There can be no harder working with no salary, dedication and love for their role than a parent or guardian, the rest is/are following a hobby/dream apart from Doctors, nurses, Police etc..anyone who physically helps others just because they want to, never mind the remuneration.
That's who needs real recognition.
No, I know they put everything into it but racing around a wooden circuit or along a tarmac road ...really?
That's like saying Sir Edmund Hillary was a just bloke who walked uphill for ages.
The OP asked about heroes. A hero is someone who shows you that things, which you didn't think possible, are actually possible. Look at the heroes from ancient (Hercules and his 12 labours, the Odyssey, the miracles of Jesus') and modern (Superman and James Bond saving the world) mythology. Likewise our real life heroes are people who achieve superhuman feats, in the sense that they are things no human has ever done before. This is why Edmund Hillary is a hero, but the hundreds of people who now climb Everest each year are not, and why Bradley Wiggins is a hero (just read the first para of his wikipedia article), but the kids down your local park are not (yet).
The "everyday heroism" of parents and medics is commendable, but we have a pretty well established model for parenthood so it's really more of an expectation that people will try to do the best for their kids. Likewise, medicine is a well established profession now with standards to be met. Pioneers do get recognition and hero status (Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, Alexander Fleming...). What you are saying, and I am assuming you are a parent is that
you want to be recognised as a hero for the things you do. Or to put it less confrontationally, you want the things you believe are truly important to be recognised. In any case, I would say the best way to reward hard-working parents and overworked/underpaid doctors and nurses is not to build statues and monuments for them, but to promote, through employment law and other gov't policy, a healthy work-family life balance, and to invest more in the health system. To be a bit controversial, why are medics special? What about the mechanic who fixes your car so you can get to work to put a roof over your family's heads, or the slaughterhouse worker who kills animals to make the food you eat to survive, why don't they deserve hero status?
As a society, we seem to have decided that elite sporting success, excellence in the arts and sciences (and climbing the greasy-pole to become a lickspittle member of the establishment) are endeavours we deem worthy of recognition and reward.
Anyway, on a lighter note, on the subject of parenting...
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...jun/18/stephen-collins-on-fathers-day-cartoon
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