As the Mothers’ Day fashion show ended at a suburban Baltimore hotel last month, The Intruders’ “I’ll Always Love My Mama” played through loudspeakers for all to hear.

“Our women get songs like this,” a brother said to me. Another felt compelled to put in his two cents worth. “Yeah,” he added. “And we get songs like ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone.’”

I’ve been thinking about that ever since, especially now that Father’s Day 2008 approaches. Are there more R&B and hip-hop songs giving praise to mothers than there are to fathers?

Tupac Shakur made a song called “Dear Mama” praising his mother Afeni Shakur. Kanye West has “Hey Mama.” There’s “A Song For Mama” by Boyz II Men, whose current project is absolutely murdering The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination.”

Bill Withers had the excellent “Grandma’s Hands,” and there’s another song about “Grandma” but I can’t remember who did the thing. And then there’s that classic tune by The Intruders that started this topic rolling.

Just for the heck of it, I Googled “R&B songs about mothers” and came up with “Mom” by Earth, Wind and Fire and “Sadie” by The Spinners. Among rappers, even the so-called gangstas have gotten in on the act.

The Web site About.com lists odes to moms from rappers Saigon, Beanie Sigel, Brand Nubian, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Canibus, Ghostface Killah and the ever-still-Crippin’ Snoop Dogg.

What do black men have? I tried to scroll through the ones I remember. There’s “Patches” by Clarence Carter and the late, great Luther Vandross’ “Dance With My Father.” After that, I drew a complete blank.

So I tried Googling “R&B songs about fathers.” Are you surprised that the pickings were darned slim?

Those brothers at the Mother’s Day fashion show may have had a point: Black mothers get praised in song while black fathers get routinely dissed. Even The Intruders, in their classic, made it a point to dis dad while praising mom. Come on, you know the lines.

“What about Pop?”

“We ain’t talkin’ ‘bout Pop.”

“Pop was drinking more wine than we used to drink.”

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong comprised the music duo that came up with “Papa Was A Rolling Stone.” Either one or both of these guys clearly didn’t think much of their dads (When an observer noticed scars on the late former heavyweight champ Sonny Liston’s back, Liston is reputed to have said, “I had some bad dealings with my father."). They started dissing black dads even before “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” hit the charts in the early 1970s.

Anybody remember the opening stanzas from their 1968 Grammy-winning megahit “Cloud Nine?"

“Childhood part of my life wasn’t very pretty. I was born and raised in the slums of the city. It was a one-room shack that slept 10 other children beside me.

"We hardly had enough food or room to
sleep. It was hard times. Needed something to ease my troubled mind. My father didn’t know the meaning of work. He disrespected mama and treated us like dirt."

The next big hit for the Tempts to come from the songwriting duet of Whitfield and Strong was 1969’s “Runaway Child, Running Wild.” A little boy runs away from home and gets lost. Homesick, guess who he cries out for?

It ain’t his daddy.

It seems, for a while at least, as though a cottage industry had sprung up dedicated to bashing black dads in song. No wonder songs like “Patches” and “Dance With My Father” seem like rare musical tributes to black dads. It’s because they are rare musical tributes to black dads.

Much as I understand, indeed, even empathize with the lament of those brothers at the Mother’s Day fashion show, candor forces me to say that maybe black men have brought this on ourselves. We all know the stats because we’ve repeated them often enough.

In the early 1960s, about 80 percent of black homes had a father; in 2008, only about 30 percent do. The results of that are more disastrous than just being dissed in a song.

A Baltimore writer recently published a memoir about growing up black in his hometown. The line that resonated with me most was this one: “The disgrace was so broad that niggers actually bragged of running out on kids.”

Baltimore went on to set record homicide numbers during the years all that running out was going on, with young black men predominating as both victims and perpetrators. What else did we expect to happen?

Indeed, what else could have happened?