2+3+4PM Mother's Day history

Anna Marie Jarvis is the reason we have a national Mother’s Day in America. When she was a young girl, her own mother (Ann Jarvis) had worked tirelessly for a time when mothers would have a day paying tribute to all the unrecognized hard work moms do. This work paid off to some degree with local ceremonies and limited recognition. When her mom passed away on the second Sunday in May, 1905, she started working to make Mother’s Day happen, which it did two years later in 1907 with the support of the wealthy John Wanamaker. The movement grew rapidly until it was made official with a proclamation of President Wilson on May 9, 1914, the purpose of which was to fly the American flag in support of American mothers, particularly those who had lost sons in war. This is painfully ironic since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which started World War 1 (The Great War) happened just over one month later on June 28, 1914.

Interestingly, the earliest Mother’s Day movements were closely associated with not only the desire to recognize the work of moms but the values of moms, most specifically the opposition to alcohol (or the temperance movement), pacifism, and social activism regarding sanitation, infant mortality, health care for the poor and food safety.

Also interestingly, considering this history, the modern commercialization of Mother’s Day so horrified and offended Anna Marie Jarvis so badly that she spent the rest of her life and most of her money fighting the practice. For instance, she opposed greeting cards because they showed an uncreative laziness compared to writing a personal letter. She also found that the emphasis on commercial aspects tended to crowd out a sincere reflection on the values of motherhood in peace, restraint, self-control, dignity, etc.

According to an excellent article on the subject: “The shift of the underlying basis for holiday from activist to consumerist probably was a result of the official holiday's emphasis on the individual mother's role within the private realm of the home and family, as opposed to the role of women in the public realm to improve their communities. As noted by others, the subtle but significant relocation of the apostrophe from "mothers'" to "mother's" helped to sap the holiday of its symbolic potential to commemorate women's collective efforts to promote peace.”