Sacred Motherhood

(WARNING: The following article contains language and information that might be offensive to certain readers. Reader discretion is advised.)

I’m generally not in favor of America’s national holidays, and Mother’s Day is no exception to that rule. Try to remain calm, all ye mothers, while I briefly explain that Father’s Day is no exception to the rule either. So, you see, you must at least admit I am consistent, even if you believe me wrong on point.

Were you to pen me down to an explanation for why it is I don’t get all mushy and sentimental about Mother’s Day (nor, Father’s Day) in particular, I should think it largely stems from the fact that our children are no more inclined to neglecting their duties to their parents – especially to their honored Momma – than their mother and I are to neglecting ours to their grandparents. Stated another way, what need have we for one day out of a year, specially set aside for a thing routinely observed in our family in spite of the existence of the nationally recognized event? There is more to it than just those facts, but those facts in themselves should suffice as explanation enough for my purposes in this article.

At this moment you might be wondering why I would bother myself with writing about this subject when neither the day nor the observance of it is really of much importance to me in that respect in any case. It’s a fair question, the answer of which is that our eldest son brought an important point concerning Mother’s Day in particular to my attention only last week. It later occurred to me that some of our readers might derive some small benefit from the information I am about to share with you concerning the holiday’s origins and the persons most responsible for its establishment.

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I chose the title heading this article because it seemed to me especially fitting given that the woman whose original idea it was to establish the holiday was a suffragist, and the phrase “Sacred Motherhood” is repeated profusely in the pre-1920s feminist-suffragist literature. Which is fairly ironic in a certain sense of viewing it, since the early feminists, and a good proportion of early suffragists to boot, were openly trying to destroy the nuclear family, both in word and in deed. By “openly” in the previous sentence, I of course mean that they weren’t trying to hide that goal, and in fact were bold in pronouncing it for all the world to notice. As such, they considered the female vote as merely one among several more or less important means of achieving that end.

The younger feminists consider that the day is rapidly approaching when to be supported by a man in return for sexual priveleges, or mere general housekeeping, or to be paid for motherhood, will be morally revolting to every self-respecting wife … The younger generation of franchise-seekers consider the vote the merest tool, a means to an end – that end being a complete social revolution.

Winifred Harper Cooley, Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 27, 1913

On the other hand, there is nothing really ironic about the fact since the phrase did not mean to them what you might think it meant to them, or what it likely means to you having read it. To the early feminist-suffragists (not to be confused with plain ol’ suffragists), every woman is a mother whether she ever marries, or bears, and/or rears any children of her own or not. And to raise children up “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” was simply religious mumbo-jumbo and utter nonsense to her convoluted way of thinking, whether she was “mothering” her own biological children or those belonging to others. Whereas to raise children – both male and female – up in the nurture and admonition of “sacred motherhood,” properly trained and on the other hand, was a vital component to completing the destructive work of that social revolution Mrs. Cooley spoke of in the quotation above-posted.

The Christian theory of the sacredness of the Bible has been at the cost of the world’s civilization … We are investigating the influence of the Bible upon woman under Judaism and Christianity, and pronounce it evil.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, revising committee, The Woman’s Bible, originally compiled by Elizabeth Cady Stanton ca. 1895

In any case, the person directly responsible for the national holiday we observe and celebrate on this day each year was a woman named Anna Maria Jarvis, daughter of Ann Reeves Jarvis. More about the elder Mrs. Jarvis in a bit. The younger Jarvis never married, nor had any children of her own. However, she did work as a teacher in a public school, no doubt exercising her own unique style of “sacred motherhood” over her pupils in that institution, for a time after graduating college and prior to entering upon a more lucrative career in the insurance racket.

According to Wikipedia, Miss Jarvis wanted a day set aside to honor all mothers because she believed a mother is “the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world.” Would that something within the ballpark of that sentiment were the case for a certain multitude of persons – past, present, and no doubt future – for whom almost the exact opposite is in fact closer to the truth. But of course we all know, if we’re honest with ourselves, it is utter nonsense for that multitude of unfortunates, of which there must have been plenty when Miss Jarvis uttered those sweeping words.

The elder Jarvis (Anna’s mother) was a contemporary of, and worked alongside, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Julia Ward Howe, for those of you unacquainted with her fame, re-wrote the words to John Brown’s Body during the WBTS, and her poem, set to the same tune, is the moving and popular “patriotic” song we all know today as Battle Hymn of the Republic. Mrs. Howe was said to have been a pacifist and a “peace activist,” but one certainly wouldn’t know it by a few of the lines in her poem, what with its reference to “a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel” and whatnot.

In fairness to Mrs. Howe on the point, not long after the carnage inflicted upon the Southland by that “fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel” put to its murderous intentions, she gave a speech now referred to as her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” of 1870 calling on women worldwide to “Arise!,” and to unite in one voice demanding of their own nations to “Disarm! Disarm!,” and now referring to the instruments that no doubt formed those “burnished rows of steel” of her poetic vision, “the sword of murder.” A later-edited version of Mrs. Howe’s Proclamation contained in the Unitarian Universalist, you may read here. Note the reference therein to “sacred motherhood,” or, rather, the “sacred word” of motherhood, omitting any mention of The Sacred Word of God.

First, the female is the race-type, not the male. The male is the sex-type, especially, and then human – as far as his masculinity allows. HIs being male hinders his being human more than her being a female does.

Femininity means, first, last, and always, Motherhood, and Motherhood, in humanity, means taking care of people – teaching, nursing, feeding, training, helping.

Fatherhood is complicated by the fighting instinct, a subhuman process. A more feminine world means a better world, cleaner, safer, healthier, better taught…

Charlotte Perkins Gillman, What is Feminism?

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I don’t of course know how many of you can honestly join with Anna Maria Jarvis and say of your own mother(s) that she is “the one person who has done more for you than anyone in the world,” nor am I asking for any confessionals one way or the other. But I strongly suspect that if you can honestly make such a claim, or anything close to it of your mother, you might also tend to agree with Miss Jarvis when she later declared that the commercialization of the day by greedy (Northern) capitalism essentially destroyed the spirit in which she originally intended the day be observed, and in which spirit it probably should be observed, if observed at all and to what extent in any case.

Permit me to confess that I cannot honestly say of my mother that she is “the one person who has done more for me than anyone else in the world,” and I’m not at all sure I would prefer it that way if I could honestly claim that distinction for her. My mother has done a lot for me, and I love and honor her for all of it. Don’t tell her I said so, however (because it would enrage her to hear it spoken aloud), but the distinction in my particular case has to go to my deceased father. And one primary thing he did for me (as well as for her) and instilled in me from a very early age, and that he reinforced whether needed or not, was to teach me to “never disrespect or disobey your mother no matter what – she is the only mother you will ever have!”

God Bless all of you God-fearing Christian Mothers of the Southland, today and every day. My fondest wish for you from this day forward, dear mothers, is that the children of your womb will shower their tenderest love and affection upon you on many days throughout the year, as my own children do with their honored mother, to my great delight in them as their father. In which case, the second Sunday of May will become for you, as it has gradually become for my wife and the mother of my children, just another calendar date; albeit one on which our children and their children nevertheless make it a point to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day in various ways, because, well, habit and tradition, and for fear that the breaking of it might cause in their mother sadness and disappointment.

As for “sacred motherhood,” the only genuine kind is the Godly kind. It is the kind that proceeds from what I call instead, Biblical Womanhood – the kind of womanhood all the women above-quoted, with the possible exception of Anna Maria Jarvis, rejected out of hand and openly rebelled against, choosing instead – nay, demanding instead – to “know good AND evil” of every kind, and very often therefore mistaking the one for the other, and vice versa. But in spite of it all, Dear Christian Mothers, me and mine wish you all a –

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!