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The Real History of Mother's Day: What Most Singaporeans Do Not Know About the Woman Who Started It
Most people assume Mother’s Day has always been what it is now. Flowers. Brunch. A card picked up on the way home.
The real story is far more human than that. And far more relevant to what it actually means to be a mother.
When Is Mother’s Day 2026?
Mother’s Day in Singapore, the United States, Australia, and most of Asia falls on the second Sunday of May each year. In 2026, Mother’s Day falls on Sunday, 10 May.
Who Created Mother’s Day And Why
Most people have never heard of Anna Jarvis.
She was an American woman born in 1864 in West Virginia. She never married or had children of her own. However, she spent the better part of her adult life fighting for a single idea: that the world should stop and recognise what mothers do.
Her inspiration was her own mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, a community organiser who had dedicated her life to improving the lives of families around her. In an era of devastating infant mortality, Ann Jarvis had set up Mothers’ Work Clubs to teach women about hygiene and childcare. During the American Civil War, she organised women to care for wounded soldiers from both sides of the conflict, refusing to let war divide her community. She raised 13 children. Only four survived to adulthood.
When Anna was 12 years old, she heard her mother close a Sunday school lesson with a prayer that she never forgot.
“I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will find a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”
Ann Jarvis died in 1905 without seeing that prayer answered. Her daughter Anna made it her life’s mission to answer it.
How Mother’s Day Became Official
Anna Jarvis began campaigning immediately after her mother’s death. She wrote letters to newspapers, politicians, and civic organisations. She organised the first official Mother’s Day church service in May 1908 at her mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia.
The idea spread quickly. Within four years, most American states were observing the day. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law as a national holiday, to be observed on the second Sunday of May every year.
There is one detail about the name that most people get wrong.
Mother’s Day is singular, not plural. Not Mothers’ Day. Anna Jarvis was insistent about this. The holiday was never meant to celebrate all mothers in the abstract. It was meant for each person to honour their own mother, specifically and personally. The apostrophe placement was a deliberate statement about intimacy over institution.
The Part of the Story Nobody Talks About
Here is where the history takes an unexpected turn.
Almost immediately after Mother’s Day became official, florists, card companies, and retailers moved in. The holiday that Anna Jarvis had imagined as a quiet, personal moment between a child and their mother became one of the biggest commercial events of the year.
Anna was horrified. She began speaking out publicly against the commercialisation of the holiday she had created. She filed lawsuits against companies using the Mother’s Day name. She attended industry events to protest. She spent most of her personal savings on legal battles she could not win.
By the end of her life, Anna Jarvis was living alone in a care facility, penniless, and deeply bitter. A journalist who managed to visit her in her final years reported that she told him, with considerable sadness, that she regretted ever starting Mother’s Day.
She died in 1948, having never profited from the holiday she founded, having never been a mother herself, and having spent her final decades fighting the very thing she created.
It is one of the most quietly devastating stories in modern history.
Why This Story Matters for Mothers Today
Anna Jarvis wanted one thing. She wanted the world to pause and truly recognise what a mother does. Not with a commodity. Not with a transaction. With genuine, personal acknowledgment of the sacrifice, the care, and the quiet constancy of motherhood.
The research is clear on this. Most new mothers report feeling unseen in the postpartum period. The physical and emotional demands of early motherhood are consistently underestimated, including by the mothers themselves, who are often the last to ask for support. Long before worrying about packing a practical
This Mother’s Day, the most meaningful thing anyone can offer a new mother is not a gesture. It is the recognition that what she is doing is extraordinary, that recovery takes longer than anyone tells her, and that she deserves care that matches the weight of what she has given.
That was Anna Jarvis’s point in 1908. It has not aged at all.
What Mother’s Day Looks Like Around the World
Mother’s Day is not one fixed date globally, which surprises many people.
Singapore, USA, Australia, & Canada: Observe the second Sunday of May.
United Kingdom & Ireland: Celebrate Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent (March).
Middle East: Mark the occasion on 21 March (the spring equinox), where children traditionally take over all household responsibilities for the day.
Hungary: Celebrates on the first Sunday of May, featuring traditional gifts of lilacs.
What is consistent across almost every culture is the core intent: to stop, look at the woman who shaped your world, and say so out loud.
For the Mothers Spending Their First Mother’s Day
If this is your first Mother’s Day with a baby, it is worth saying directly: you may not feel the way the greeting cards suggest you should feel.
You might be exhausted. You might still be healing. You might be somewhere between overwhelmed and quietly in love and not sure which feeling is winning at any given hour.
All of that is real motherhood.
What should I buy for Mother’s Day?
Anna Jarvis wanted the world to honour mothers quietly and intentionally. That idea has stayed with us since we first came across her story.
It is part of why NUEBORN exists. Not to add noise to an already overwhelming season, but to offer thoughtful support—whether that means curating practical essentials for a
This Mother’s Day, we are asking you to notice the mothers around you, especially the new ones, and let them know you see what they are carrying.
If a small, considered gift feels like the right way to do that, we are here.