The History of Mother’s Day: From Global Peace to Greeting Cards 

Mother’s Day in the United States has a history all its own—and it’s more complicated than greeting cards might lead you to believe. There were repeated efforts to establish a Mother’s Day holiday and conflicting ideas about what it should stand for and how it should be observed. From a call for women to improve global policymaking and seek peace to a day to honor women’s work and role in the family, the history of the holiday reveals multiple insights into how mothers shape the world.

Julia Ward Howe, best known as the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was an abolitionist, a women’s rights advocate, and a peace activist. In 1870, horrified by the death and destruction she had witnessed during the Civil War and concerned by the Franco-Prussian war unfolding abroad, Howe issued what has come to be known as her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” originally called an “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world.” In it, Howe urged the creation of an international body of women who could find ways to avoid war and bloodshed:

“I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed … to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”