How Mother's Day Went From Being an Empowering Feminist Movement to a Capitalist Sales Pitch

My mother actually got her token Mother’s Day flowers yesterday. I double checked the order to make sure that I had put Sunday as the delivery date, and I had, but nevertheless she got them early. She was delighted with the bouquet, an arrangement of fresh spring roses, daisies, and lilacs, all in a laughably pink vase. It was extremely overpriced obviously, but I had to make up for the fact that because of the shutdown, I wasn't going to be able to see my mother in person to tell her all the things you're supposed to tell your mom on Mother’s’ Day, or do the traditional things like take her out to lunch, or make her breakfast in bed.

When we think of Mother's Day, we generally think of it as the second sunday of May being set aside to celebrate moms and all amazing (and let's face it, sometimes miraculous) work they did in raising us. Come hell or high water, they got us up and through life, through tantrums and ear infections, first days at school and proms, horrible heartbreaks and more. They are there when we get bruised knees or when we don't get the promotion we thought we deserved. When I need to have a big crying purge, I generally watch Thai life insurance commercials about moms. They’re guaranteed to turn on the waterworks in two minutes or less, such is the intimate and tender connection we have with our mothers. Sometimes when I'm sad, I'll clutch my pillow and murmur the word 'mommy' to myself, although I would never admit that to my mom. I've got a small tattoo of her name behind my ear.

“Not only would the creator of Mother’s Day be disappointed in how we celebrate it, she would be utterly horrified... ”

But Mother's Day actually had very different roots, ones that speak more to modern feminist agendas than anything else we usually do to celebrate the day. Every May we usually only point out the emotional and domestic labor our moms do for us, which is why it's so common for us to say "hey mom, let ME make breakfast today, it's your special day!" or, as kids, we got her tin cans with our drawings pasted onto the label, for her to stick her wooden kitchen spoons into. 'Traditional' ways of celebrating Mother's Day are always centered around her role as the backbone of the nuclear family, or about saying thank you and acknowledging her devotion to the family (we can dive into the completely different topic of why we think it's acceptable to only have one day a year to celebrate this essential role, but for now let's focus on the current topic). However, according to Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were, not only would the creator of Mother's Day be disappointed in how we celebrate it, she would be utterly horrified.

Mother's Day was first proposed by Anna Reeves Jarvis, a social activist and community organizer through the civil war era, and it was definitely not to celebrate the domestic roles mothers played. In fact, she wanted Mother’s Day to celebrate women's roles outside of the home, and how mothers had extremely important roles as social organizers. They didn't just raise their own children, but their raised the entire community. The first forms of Mother’s Day that Jarvis organized were in 1858 West Virginia to help improve sanitation in the Appalachian mountains. Her organizationational efforts also helped provide medical services to soldiers and civilians during the Civil War, and afterwards, the mother members helped former combatants set aside their animosities and hatred and form new social and political alliances. It was never about what these mothers were doing at home for their children, but what they were doing in their communities for everybody.

Several years later, poet and fellow activist Julia Ward Howe proposed an annual Mother’s Day to celebrate peace emphasizing that a ‘mother's role cannot and should not be to raise sons that will only go on to fight the sons of mothers of another country.’ It was celebrated wildly in New England well into the turn of the century by mothers, many of whom had lost their sons to the war and now carried the weight of their grief on top of the burden of trying to repair their devastated communities. Mother’s Day was not only an acknowledgement of their terrible loss, but a salute to their strength and necessary part in healing their broader networks after the war. What's more, it was a much broader celebration that took into account the labor that all mothers everywhere did, and not just your own mom. It was common not to just thank your mom, but to thank all of them.

However, when Mother’s' Day was officially adopted in 1914, it's meaning and significance had already changed. Businessmen, merchants, and politicians who were against women's suffrage quickly transformed the holiday from one that supported acknowledging the role mothers played in larger society and instead, moved to shrink it down to one that only celebrated a mother's role in her own home, and only thanking her for the labor she gave to her own family. They recognized the power that was in appreciating women as essential to building and caring for communities, and strove to erase it until we only defined motherhood, and mothers, as being isolated and singular members of family, and not public protectors.

This minimization also went hand in hand with the commercialization of the holiday. Originally, carnations were given on the day because they were cheap to purchase, which meant that every mother could be celebrated. But within years, stores began preparing elaborate window displays full of lush boxes of chocolates, expensive jewelry, or clothing, touting them as the only acceptable ways to appreciate your mother’s labour. Motherhood, which had been seen as a social and political duty to literally 'mother' the community as a whole through activism and reform, was privatized and limited just to the domestic sphere; cheapened with generic cards filled with terrible poetry, or wilted, overpriced flowers, which is how we celebrate it today.

What can we take away from this? We can learn that complacency leads to the sterilization and commercialization of our roles as women in society, that we need to be conscious every day of our responsibility to uphold the values that Mother’s Day originally held, which means appreciating mothers (and mother-figures) for their essential role in nurturing our communities and enacting widespread community change. Anna Jarvis's daughter, who was also named Anna, is a reminder of that. When she saw that the holiday her mother had fought so proudly to celebrate was being turned into a marketing opportunity, she poured her energy into defending its original values. She would call out florists for selling extravagant and overpriced bouquets, and protest shops promising that all your mother needed to feel valued was a bar of expensive-smelling soap, or a new pair of silk stockings. Her efforts were overwhelmed however, and near the end of her life she was committed to a sanitorium, where she eventually died.

The work of Anna and Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe, along with countless other defenders of the importance of motherhood should not have worked in vain… It is a travesty that Mother’s Day’s radical roots have been watered down into appreciating only a fraction of what a mother does, and instead is more a platitude to capitalism. So please, this Mother’s Day, call your mom, or even send her flowers if you like, but also be sure to appreciate the women who help shape and build your community: the activists, the members of local government, the petitioners and volunteers. Support the non-profit organizers, the female writers/journalists, teachers, sunday school leaders, or carers who made a difference in your life. Acknowledge that Mother’s Day goes beyond just caring for a single family or home, but that the labor of motherhood is one that nurtures our communities, our countries, our earth.