Although Mother's Day has been criticized as a giant commercial for florists and greeting card companies, and as stereotyping or confining women to the role of mothers, it's origin and essence is politically progressive.
Feminists who are men, especially, would best take the day to recognize that women do the predominance of , not only mothering children, but all forms of Caring Labor in our society, and around the World. It is women who possess and exercise the main REPRODUCTIVE LABOR POWER , in the larger sense of "reproductive". They reproduce people and personality, in pregnancy and birth , and everyday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Care_work
http://www.shawnhaley.ca/
The role of Mother is assigned the greatest concentration of personal care work of all types, from childcare, to housework, cooking , nursing, school teaching, elder care , etc. All of these forms of work are personal services to many Individuals, children, husbands, relatives, friends, herself, in reproducing themselves and their personalities everyday and night.
In "Why we should celebrate the real origins of Mother's Day", Samantha McGavin says:
"... in the United States, where the origins of a national Mother's Day can be traced back to the activism of especially three women Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, Julia Ward Howe and Jarvi's daughter Anna Jarvis. "
"...The first, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, organized women in her area into Mothers' Day Work Clubs in 1858 to improve local health and sanitation conditions. During the American Civil War, they courageously nursed soldiers from both sides."
"... Julia Ward Howe, a prominent anti-slavery activist and suffragist, was disgusted by the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Inspired by Mothers Friendship Day, Julia issued a "Mothers' Day Proclamation" in 1870, calling on women around the world to form a peace congress."
Thus, not surprisingly, the original Mother's Day was a demand for Peace and against War.
McGavin continues:
"The third woman to play a role in the development of Mother's Day in North America was Jarvis's daughter Anna Jarvis, who, upon her mother's passing in 1905, vowed to realize her mother's dream of a day commemorating the "matchless service rendered to humanity" by mothers.
She started a tradition in 1908 of an annual church service on the second Sunday in May, the anniversary of her mother's death, as a general memorial day for all mothers. Anna also began the tradition of wearing her mother's favourite flower, a carnation, as a simple and inexpensive symbol of love and respect for one's mother -- coloured if she were living, white if not."
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/05/
Anna Jarvis, the daughter, had never married nor did she have any children.
." It was during one of her Sunday school lessons in 1876 that Anna Jarvis, the mother, allegedly found her inspiration for Mother’s Day, as Ann closed the lesson with a prayer, stating,
I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
"Although ...successful in founding Mother's Day , Anna Jarvis, the daughter, soon became resentful of the commercialization and angry that companies would profit from the holiday. By the early 1920's, Hallmark and other companies had started selling Mother's Day cards. Jarvis became so embittered by what she saw as misinterpretation and exploitation that she protested and even tried to rescind Mother's Day. The holiday she had worked so hard for was supposed to be about sentiment, not profit." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
It is a truism that the role of mother is vital to any human society including ours. It is a most profound truism that paradoxically is trivialized perhaps reflecting children's inclination to take mothers and parents for granted. Everyone who was born should celebrate mothers, your own and others' mothers. (smiles)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2l6KB0VLX8
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