--- description: In its 101 years as a national observance, Mother's Day has made its fair share of enemies title: Mother's Day History: 3 People Who Hated the Holiday image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ac9c9d90fddf67f/6987eddb524fc02e7ddf082d/jarvis.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # 3 Historical Arguments Against Mother's Day  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 10, 2015 1:00 PM CUT  A portrait of the founder of Mothers Day, Anna Jarvis, circa 1900 A portrait of the founder of Mothers Day, Anna Jarvis, circa 1900FPG / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. May 10, 2015 1:00 PM CUT Campaigning against Mother’s Day is a surefire way to sound like a grouch — but that didn’t stop Anna Jarvis. That’s because if anyone could get away with it, she could. After all, Jarvis invented the whole thing, and then it ballooned far beyond what she had been imagining. As TIME wrote in 1938, it was May of 1907 when Jarvis persuaded a church in her hometown, Philadelphia, to hold a special church service on the anniversary of her mother’s death. The next year the governors of Florida and North Dakota issued special proclamations inspired by the service and it went national in 1914 when President Wilson made one, too. It wasn’t long before businesspeople across the country figured the day could be a great way to sell the nation on flowers, cards and other tokens. Jarvis, the article explained, was not amused: --- > “” --- It didn’t stop there. TIME reported that Jarvis sent violent telegrams to President Roosevelt and mostly shut herself inside her house–emerging only to hand out flyers about the evils of commercializing Mother’s Day. But rampant commerce wasn’t the only objection to the way Mother’s Day was celebrated. In that same TIME story, Eleanor Roosevelt urged that Mother’s Day also be turned into a public awareness event about the maternal mortality rate, which was 14,000 deaths a year at the time. That idea was an echo of an earlier campaign by physiologist Thomas Wilcox Haggard, who in 1934 [reminded the world](http://time.com/vault/issue/1934-05-21/page/17 "undefined") that “lives of mothers can be saved only by facing gruesome realities, not by holding out the promise of a potted plant.” And finally, history has seen its fair share of those who believe that Mother’s Day is all well and good, but doesn’t go far enough. [In 1950](http://time.com/vault/issue/1950-08-21/page/17 "undefined"), TIME wrote about Miss Dorothy Babb, an advocate for a National Old Maids’ Day. “Many spinsters, she pointed out, don’t even get birthday gifts, so eager are they to avoid the subject of age,” the magazine reported. [In the ’70s](http://time.com/vault/issue/1972-07-03/page/37 "undefined"), that cry was picked up by [the National Organization for Non-Parents](http://time.com/3813535/national-organization-for-non-parents/ "undefined"), which [advocated](http://time.com/vault/issue/1972-07-03/page/37/ "undefined") for Non-Mother’s Day to be a holiday. **_Read the whole 1938 story about Mother’s Day and Anna Jarvis, here in the TIME Vault:_** [Mother’s Day, Inc.](http://time.com/vault/issue/1938-05-16/page/21/ "undefined") ### Mother's Day Special: LIFE With Famous Moms  Jackie Kennedy reads to her daughter, Caroline, in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 1960. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Judy Garland holds her daughter, Liza, at home in Hollywood in 1946. Martha Holmes—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra with her daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in Rome in 1962. Paul Schutzer—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Elizabeth Taylor and her mother, Sara, in 1948. Mark Kauffman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Shirley MacLaine and her daughter, Sachi Parker, in 1959. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  The great American contralto Marian Anderson kisses her mother after a concert in Philadelphia in 1937. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee holds her 4-year-old son, Erik Lee Kirkland, during a stopover in her traveling carnival show, Memphis, Tenn., 1949. George Skadding—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Shirley Temple with her daughter, Lori, in Atherton, California, in 1957. Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Ingrid Bergman and her daughter, Pia Lindstrom, in 1959. Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sophia Loren with her son, Carlo Ponti, Jr., in 1969. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sophia Loren (right) poses with her mother (center) and her sister, Maria, in 1957. Loomis Dean—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Zsa Zsa Gabor and her daughter, Francesca, at home in Bel Air, 1951. Ed Clark—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Joan Crawford and two of her children, Christina and Christopher, on the beach, Monterey, California, 1945. Peter Stackpole—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy with her children, 1961. Leonard McCombe—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Jane Fonda and her daughter, Vanessa, in California, 1971. Bill Ray—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Nancy Reagan with Ron Reagan in Pacific Palisades, Calif., in 1965. Bill Ray—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Natalie Wood and her mother at home, 1945. Martha Holmes—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Peggy Lee gets a goodnight kiss from her 4-year-old daughter Nicki, 1948. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Mia Farrow reads to her children on Martha's Vineyard in 1974. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3842561/mothers-day-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3842561/mothers-day-history/"},"headline":"3 Historical Arguments Against Mother's Day","datePublished":"2015-05-10T13:00:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:04:15.531Z","description":"In its 101 years as a national observance, Mother's Day has made its fair share of enemies","url":"https://time.com/3842561/mothers-day-history/","keywords":["Family","Holidays","Mother's Day"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ac9c9d90fddf67f/6987eddb524fc02e7ddf082d/jarvis.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ac9c9d90fddf67f/6987eddb524fc02e7ddf082d/jarvis.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Anna Jarvis","caption":"Anna Jarvis","creditText":"FPG / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3842561/mothers-day-history/","name":"3 Historical Arguments Against Mother's Day"}}]}] ```