Feminism and the history of Mothers Day!

 Since its inception in 1914, Mother's Day has worn many different hats. Influenced by religion, war, the Suffragette movement, commercialism, the day of celebrating mothers has morphed throughout the decades to engender a myriad of different meanings and messages.

Anna Marie Jarvis spearheaded Mother's Day as a national holiday. It took her 7 years of working towards her goal. Actually, it was originally brought to the table all the way back in 1872 with the inspiration that a day dedicated to maternal bond might instill pacifism during a time of carnage. Even with the message being centered around the idea of female sweetness, society and government had to ripen quite a bit in order to be ready for a day celebrating women. 42 years later the proclamation that the second Sunday in May be the National holiday of Mother's Day was signed by president Woodrow Wilson who said “The American Mother is the greatest source of our country's strength and inspiration.”

Here we are 108 years later looking at Mother's Day. It’s the first Mother's Day in a couple of rough years, that we are basically cleared to gather to celebrate. Fauci won't be mad. I think it's safe to say mothers might be blinking in the light a little in this freshly post pandemic moment. Working and parenting with schools closed and camps and day cares off the table, was no joke!! Facilitating online school while going to work with a mask and hoping for the best, or being trapped in a house with multiple computers freezing and deadlines looming while tiny humans needed to be fed and diapers had to get changed was a beast of an undertaking. The societal model we’ve operated with, where in school was a fact of raising children, went dark right before our eyes. And mothers held it down, in so many different capacities.

When we think of the many faces of what Mother's Day has looked like, during times of War, or great recession, or surviving the onset and presence of a Covid 19 viral pandemic; it is worth noting how constantly mothers persevere. It's been true throughout all history, during years of less societal strife and a greater sense of contentment and ease, to times when what it means to be a woman and a mother are challenged and redefined, and the rights to choose if and when to become a mother are restricted and limited, Mothers have been the steel rod that holds the machine upright.

Motherhood and feminism are entwined right to the core. The rollback of Roe vs Wade being the week before Mother’s Day has sparked a firestorm of conversation about both. As so many thing’s women built with intention are threatened, Mother’s Day is tinted with relevant upheaval. Soldiering through hugely valid emotional rollercoasters, moms still say thank you for the cards and the pancakes and keep it moving, this day like every day, that’s what moms do..