I have to admit that I’m a bit curmudgeonly about Mother’s Day: I feel like as a family we honor the role and never-ending job of motherhood every day and don’t need a commercialized holiday originally started by Hallmark Cards to tell us that it’s important to say thanks. But, somehow societal pressures are effective and while we’re not doing much to celebrate Mother’s Day, our children are, and, of course, we do have the obligatory phone calls to our mothers on the agenda for the day.
How many of you feel like you don’t need to celebrate Mother’s Day because every day of attachment parenting is a celebration of mothering and parenting?
I agree but Mother’s Day was NOT started by Hallmark! Google it and find the real history. It is actually pretty cool! 8)
Hmmm…both posts from men? John is right, it was not started by Hallmark and it is a sweet story.
We practice attachment parenting in our house, and I really don’t see anything wrong with honoring our mothers and fathers. You don’t have to buy a card or anything else as far as that goes. I also don’t consider the call to my mom (or dad on Father’s day) to be something I have to do, but rather something I enjoy doing.
Not only that, I call my sisters and girlfriends who are mothers and offer them love and honor at the fabulous job they are doing. Same goes for Father’s day.
After becoming a mother, I learned on a daily basis the kinds of sacrifices my parents made for us. These holidays have become even more important to me as it gives me a chance to reflect on the past year and all of it’s challenges. I then take those reflections and let my parents know that I celebrate and honor them for the tremendous amount of love and devotion that they gave us as kids – and still give us as adults. I am thankful for all that my parents have done for me.
The other thing about Mother’s day, for me, is that it gives me a chance to reflect on the gifts (of love and learning) that my own son has given to me that I wouldn’t understand if not for his existence and my becoming a mother. I use it as a time to honor him as well.
Attachment parenting is a wonderful way to raise children and in many ways we honor each other in daily existence. But a once a year special treat is just that – special.
Here’s a nice history of Mother’s Day that’s opened up my eyes to the holiday, I admit. It’s from the Missouri Department of Economic Development, of all places!
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The cause of world peace was the impetus for Julia Ward Howe’s establishment, over a century ago, of a special day for mothers. Following unsuccessful efforts to pull together an international pacifist conference after the Franco-Prussian War, Howe began to think of a global appeal to women. “While the war was still in progress,” she keenly felt the “cruel and unnecessary character of the contest.” She believed, as any woman might, that it could have been settled without bloodshed. And, she wondered, “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?” Howe’s version of Mother’s Day, which served as an occasion for advocating peace, was held successfully in Boston and elsewhere for several years, but eventually lost popularity and disappeared from public notice in the years preceding World War I.
For Anna Jarvis, also known as “Mother Jarvis,” community improvement by mothers was only a beginning. Throughout the Civil War she organized women’s brigades, asking her workers to do all they could without regard for which side their men had chosen. And, in 1868, she took the initiative to heal the bitter rifts between her Confederate and Union neighbors. The younger Anna Jarvis was only 12 years old in 1878 when she listened to her mother teach a Sunday school lesson on mothers in the Bible. “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day,” the senior Jarvis said. “There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”
Following her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis embarked on a remarkable campaign. She poured out a constant stream of letters to men of prominence President William Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt among them and enlisted considerable help from Philadelphia merchant John Wannamaker. By May of 1907, a Mother’s Day service had been arranged on the second Sunday in May at the Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Mother Jarvis had taught. That same day a special service was held at the Wannamaker Auditorium in Philadelphia, which could seat no more than a third of the 15,000 people who showed up. The custom spread to churches in 45 states and in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico and Canada. The Governor of West Virginia proclaimed Mother’s Day in 1912; Pennsylvania’s governor in 1913 did the same. The following year saw the Congressional Resolution, which was promptly signed by President Woodrow Wilson.
Mother’s Day has endured, said Cheryl Grazier, executive director of the Missouri Womens Council. It serves now, as it originally did, to recognize the contributions of women. Mother’s Day, like the job of mothering, is varied and diverse. Perhaps that’s only appropriate for a day honoring the multiple ways women find to nurture their families, and the ways in which so many have nurtured their communities, their countries, and the larger world.
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Read the entire article at http://www.ded.mo.gov/cgi-bin/dispress.pl?txtpressid=678
Dorothy Taylor
New interesting theme