The Origins of Mother’s Day

As we are all carpet-bombed with ads admonishing us to buy something for our mothers, it is important that we look back at the origin of Mother’s Day in the US.

Mother’s Day came about as an extension of the efforts of women who were involved in abolition and suffragist struggles. Most radical historians say that Mother’s Day can be traced to the person of Julia Ward Howe.

This courageous woman is best known for writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which she wrote in response to visiting wounded men in the camps during the Civil War. It was in this context that Julia Ward Howe began to think about both the human and economic toll of war.

When war broke out at the international level in 1870, with the Franco-Prussian War, Howe called for women all around the world to rise up against war. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, and commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts.

She also issued a declaration which spoke out against war by saying things like, “Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,” and “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn 
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
 We, the women of one country,
 will be too tender of those of another country
 to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

Her attempts to have a formal Mother’s Day for Peace was not successful, but another woman named Anna Jarvis took up where Julia left off. Jarvis organized to have a Memorial Day for Women who lost husbands or sons due to war.

The first time it was celebrated in any official capacity was in 1907 in West Virginian church, where Anna Jarvis’s mom had taught Sunday school. The custom spread and eventually was adopted by 45 states. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother’s Day to be a national holiday.

It would do us all well to honor the origin of this holiday and to stand with mothers around the world and call for the end of war.