Mothering has changed drastically since first Mother's Day, except ways that matter most

Times Editorial Board
·2 min read

This Sunday, you might take Mom out to brunch, get her some flowers or, around these parts, take her fishing. The American traditions of Mother's Day date back to 1908, created by the efforts of Anna Jarvis to set aside a day to honor the nation's mothers. It became an official U.S. holiday in 1914.

Since then, the love and the hard work that comes with the state of motherhood hasn't changed, but almost everything else has. Worries about screen time, juggling career and kids, the rate of one-parent households, how and how long kids are educated, the dangers kids face, what we feed them and current theories on how best to raise children — all modern.

While the list of unchanged circumstances for American mothers over the past 114 years is short, those rare stagnant situations are monumental in the lives of families.

  • An organized system of child care does not exist, now or in the United States of 1908.

  • The effort to provide medical care to all children in all families benefits in 2022 from sincere attempts, but has still not been universally solved.

  • The U.S. maternal mortality rate in 2020 was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the CDC. The safety of American mothers ranks only 46th in the world. This, in a nation that likes to say it has the best medical system in the world. And while research methods have surely changed, a 1924 study by the Children's Bureau put the rate of mother deaths at 15.7 per 100,000 births way back in 1908.

  • Mothers very commonly work as many hours outside the home in 2022 as fathers. They do not, however, universally receive equitable pay for similar work. It's better than the mothers of 1908 whose labor was often entirely unpaid. But it still puts mothers (and their children) at heightened economic risk, as in 1908.

  • The freedom to legally choose when or if to bear children did not exist for pregnant women in 1908. It now looks probable that the past is prelude to a similar dark era for women.

America's mothers carry huge mental, emotional and economic burdens and they usually make it look manageable, if not easy. This is the day to express the love and respect they deserve.

But they also deserve policies that make this most important of jobs safer and better for them and the generation they're raising. They deserve votes that move policies forward for families.

— This is the opinion of the St. Cloud Times Editorial Board, which includes Editor Lisa Schwarz and Content Coach Anna Haecherl.

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Mothering changed drastically since first Mother's Day, but not enough