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The original proposal for a day for mothers occured in 1858. Mothers’ (plural) Day was to be a day to celebrate women’s roles as community organizers and activitsts. These were women who acted on behalf of the entire generation of children, not just their own (Coontz, 1992.) Later versions also stressed that Mothers’ Day ought to be a vehicle for organized social and political action by all mothers.
But the eventual adoption of Mother’s (singular) Day by Congress in 1914 represented a reversal of everything nineteenth-century mothers’ days stood for. Politicians now made speeches linking Mother’s Day to domestic life. They repudiated mothers’ roles outside the household. Merchants hung testimonials to their own mothers in their stores, hoping to entice others to buy things for their mothers. What was once an occasion for activism and controversial causes in the community was reduced to an occasion for sales pitches and marketings, all cloaked in the image of mother as a domestic servant to her family.