The Creator of Mother’s Day Boycotted the Commercialized Venture It Became
Before delving into how things went wrong, we need to know about Anna Jarvis’ mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis.
Ann had twelve children in the late eighteen hundreds. Eight of them died of epidemics and disease before reaching adulthood. While pregnant with child number six, she found time to take on the social problems of the day.
It was clear to Ann that unsanitary conditions had a lot to do with the loss of her children and so many others.
Ann founded “Mother’s Friendly Day” to improve sanitation and health for Union and Confederate encampments undergoing a typhoid outbreak near the end of the Civil War. In 1865, she organized a “Mothers’ Friendship Day” to unite soldiers and neighbors of all political stripes.
The event was a big success, despite many fearing an eruption of violence. Mothers’ Friendship Day became an annual event to unite families divided during the Civil War.
Ann joined a public health movement to reduce disease and infant mortality, forming clubs to raise money for medicine and caregivers for families whose mothers suffered from ill health. She started programs to inspect milk, and club members visited households to educate mothers on improving sanitation.
