[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 8, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2207-H2208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CELEBRATING MOTHER'S DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. CARSON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the Chair 
recognizing me as a young lady.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration of Mother's Day this Sunday, 
May 12, a day celebrated in the United States and many countries around 
the world to celebrate motherhood and express appreciation of our 
mothers.
  Our Founding Father, George Washington, once said: ``My mother was 
the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I 
attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and 
physical education that I received from her.''
  The first celebration honoring mothers dates back to ancient Greece 
where spring celebrations were held in honor of Rhea, the mother of the 
gods. During the 1600s, England honored mothers by celebrating the day 
called Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and it was in 
1872 that the United States was introduced to the idea of Mother's Day 
by Julia Ward Howe, a lyricist of the ``Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' 
with the intention of Mother's Day being dedicated to peace.
  Thirty-five years later, in 1907, a campaign led by Anna Jarvis of 
Philadelphia led to the establishment of Mother's Day as a national 
holiday in the United States. On May 8, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson 
signed a joint resolution which dedicated the second Sunday in May as 
Mother's Day to express our appreciation of the love and devotion of 
our mothers.
  My own mother, Velma Porter, who is no longer with us in the presence 
but certainly in my life, in the spirit, has always been my 
inspiration. She was my teacher, my defender and a continual source of 
strength and wisdom; and although my mother and I were not blessed with 
material wealth, I attribute the happiness of my childhood to the 
enormous strength of my mother and the strength of the community where 
we live.
  Today, there are an estimated 35 million mothers in the United 
States. In today's world, mothers are faced with the challenge of not 
only raising children alone, but participating as successful equals of 
their male counterparts in all walks of life.
  We often hear politicians especially bemoan the fact that there are 
too many single female heads of household, mothers, who are attempting 
to raise their children in the proper manner while they provide an 
economic and educational opportunity for their offspring. We often 
criticize women, mothers, who have been left to raise their families 
alone, not through any fault of their own, but through the premature 
demise of their husbands or through the total abandonment of their 
husbands and their children's father.
  According to the AFL-CIO, 72 percent of the women with children 
younger than 18, 78 percent of women with children between the ages of 
6 and 17, and 65 percent of women with children younger than 6 were in 
the labor force in 1997.
  Those of us who are affiliated with Christianity, the Protestant 
religion, recall very vividly how Jesus revered his mother when he was 
in the middle of dying and had all of the opportunity

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to concentrate on his dying. He stopped in the middle of it and told 
John to behold his mother, and from the cross we are reminded of the 
importance and the love and the strength of our mothers and the kind of 
moral character that they have conveyed on to us.
  I would trust that as we go forward with the congressional agenda 
that we will not invoke pain through policy and through measures on 
mothers who attempt in every way that they know how to care for their 
families, both spiritually and economically.

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