A day to honour motherhood, Mother’s day is celebrated in many countries on the second Sunday of May which was formally originated from the United States. Other countries, however, observe Mother’s day at other times of the year.

The American History of Mother’s Day dates back to  1858 when Ann Jarvis, an Appalachian housewife and mother to at least eleven children, organized “Mother’s Work Days” to improve sanitation, in a time when polluted water and disease-bearing pests were major causes of death in poor communities like hers. Jarvis was also a peace activist who organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs to care for soldiers on both sides of the Civil War.

When Ann Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, campaigned for an official Mother’s Day to honor her own mother’s lifelong activism and as a way to honor the sacrifices mothers make for their children.

Jarvis, organized a small service in honor of her deceased mother on the second Sunday in May at the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. The first formal “Mother’s Day” event was marked with another service on the second Sunday in May at the same church in Grafton. There, Jarvis has white carnations distributed to the mothers, sons and daughters in attendance in Grafton.

In 1914, Anna’s efforts succeeded with a Bill to formally recognise Mother’s Day which was signed by then US President Woodrow Wilson.

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After the official launch of Mother’s Day, with the growing popularity, Jarvis began to realise the commercialisation and exploitation of a day that she held dear. For Jarvis, the day was meant to be a “very private acknowledgment of all the mother does for the family” (Katharine Anto). In the subsequent years and later part of her life,  Anna protested bitterly against the commercialisation of the occasion and died penniless in an asylum.

Jarvis was very intentional about the name of her holiday. It’s Mother’s Day — as in one mom. The way Jarvis put it, Mother’s Day is a day to honor “the best mother who ever lived,yours.”

But Mother’s Day became way more popular than she expected and today mothers or any motherly figure are celebrated and honoured on the second Sunday of May.