The first Mother’s Day observance was a church service in 1908 requested by Anna Jarvis, of Philadelphia, to honor her deceased mother. Jarvis, at an early age, had heard her mother express hope that a day to commemorate all mothers would be established. Her mother had also expressed the sentiment that there were many days dedicated to men but none for mothers. Two years after her mother’s death, Jarvis and friends began a letter-writing campaign to declare a national Mother’s Day observance to honor mothers. In 1914, Congress passed legislation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

How Many Mothers
82.5 million
Estimated number of mothers of all ages in the United States. (From unpublished data.)

68%
Percentage of women in Mississippi, ages 15 to 44, who are mothers. This is among the highest rates among states. The national average is 56 percent.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

82%
Percentage of women 40-to-44 years old who are mothers. In 1976, 90 percent of women in that age group were mothers. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

How Many Children

Only about 10 percent of women today end their childbearing years with four or more children. That compares with 36 percent in 1976. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

2
Average number of children that women today can expect to have in their lifetime. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

3
Average number of children that women in Utah and Alaska can expect to have in their lifetime. These two states top the nation in average births. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

Flowers
23,870
Number of florists nationwide in 2001. The florists’125,116 employees will be especially busy selling bouquets for Mother’s Day.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/business_ownership/000926.html>

The flowers you buy mom probably were grown in California or Colombia. Among 36 surveyed states, California was the leading provider of cut flowers in 2002, accounting for more than two-thirds of the domestic production ($279 million out of $410 million) in those states. Meanwhile, the value of U.S. imports of cut flowers and fresh flower buds in 2003 from Colombia, the leading foreign supplier to the United States, was $344 million. <http://www.usda.gov/nass/> <http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/>

New Moms
4.0 million
Number of women who have babies each year. Of this number, about 425,000 are teens ages 15 to 19, and more than 100,000 are age 40 or over. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

25.1
Average age of women when they give birth for the first time. This is a U.S. record high. The average age has risen nearly four years since 1970. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

40%
Percentage of births annually that are the mother’s first. Another 32 percent are the second-born; 17 percent, third; and 11 percent, fourth or more. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

35,000
Number of births each year attended by physicians, midwives or others that do not occur in hospitals. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

1-in-32
The odds of a woman delivering twins. Her odds of having triplets or other multiple births was approximately 1-in-540. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

August
The most popular month in which to have a baby, with 359,000 births taking place that month in 2002. July, with 358,000, was just a shade behind. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

Tuesday
The most popular day of the week in which to have a baby, with an average of almost
13,000 births taking place on Tuesdays during 2002. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_10.pdf>

Working Moms
55%
Percentage of mothers in the labor force with infant children in 2002, down from a record 59 percent in 1998. This marks the first significant decline in this rate since the Census Bureau began calculating this measure in 1976. In that year, 31 percent of mothers with infants were in the labor force.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

63%
Percentage of college-educated women in the labor force with infant children.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

Among mothers between 15 and 44 who do not have infants, 72 percent are in the labor force. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

More than 67,000
Number of day-care centers across the country in 2001. Many mothers turn to these centers to help juggle motherhood and career.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/business_ownership/000926.html>

About 2 million
Among more than 10 million preschoolers, the number who were primarily cared for in a day-care center during the bulk of their mother’s working hours.
<http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/child/ppl-168.html>

Single Moms
10 million
The number of single mothers living with children under 18, up from
3 million in 1970. <http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabFM-2.pdf>