The History of Mother's Day: From Activism to Commercialization

Mother's Day often centers on flowers, cards, and brunch reservations. But its origins are rooted in more solemn intentions, shaped by political activism, wartime grief, and a quiet transformation from commemoration to consumer ritual.

The modern American holiday traces most directly to Anna Jarvis, who began campaigning in the early twentieth century to create a national day honoring mothers. Jarvis’s motivation was personal and mournful. After the death of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, in 1905, she sought to establish a formal occasion for expressing gratitude toward maternal sacrifice. Her efforts succeeded. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

But the story does not begin with Anna. Her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, had organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in the 1850s. These clubs were not about celebration but about improving sanitation, reducing infant mortality, and tending to wounded soldiers during the Civil War. They were grounded in health advocacy and civic service rather than sentimentality.

Internationally, other traditions informed the shape of what Mother’s Day would become. In the United Kingdom, for example, Mothering Sunday has liturgical roots tied to the fourth Sunday of Lent. Originally about returning to one’s “mother church,” the day gradually evolved into a broader celebration of mothers and caretaking figures. Elsewhere, state agendas often shaped the day’s meaning. In some countries, it has been used to reinforce gender roles or promote national ideals through the idealization of maternal devotion.

In the United States, what began as a memorial quickly attracted commercial interest. By the 1920s, florists, greeting card companies, and confectioners began marketing products aligned with the emotional appeal of motherhood. Anna Jarvis was deeply disturbed by this shift. She spent much of her later life denouncing the holiday’s commercialization and even lobbied to have it removed from the calendar. For her, the day had become unrecognizable.

This tension between personal meaning and marketing remains central to the history of Mother's Day. What began as a ritual of remembrance and civic gratitude was gradually absorbed into broader systems of seasonal consumption. The change reflects a more general pattern in which emotional practices are institutionalized, ritualized, and eventually monetized.

Understanding the history of Mother’s Day invites more than a historical overview. It raises questions about how societies process care, loss, and recognition. It asks why we ritualize maternal labor and what forms that ritual should take. It challenges us to think carefully about how we express appreciation and whether the current customs reflect the values we intend to honor.

Rather than prescribing what the day should be, the history opens the door to reflection. It invites a deeper consideration of what acknowledgment means, how it evolves, and how we might recover a form of honoring that does justice to its origins without losing its relevance in the present.