is about as far from romantic as one could ever get. My friend has just told me that she avoided Mothering Sunday lunch with her children for a similar reason and is just getting a nice takeaway. Hey, marketers, your targeted commemorations are turning people off you.

My offspring, who normally eschew trite public celebration of marketing fests, received a timely reminder from my husband of the need to mark today in some way so I have received some lovely flowers and some yellow shortie wellies, though we are exhorted not to share pictures of such things lest they upset someone.

As I find myself alone this year, for reasons, I am taking myself out for a meal tonight and being joined by a friend also a mother. It’s only when you’re a parent that you appreciate the level of sacrifice and pure hard work that being a parent necessitiates. The needs of another person automatically have top priority over your life forever.

Let mums have our day. The rest of you can have the other 364.