The Surprisingly Sad Origins of Mother's Day

Perhaps it is appropriate that the day on which Americans celebrate mothers has an unusual set of parents: President Woodrow Wilson is widely regarded as the “father” of Mother's Day, having signed a proclamation on May 9, 1914, declaring the second Sunday of May “a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country,” while copywriter Anna Jarvis is widely regarded as the “mother.”

Jarvis sent 500 white carnations to Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, in honor of her late mother Ann on May 10, 1908. That date, which she also celebrated in Philadelphia, where she was living at the time, is regarded as America's first Mother's Day celebration. Mother's Day will be observed on Sunday, May 13, 2018.

But Jarvis was not the only one who attempted to establish a Mother's Day holiday.

Jarvis' own mother, who had come up with such an idea in the mid-nineteenth century, may also have a claim to that fame. Her vision for Mother's Day, on the other hand, was very different from the gift-centric holiday of today.

Anna Jarvis did not hide the fact that she got the idea from her mother. She always traced the holiday's origins back to the moment she heard her mother recite the following prayer after teaching a Sunday School lesson in 1876: "I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother's day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life." When her mother died in 1905, she vowed to carry out her mother's dream.

But what the elder Jarvis had in mind was probably not the same as what her daughter eventually brought to fruition. According to Katharine Lane Antolini, an assistant professor of history and gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College and author of Memorial, the original idea was for a “Mothers' Day” — a day for mothers, plural, not a day for one's own mother — on which mothers would get together for a day of service to help out other mothers who were less fortunate than they were.

Why would the elder Jarvis have focused her idea for a motherhood commemoration on the concept of community service? The reason was heartbreaking.

Her motherhood experience had been tinged with melancholy. Only four of her 13 children survived to adulthood. According to Antolini's book, an estimated 15 to 30 percent of infants in that Appalachian region died before their first birthday during the 19th and early 20th centuries, largely due to epidemics spread by poor sanitary conditions. Jarvis enlisted the help of her brother Dr. James Reeves, who was involved in treating victims of the typhoid fever epidemic, to try to improve the situation in 1858, while she was pregnant for the sixth time. They organized events in which doctors were invited to lead discussions with local mothers about the most up-to-date hygiene practices that could keep their children healthy. Mother's Day Work Clubs was the name given to the events.

You may know some Mother's Day facts but do you know its sad story behind them?