Mother’s Day Began as a Peace Movement

Before Mother’s Day became a $38 billion celebration of brunch, bouquets and greeting cards, it was about peace. In the aftermath of the Civil War, two women—Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia and Julia Ward Howe of Boston—imagined a day when mothers would gather not to be honored but to heal divided communities.

The earliest Mother’s Day observances were not sentimental, according to Katharine Antolini, historian and author of Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day. They grew from the belief that mothers had a civic duty to protect life and promote peace.

One of the clearest examples came from Howe, whose 1870s call for women to gather each June 2 to sing, pray and reflect was meant as a rallying cry. “The theme of all or any of these should still be how to bring God’s peace on earth,” Howe urged, according to Memorializing Motherhood.

Of Ann Reeves Jarvis’ 13 children, only four survived to adulthood. (The exact number of children Jarvis had is disputed, though sources report between 11 and 14.) At least four of her kids died from measles in 1862 alone. One of her surviving daughters, Anna Maria Jarvis, later described her mother’s life as one marked by “care, anxiety, illness, sorrow and self‑sacrifice,” Antolini writes in Memorializing Motherhood.

Still, Jarvis organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs beginning in 1858 to fight epidemics such as measles, typhoid and diphtheria that devastated Appalachian towns. The clubs educated families on sanitation, inspected milk, provided medicine and quarantined homes.

The Civil War changed Jarvis’ focus, however. According to the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, “Jarvis insisted that the women’s groups she organized help both Confederate and Union troops who were sick or wounded, and she worked to promote peace and unity following the war.”

Jarvis organized a Mother’s Friendship Day in 1868 to “bring families from both sides of the war together to try to restore a sense of community,” per the museum. According to Memorializing Motherhood, many veterans arrived, allegedly while armed, and town officials begged her to cancel.

She refused.

Jarvis stood before the men, “flanked by two teenage girls dressed in blue and gray, and keenly explained the gathering’s message of forgiveness and unity,” Antolini writes. “Eventually, more women dressed alternately in blue and gray came forward to link hands with Jarvis, and they led the crowd in choruses of ‘Dixie’ and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’” Witnesses recalled veterans “weeping and shaking hands,” saying, “God bless you, neighbor; let us be friends again.”

While Jarvis worked locally, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, who co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association and wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” looked outward.

She also knew maternal grief. Her youngest son, Sam, died of diphtheria in 1863 at age 3. That loss, combined with the horrors of the Civil and Franco-Prussian wars and her belief in women’s moral authority, convinced her that mothers had a responsibility to speak out against war.

In 1870, she released her Mother’s Day Proclamation, urging women across the globe to oppose war. “We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs,” she wrote.

The proclamation called for the appointment of a “general congress of women, without limit of nationality” to promote peaceful international cooperation. When that effort stalled, Howe pushed for an annual Mother’s Day for Peace each June.

From 1873 to 1913, according to Antolini, Mother’s Day services were held on June 2 in cities including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, London, Rome and Geneva.

When Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter Anna Jarvis vowed to fulfill her mother’s wish for a day honoring mothers, choosing the second Sunday of May to commemorate the date of her mother’s death. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation in 1914 establishing a national Mother’s Day.

“The connection between motherhood and peace remained in 1914 with the early peace movement,” says Antolini, who is an assistant professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

The Woman’s Peace Party, founded in 1915 with Jane Addams at the helm, became a leading voice. At the party’s conference that year, Addams called attention to motherhood’s role in ending World War I. “Every woman who cares for a little child, fondly throws her imagination forward to the time when he shall have become a great and heroic man,” she said. “But no one in Europe in the face of war’s destruction can consider any other fulfillment of life than a soldier’s death.”

Yet, the holiday’s peaceful roots were soon obscured. “Once the U.S. entered the war…Mother’s Day was used to support the war effort, a reminder of how brave American sons were fighting to protect American families and the wholesome way of life that mothers represent,” Antolini explains.

The same held true during World War II, she adds.

“During both wars, women were praised for encouraging their sons to enlist in the military and demonized for attempting to hinder their service in any way,” Antolini says. “So Mother’s Day was reserved to especially praise ‘patriotic mothers.’”

Today, Mother’s Day looks very different from the versions Jarvis and Howe imagined. “Only those who still credit Julia Ward Howe with the original idea for Mother’s Day even mention the link to peace,” Antolini says.

A resurgence in Howe’s Mother’s Peace Day occurred in the 1930s, she adds, with some communities holding peace parades on Mother’s Day. But Anna Jarvis rejected any attempt to revive Howe’s vision, insisting the holiday be a personal tribute to one’s own mother.

“Unlike Reeves Jarvis and Howe, Anna Jarvis did not envision the day as one of maternal activism,” Antolini says. “Ultimately, it was Anna Jarvis’ sentimental and private vision of Mother’s Day that prevailed. And, of course, it was a sentiment that was so easily commercialized in a way that a Mother’s Peace Day could not be.”

Ironically, Anna later spent her life fighting the commercialization of the holiday she created.