The second Sunday in May is a celebration of mothers in the US. It’s one of the busiest days for phone calls and florists. Its origins may surprise you. With the goal of teaching local women proper child care, Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia helped form Mothers’ Day Work Clubs before the Civil War. During and after the war, these clubs unified a divided region. Jarvis went on to set up “Mothers’ Friendship Day” in 1868, where mothers gathered to promote reconciliation with former soldiers from both sides of the war.
Jarvis was not alone in focusing on mothers. Julia Ward Howe, suffragette and abolitionist, wrote the “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world,” now called the Mothers’ Day Proclamation. This was in reaction to the horrors of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. In 1873, she called for June 2 to be an annual “Mother’s Peace Day,” but was unsuccessful.
The official holiday came about through the efforts of Anna Reeves Jarvis’ daughter, Anna. She wanted a day set aside to honor the sacrifices mothers make for their children. The first official day was in 1908, backed by a department store. After many years of lobbying, the second Sunday in May became the official date in 1914 with President Woodrow Wilson’s signature.
As the celebration grew more and more commercial, Anna Jarvis began to fight against it. This was not what she envisioned—she saw it as a day for families to have personal celebrations together, not the huge event it is today. She even tried to get it removed from the calendar!
What does this story have to do with co-operatives? As a community-owned, democratically-run entity, we all have a say in what our co-op will be like. Maybe we are more like the “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs,” working to give our community a healthy place to shop, meet, and learn. We will be profitable, of course—we must be to survive and flourish, yet not in a way that compromises our commitment to our co-operative values and our community.
Sources: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/mothers-day