Strollerderby
Mama’s Got History
If you haven’t noticed Mother’s Day is coming, get thee to a calendar.
In honor of all things mom, we’re going old school at Babble. REALLY old school.
Backstory: The American History Guys, a radio show produced at the University of Virginia, managed to squash three centuries of motherhood into an hour-long show.
It’s worth a listen simply for Ann Hulbert explaining why mothers in the 1920s were instructed “not to smother their children with love.” No whirring helicopters in those roaring twenties, apparently.
Then there’s the tragic story of Anna Jarvis, mama of Mother’s Day, a West Virginian feminist in the nineteenth century and her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis. The latter Jarvis wasn’t a mother, but she loved her mother – and she loved her mother’s ideals. She worked tirelessly to make her mother’s dream of Mother’s Day a national holiday about social justice. By 1914, she’d gained the national holiday for mother’s. But why was she unhappy with it, railing against it for the latter half of her life? You’ll have to listen to the American History Guys’ Mama Tried: A History of American Motherhood.”
What about you moms, do you like Mother’s Day?
Image: Backstory
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