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Mother’s Day Roots Guide a Push for a More Inclusive Tribute

Writers urge honoring caregiving more broadly by returning to the holiday’s original purpose.

While the nation and its millions are paying tribute to America’s mothers next Sunday, May 11, this grand old lady, whose devotion to her own mother resulted in the national observance of Mother’s Day, will be resting quietly in a West Chester Sanitarium. She is Miss Anna M. Jarvis, now 83, blind and quite deaf, founder of Mother’s Day. This photograph of Miss Jarvis was made before she became an invalid. When her mother died on May 23, 1905, Miss Jarvis worked untiringly to have the second Sunday in May set aside each year as a day of honor to the mothers of the nation.
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Overview

  • Reporters and columnists revisit the holiday’s origins to shape how people choose to mark it now.
  • Anna Jarvis organized a 1908 church memorial in Grafton, West Virginia, with white carnations that grew into a U.S. holiday in 1914.
  • Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, led Mothers’ Day Work Clubs that taught sanitation and hosted postwar reunions to heal Civil War rifts.
  • Jarvis spent decades fighting commercial uses of the day, including boycotts of florists and protests of civic groups over slogans and symbols.
  • New pieces urge a wider tribute that honors those who mother in many forms, drawing on accounts of Julia Ward Howe’s earlier peace‑focused “Mothers’ Day.”