A woman by the name of Anna Jarvis held the first modern Mother’s Day event at an Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1907. Jarvis was honoring the memory of her mother, peace activist Anna Reeves Jarvis. What ensued were several years of struggle to make Mother’s Day a recognized holiday.
In 1908, a proposal to make Mother’s Day an official holiday failed in Congress and Jarvis took her crusade in a different direction with a focus on individual states. By 1911, each state in the union had some official recognition for Mother’s Day with the first being Jarvis’ home state of West Virginia.
Finally, in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation that designated the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. Jarvis’ campaign received financial backing from Philadelphia department store pioneer John Wanamaker. Jarvis herself never became a mother.
For Jarvis, success turned into resentment at the rapid commercialization of the holiday. A day meant to honor motherhood in all its varied aspects quickly became a cause for spending in the name of motherhood.
By the 1920s, Mother’s Day had become a Hallmark moment, as the card company pushed a variety of Mother’s Day cards. Flowers and candy quickly became synonymous with the holiday, so much so that today, Mother’s Day tops the list of holidays for eating out.
According to a National Restaurant Association survey conducted in 2022, nearly half of American households were planning to go out to a restaurant as part of Mother’s Day celebrating, and another nearly 20% were planning to bring take-out home.
Soon after Jarvis had succeeded in making Mother’s Day a national holiday, she called for a halt to the cards, flowers, and candy.
Reflecting in the nature of motherhood became, instead, spending money on things the American marketers had made synonymous with the day.
According to the National Retail Federation, consumers are poised to spend $35.7 billion on Mother’s Day this year, a projected $274 per American household.
Of course, the commercialization of the holiday does not preclude engaging in its original purpose – reflecting and celebrating the importance of mothers and motherhood.
This year, however, motherhood has become even more politicized than it has ever been. The struggles over abortion rights and contraception are fully a part of the divided American phenomenon.
The statistics tell us that the usual abortion narrative is incorrect. This is not just about a young, unmarried woman unable to deal with the financial and emotional burdens of motherhood. Most abortions are sought by women who already have children. The reasons are varied and have become less important in a world where demonizing the political right or the political left has become the hallmark of discourse on the issue.
Now, we also have the phenomenon of fewer births, or to put it in a language more appropriate to this discussion, fewer mothers. What the 2020 census showed us is that natural population growth has plummeted. Growth, where it did occur, was largely through immigration, not natural birth rates. In 2021, we recorded the third fewest births in 40 years.
Sure, the pandemic had its impact, but the numbers show the slowdown began long before the pandemic. The population is aging, replacement has slowed, and the average size of the nuclear family is down.
Have we so burdened motherhood that we make it less attractive? Are the financial and social realities of raising children such that women wait longer before embracing motherhood?
Census Bureau figures in 2022 tell us that the average age of women giving birth is now 30 in the U.S., the oldest average on record.
Maybe as we make that reservation for Mother’s Day brunch, we need to set aside some time for contemplation. Is motherhood, real motherhood, something we wish as a society to facilitate? If so, what is the discourse we need to have over the noise and division in our politics?
The answers are not obvious, nor will arriving at them be easy. But if we use just part of this holiday thinking, truly and sincerely, about what motherhood is 365 days a year, we will not have solved all our differences, but we just might be closer to doing so.
