Every year, millions of people across the world celebrate Mother’s Day to honour the women who shape families, communities and entire generations through care, sacrifice and emotional labour that often goes unnoticed.
Celebrated on the second Sunday of May in countries including India, the United States, Australia and many others, Mother’s Day 2026 falls on Sunday, May 10.
For many people, the occasion is deeply personal. It exists in handwritten notes, flowers picked on the way home, family lunches, old photographs, missed phone calls finally returned or quiet moments spent simply saying thank you.
But behind the modern celebration lies a far more emotional and politically layered history than most people realise. The roots of Mother’s Day trace back to Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis, a community organiser in the United States during the 19th century.
After losing several of her children to diseases like measles and diphtheria, Jarvis began working to improve public health conditions for mothers and families. She organised “Mothers’ Work Clubs” where women came together to improve sanitation, support struggling families and reduce infant mortality in their communities.
Her work continued during the American Civil War, when she helped care for wounded soldiers from both Confederate and Union sides. After the war ended, she also organised “Mother’s Friendship Day” gatherings to encourage healing and rebuild fractured communities.
The Mother’s Day celebrated today, however, was established largely through the efforts of her daughter, Anna Jarvis.
Following her mother’s death in 1905, Anna Jarvis began campaigning for a national day dedicated specifically to honouring mothers. She wanted the occasion to feel intimate and sincere rather than political. She encouraged people to write heartfelt letters to their mothers and chose white carnations as the official symbol of the day because they represented purity and unconditional love.
Anna Jarvis spent years writing letters to politicians, influential figures and organisations across the United States, urging them to officially recognise the holiday. Her campaign gained momentum quickly. By 1911, Mother’s Day was being celebrated across every US state. In 1914, then US President Woodrow Wilson officially declared the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day.
Over time, the celebration expanded globally and evolved into a broader recognition of maternal figures of all kinds, including grandmothers, stepmothers, adoptive mothers and caregivers who have shaped people’s lives through love, protection and guidance.
Ironically, Anna Jarvis later became one of the holiday’s strongest critics.
As businesses began commercialising Mother’s Day through greeting cards, advertisements and expensive gifts, Jarvis believed the occasion was losing its emotional meaning. She argued that people were replacing genuine gratitude with performative gestures and profit-driven traditions. The woman who had fought tirelessly to create Mother’s Day eventually spent much of her later life campaigning against its commercialisation.
In 1943, she even launched efforts to have the holiday removed altogether. She died a few years later with little money left, while many of the industries she criticised continued profiting from the celebration she created.
More than a century later, Mother’s Day continues to exist somewhere between sincerity and consumer culture. Yet despite the marketing campaigns, the day still carries emotional weight for many families around the world. At its core, Mother’s Day remains about recognition. It is about acknowledging invisible labour, unconditional support and the countless ordinary acts of care that quietly hold lives together.
Sometimes that recognition comes through gifts or flowers. Sometimes it arrives through a phone call, a home-cooked meal, helping with chores, revisiting old memories or simply spending time together.
And perhaps that is why the occasion continues to resonate across generations. Because behind every celebration of motherhood lies something universally understood: long before most people learn how to express love, they experience it first through a mother’s presence.
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