Motherhood has been discussed a lot lately. Americans have wrangled over the implications of a 63-year-old woman giving birth, wondering whether that isn't too old for such a responsibility. Political activists, meanwhile, are talking of a "million woman march" in Washington - a call for social and economic justice.
Others argue that the greatest gift to mothers this year would be to provide government-sponsored health insurance for all children. The discourse fills the air with the wind and thunder of statistics and stark warnings. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion, new angle or agenda.Much of the discourse misses the mark. Mother's Day was meant as an intensely personal holiday. It was to be a time to celebrate the selfless impact mothers have had on individual lives as well as on society as a whole. That influence, if it can be generalized at all, most often has been felt as a nurturing, teaching and peace-making one. It has been given in understated, quiet and unassuming ways. It is this role that should be celebrated and promoted, not one day each year, but always.
The holiday traces its origins to 1872 when Julia Ward Howe, best known as the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," proposed a yearly day for peace. Howe, herself, was a noted peace advocate, and she believed motherhood had an obvious link to that desire.
She wrote: "We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." Mother's Day was an annual day for peace until a growing consumer culture gradually turned it into a banner day for the florist and greeting-card industries.
That peace, which starts with the loving care of children, ought to be the focal point of the holiday. It is a peace that is potent enough to change the world. A soothing lullaby, after all, is much more powerful than a noisy march on the nation's Capitol.
Flowers and cards are appropriate on this day. Debates about old-age, social justice and health insurance have their place in every day life. But a lifetime of honest and peaceful service is the best gift any son or daughter can give to a mother.