Today is Mother’s Day — a day that gives people a special opportunity to show their gratitude to the moms, grandmas, stepmoms, aunts, and other maternal figures in their lives. Mother’s Day is always the second Sunday in May — this year, that’s May 8.
The average age for first time mothers has gone up over the past 20 years… in 2000, the average age was 24.9 years, in 2020 it was 27.1 years old.
Mother’s Day always falls on a Sunday, and attending church is a popular activity among families. A recent poll asking pastors about the highest attended Sundays at their churches throughout the year, Mother’s Day ranked third behind Easter and Christmas.
Today has always been a day to take mom out to dinner — even during the pandemic. In 2020, consumer spending at restaurants increased 103 percent on Mother’s Day Sunday (compared to the average daily revenue throughout the pandemic.
Some data indicates that the Greeks and Romans celebrated Mother’s day by honoring goddess Cybele, personifying Mother Earth (Gaia) and the goddess of fertility, and Rhea, mother of the gods.
The idea of Mother’s Day first surfaced in the United States after the Civil War and was suggested by social activist Julia Ward Howe. However, her vision was a Mother’s Day for Peace — where women would protest against war.
The current version of Mother’s Day was started by Anna Jarvis in the early 1900s. Jarvis persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to declare that the second Sunday of every May would be Mother’s Day. But less than 10 years after she fought so hard to make it happen, Anna Jarvis despised the holiday and spoke out vehemently about the commercialization of Mother’s Day, and called for its demise. She was actually arrested during one of her protests in 1948.
They say a woman’s work is never done — that’s especially true for moms… it’s a 24/7, 365-day commitment and according to research, stay-at-home-moms should earn $162,581 a year.
So the old adage that “life doesn’t come with a manual; it comes with a mother,” is probably true and we should thank her every day, but maybe especially today — Happy Mother’s Day.
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