Larry Silver Photographing baby in park, Sherwood Island, State Park, Westport, Connecticut 1980 (470.1986)
Today is the day to celebrate the influence and impact that mothers and the maternal bond have on the development of both their own children and society. Mother’s Day is certainly not a holiday unique to the United States. It is celebrated in different ways and on different days the world over. In the U.S., the first Mother’s Day was celebrated May 12, 1907 in West Virginia as a small church service held by Anna Jarvis to honor her late mother, Ann, who had died two years prior. The following year, the service was accompanied by a larger ceremony held in Philadelphia, and by 1909 Mother’s Day was reportedly observed across New York. The day was officially declared first in West Virginia in 1910 after campaigning by Jarvis, and in 1914 Congress and President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
Weegee [Mothers with three babies competing in Methodist Hospital’s fourth annual Perfect Baby contest, Brooklyn] May 14, 1941 (2456.1993)
Carl Mydans Mother Scrapes Bottom of Pot and Gives Self Smallest Portion in Years of Post War Shortages 1954 (218.2005)
Martin Munkacsi [Helen Hayes holding daughter Mary MacArthur] 1936 (2007.110.1682)
