Dad will be lucky to get a tie this year

Poor pops. In this recessionary year, Mother's Day has already suffered the impact of reduced spending; respondents to two surveys last month indicated they planned to spend less on Mom for her special day, but things are looking even worse for Dad.

In a pair of polls conducted by Pricegrabber.com and the National Retail Federation, Americans are cutting their spending on Father's Day gifts even more drastically than they did for Mother's Day.

Pricegrabber found that 34% of shoppers plan to spend less for Father's Day, a higher percentage than those who said they were scaling back their Mother's Day gifting last month. Some 7% of survey respondents said they weren't going to spend anything on a gift for Dad this year. One quick reminder to those seven percent: You can only get away with giving him a Play-Doh ash tray -- especially if he doesn't smoke -- until you're about eight or so.