Mother's Day is about Working For Peace, not Breakfast in Bed


When American poet and feminist Julia Ward Howe fought for the establishment of Mother's Day, she never intended it to become the schmaltzy, Hallmark-y day it has become. For Howe, Mother's Day meant recognition of how mothers suffered as a result of war. Mother's Day is also about empowering women's voices so they may have a say in how their lives are governed. Mother's Day is about the politics of gender. In this entry, I reprint Howe's 1870 Mother's Day proclamation, which calls for disarmament and for women the world over to join in the rejection of war in favor of peaceful resolutions to conflict.

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe Boston 1870


Posted: Thu - May 6, 2004 at 10:08 AM          

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