Mother’s Day is one of the most popular holidays in the United States.  It is a day dedicated to showing appreciation for all mothers and is celebrated around the world.  Mother’s Day is traditionally celebrated with phone calls, greeting cards, gifts, festive dinners and sending flowers from children to their mother’s to show their gratitude.

In honor of Mother’s Day, we’ve compiled a list of fun and interesting facts about the Mother’s Day holiday and about Mothers in general! Enjoy!

 

• Anna Jarvis is recognized as the Founder of Mother’s Day in the U.S., which originated on May 12, 1907 after she held a memorial services at her late mother’s church. Within five years virtually every state was observing the day, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday, designating the second Sunday in May as ‘Mother’s Day’.
• Each year Anna would send Carnations to the church in Grafton, West Virginia to honor her mother. Carnations were her mother’s favorite flower and Anna felt that they symbolized a mother’s pure love.  The red carnation has become the official flower presented to mothers on mother’s day.
• A trend that has become popular on Mother’s Day is wearing or giving flowers.  A red carnation today signifies respect of a living mother, while a white carnation is worn or given in honor of a mother who has passed away.
• Less than a decade after she fought so hard to make it happen, Anna Jarvis ended up despising the holiday she helped popularize. She spoke out vehemently over the commercialization of Mother’s Day, called for its demise and was arrested during one of her protests in 1948.
• In 2009, there are an estimated 85.4 million moms in the United States.
• Just over half of women aged 15 – 44 in the U.S. are mothers.
• In 2008, the average age for a woman’s first birth is 25.1, slightly up from the previous years.
• The number of stay at home moms is dropping. It’s gone down from 5.3 million in 2008 to 5 million in 2010.
• On April 9, 2003, Satyabhama Mahapatra, a 65-year-old retired schoolteacher in India, became the world’s oldest mother when she gave birth to a baby boy.
• Jayne Bleackley is the mother who holds the record for the shortest interval between two children born in separate confinements. She gave birth to Joseph Robert on September 3, 1999, and Annie Jessica Joyce on March 30, 2000. The babies were born 208 days apart.
• Elizabeth Ann Buttle is the mother who holds the record for the longest interval between the births of two children. She gave birth to Belinda on May 19,1956 and Joseph on November 20, 1997. The babies were born 41 years 185 days apart. The mother was 60 years old when her son Joseph was born.
• 24.8 is the median age of women when they give birth for the first time – meaning one-half are above this age and one-half are below. The median age has risen nearly three years since 1970.
• The odds of a woman delivering twins is 1-in-33. Her odds of having triplets or other multiple births was approximately 1-in-539.
• When the female embryo is only six weeks old, it makes preparations for her motherhood by developing egg cells for future offspring. (When the baby girl is born, each of her ovaries carries about a million egg cells, all that she will ever have).
• August is the most popular month in which to have a baby, with more than 360,000 births taking place that month in 2001.
• Tuesday is the most popular day of the week in which to have a baby, with an average of more than 12,000 births taking place on Tuesdays during 2001.

New Empire Group would like to wish all of the Mothers out there a very Happy Mother’s Day!

Sources: www.wikipedia.org; www.history.com; www.womansday.com

New Empire Group, LTD. offers coverage for Property Managers, Community Associations and Apartment Building Owners!  To check out what’s new at New Empire Group, LTD. visit our social media sites –  Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter!