The history of our modern Mothers’ Day is a complex one. The version of Mothers’ Day celebrated today is rooted in the work of Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis (1832–1905) and her daughter, Anna Jarvis, who established the holiday to honor her mother. After having more than a dozen children, most of whom died from diseases such as diphtheria or measles, which were common during her day in the Appalachian area of Virginia, Ann Maria worked hard in her community to try to help other mothers and families avoid the tragedies she had suffered. She organized “Mothers’ Work Clubs” and promoted special “Mothers’ Work Days,” when women would collaboratively collect trash and undertake other projects to improve local environmental conditions and their neighbors’ understanding of hygiene. The focus of Jarvis’ work changed with the Civil War. Her region was deeply divided with local soldiers fighting on both sides of the conflict, and guerilla warfare was rampant. Jarvis insisted that the women’s groups she organized help both Confederate and Union troops who were sick or wounded, and she worked to promote peace and unity following the war. In 1868, despite threats of violence, she organized a “Mothers’ Friendship Day” to bring families from both sides of the war together to try to restore a sense of community. It was her deep belief that women—and especially mothers—were best suited to bring people together with a goal of peace.
Her daughter, Anna, set out to honor her mother’s legacy by establishing a national Mothers’ Day on the second Sunday in May, the day her mother had died. Anna, who never married or had children of her own, did not focus the holiday on peace activism but on the idea of honoring one’s own mother. Anna succeeded in her quest for official recognition, and President Wilson issued a proclamation of the first national Mothers’ Day just before the start of World War I in 1914. Anna Jarvis, however, soon grew discontented as she noted increasing commercialization of the celebration. What she had wanted to be an earnest “holy day” had become, in her eyes, a crass holiday benefitting florists and greeting card companies more than honoring the mothering work done by women. Anna was so distraught over the way Americans observed the holiday she had worked hard to establish that she started a petition to have it recalled in 1943.
Mothers’ Day provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on and honor the role of mothers in our own families and in the rich and complicated history of our nation.