MOTHER’S DAY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 182, 30 April 1936, Page 6

MOTHER’S DAY

Once a Campaign For Maternity Care WIDER OBSERVANCE Although Mother’s Day is now regarded as one special day in the year reserved for the remembrance of one’s mother, as late as 1931 it was in New York part of tt national campaign to develop an appreciation of the importance of adequate maternity care. In sermons, radio addresses, street speeches and in placards and advertisements the public was told that 10.000 of the 16,000 women who died in childbirth in the United States of America each year died needlessly, that they could be saved by adequate maternity care. On May 11, many church and radio programmes were devoted to the observance of Mother’s Day. XVbife earnations, chosen as a symbol of the day, were widely in evidence. Thousands of messages home sped over telegraph wires and all regular army men in the corps district had orders to write home. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, honorary chairman of the National Golden Rule Mothers’ Fund Committee, gave a Mother's Day address. “One of the highest tributes that could be paid to a mother,” she said, “is to pass on to less fortunate mothers and children something of the ministry that was received from her and that she, if living, would during this period of unemployment lovingly render to those in adversity. Tlie Golden Rule Mothers’ Fund has boon organised for the purpose of enabling men and women to honour their mothers by helping to provide the necessities and comforts of life for those myriads of mothers who to-day are perplexed and pained by their inability to provide for their children.” Many Girl Scouts in the Girl Scout Federation of Greater New York observed the day by assuming all Sunday household duties and serving breakfast to their mothers in bed. Many American Jews followed a suggestion fostered by Zionist bodies to “plant a tree in the Holy. Land in honour of your mother.” According to Hebraic custom, a tree should be plnnted to mark some particular occurrence or date, and Mother’s Day was considered an appropriate one. A plea for the wider observance of Mother's Day was made by Mrs. Robert E. Speer, president of the national board of the Young XVomen’s Christian Association. Mrs. Speer described the occasion its an attempt to bring back into American life a new sense of values, human relationships and motherhood. Disclaiming sentimentality as a motive for the observance, Mrs. Speer said there was a need for a greater appreciation of Mother’s Day. She pointed out the pressure of modern life and its denial of leisure for human relationships unless time were taken to preserve human values. Conditions under which mothers reared children, she said, needed u fresh study of the whole problem.