mothers' day

Today, many complain, the personal element in this celebration has been lost. Mother's Day is just another occasion to make money. It is the busiest day of the year for restaurants, and the week that precedes it is the single-best for florists. The real meaning of Mother's Day is gone.

Such lamentation about the holiday's degradation reflect a misunderstanding of its history. It was the education of Mother's Day to sentimentalism and private family relations that made it so vulnerable to commercial exploitation.

The 19th century forerunners of our modern holiday were called mothers' days, not Mother's Day. The plural is significant: They celebrated the extension of women's moral concerns beyond the home. They commemorated mothers' civic roles and services to the nation, not their private roles and personal services to the family. The women who organized the first mothers' days believed motherhood was a political force that should be mobilized on behalf of the entire community, not merely an expression of a fundamental instinct that led them to lavish all their time and attention on their children.

Full article "Mothers in arms" is at: http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article5.htm