Few know the name Anna Jarvis, yet on the second Sunday in May, we mail the card, buy the flowers, place the phone call, or make the brunch reservation to honor our mothers, all because of her. Anna Jarvis organized the first official Mother's Day celebration in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908 and then spent decades promoting the holiday and defending it from commercialization. She designed her Mother's Day celebration around a sentimental view of motherhood and domesticity, envisioning a day venerating the daily services and sacrifices of mothers within the home. After Mother's Day became a...

Few know the name Anna Jarvis, yet we mail the card, buy the flowers, place the phone call, or make the brunch reservation to honour our mothers, all because of her. Memorializing Motherhood explores the complicated history of Anna Jarvis's movement to establish and control Mother's Day, as well as the powerful conceptualization of this day as both a holiday and a cultural representation of motherhood.