Father’s Day is marching toward us! It’s Sunday, June 21st. Do you know the inspiration for father’s day?
Mother’s day inspired father’s day. The mother’s day we celebrate today started in the peace and reconciliation campaigns just after the Civil War era. “During the 1860’s at the urging of activist Ann Reeves Jarvis, one divided West Virginia town celebrated ‘Mother’s Work Days’ that brought together the mothers of the Confederate and Union soldiers,” according to the History.com website. It didn’t become a commercial holiday until 1908 when Ann Jarvis took her mother to a Philadelphia department store to honor her.
Retailers took note. Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday in 1914.
In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd from Spokane Washington, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. Her mother had died in childbirth, so her father raised 6 children. To garner support, “She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for the idea. She was successful. Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.” (History.com website) June was chosen because it was the month of Smart’s birth.
Father’s Day was officially recognized as a holiday in 1972 by President Nixon.
In the United States, there are approximately 70.1 million dads, and there is a rising trend of stay-at-home dads!
According to Zillow: Slightly more than one in five children of married parents (22.3 percent) lived with a full-time, stay-at-home parent in 2017, according to a Zillow analysis of U.S. Census data, unchanged from 2016.
But the share of stay-at-home parents who are fathers has been steadily increasing since 2007, reaching an all-time high of 20.2 percent last year.
So, high five to all the dads out there! Keep up the good work! I bet the dads out there have some miniature golfers and little toots running around! Check out these gifts!
