Mother's Day

====Germany====
[[File:Herztorte zum Muttertag.jpg|thumb|Mother's Day cake in [[Germany]]]]

In the 1920s, [[Germany]] had the lowest birthrate in Europe, and the declining trend was continuing. This was attributed to women's participation in the labor market. At the same time, influential groups in society (politicians of left and right, churchwomen, and feminists) believed that mothers should be honored but could not agree on how to do so. However, all groups strongly agreed on the promotion of the values of motherhood. In 1923, this resulted in the unanimous adoption of ''Muttertag'', the Mother's Day holiday as imported from America.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9SlB2qcb0NIC&pg=PA423|last=Weindling|first=Paul  |title=Health, Race & German Politics Between National Unification & Nazism|page=423|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=052142397X|year=1993|access-date=9 July 2019}}</ref> The head of the Association of German Florists cited "the inner conflict of our ''[[Volk]]'' and the loosening of the family" as his reason for introducing the holiday. He expected that the holiday would unite the divided country. In 1925, the Mother's Day Committee joined the task force for the recovery of the ''volk'', and the holiday stopped depending on commercial interests and began emphasizing the need to increase the population in Germany by promoting motherhood.<ref name="mouton" />

The holiday was then seen as a means to encourage women to bear more children, which nationalists saw as a way to rejuvenate the nation. The holiday did not celebrate individual women, but an idealized standard of motherhood. The progressive forces resisted the implementation of the holiday because it was backed by so many conservatives and because they saw it as a way to eliminate the rights of working women. ''[[Die Frau]]'', the newspaper of the Federation of German Women's Associations, refused to recognize the holiday. Many local authorities adopted their own interpretation of the holiday: it would be a day to support economically larger families or single-mother families. The guidelines for the subsidies had [[eugenics]] criteria, but there is no indication that social workers ever implemented them in practice, and subsidies were given preferentially to families in economic need rather than to families with more children or "healthier" children.<ref name="mouton" />

With the Nazi party in power during 1933–1945, the situation changed radically. The promotion of Mother's Day increased in many European countries, including the UK and France. From the position of the German Nazi government, the role of mothers was to give healthy children to the German nation. The Nazi party's intention was to create a pure "Aryan race" according to [[nazi eugenics]]. Among other Mother's Day ideas, the government promoted the death of a mother's sons in battle as the highest embodiment of patriotic motherhood.<ref name="mouton" /><ref name="taylor" />

The Nazis quickly declared Mother's Day an official holiday and put it under the control of the NSV ([[National Socialist People's Welfare Association]]) and the NSF ([[National Socialist Women Organization]]). This created conflicts with other organizations that resented Nazi control of the holiday, including Catholic and Protestant churches and local women's organizations. Local authorities resisted the guidelines from the Nazi government and continued assigning resources to families who were in economic need, much to the dismay of the Nazi officials.<ref name="mouton">{{citation |title= From nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and Nazi family policy, 1918–1945 |chapter= From Mother's Day to Forced Sterilization |pages=107–152 |series= Publications of the German Historical Institute |author=Michelle Mouton |edition= illustrated |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year= 2007 |isbn= 978-0-521-86184-7 |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=YAwuIKyMvSEC }}</ref>

<!-- I find the following paragraph on "Mother's Cross" much too elaborate to fit into this article about "Mother's Day". If you agree, please shorten. -->
In 1938, the government began issuing an award called [[Cross of Honor of the German Mother|Mother's Cross]] (''Mutterkreuz''), according to categories that depended on the number of children a mother had. The medal was awarded on Mother's Day and also on other holidays due to a large number of recipients. The Cross was an effort to encourage women to have more children, and recipients were required to have at least four.<ref name="mouton" /><ref name="taylor">{{citation | author=Ann Taylor Allen | title= Reviewed work(s): Muttertag und Mutterkreuz: Der Kult um die "Deutsche Mutter" im Nationalsozialismus, by Irmgard Weyrather |location= Frankfurt A.m |journal=[[American Historical Review]] |volume= 100 |issue= 1 |date= February 1995 |pages= 186–187 |doi=10.2307/2168063| jstor= 2168063 }}</ref>