Motherhood Boom

Mother's Day, first nationally proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 at the behest of an eccentric Philadelphia spinster, Anna Jarvis, and since proclaimed by successive U.S. presidents (who without exception have loved their mothers) has long since become Big Business for florists, greeting-card makers, candy makers, telegraph companies.

But Mother's Day 1942 had two great differences from its predecessor of peacetime:

> There were more mothers than ever before in U.S. history --and fewer of them looked like Whistler's. For more than a century the U.S. birthrate has been dropping. The draft had much to do with a fact now noted by statisticians: the U.S. birthrate last year was 18.8 per 1,000, highest since the crash of 1929. In 1941 there were 2,500,000 new U.S. babies, and 1,500,000 new brides. Some of the brides are already mothers and lots more U.S. babies are on the way. In February 1941 the U.S. birthrate hit 20.2, passing Germany's for the first time since 1933, when Adolf Hitler began encouraging motherhood.

> Not since 1918 have more U.S. sons been away from home on Mother's Day.

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