Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Sociology Faculty Publications Department of Sociology 2008 “A Kiss for Mother, A Hug for Dad”: The Early 20th Century Parents’ Day Campaign Ralph LaRossa Georgia State University,
[email protected] Jaimie Ann Carboy Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/sociology_facpub Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Ralph LaRossa and Jaimie Ann Carboy. "'A Kiss for Mother, A Hug for Dad': The Early 20th Century Parents' Day Campaign," Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as Fathers, 2008, vol. 6, pp. 249-266. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Sociology at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. “A Kiss for Mother, A Hug for Dad”: The Early 20th Century Parents’ Day Campaign RALPH LAROSSA JAIMIE ANN CARBOY Georgia State University Father’s Day and Mother’s Day occupy sacred positions in American soci- ety—at least today. Unbeknownst to many, however, there was a campaign in the 1920s and 1930s to change Father’s Day and Mother’s Day to Parents’ Day, so that fathers and mothers would be honored on the same day. The cam- paign, based in New York City, was essentially a debate about the cultural po- sition of parents in American society. How the campaign came to be—and why, in the end, it failed—illustrate the political maneuvering that character- izes people’s efforts to draw symbolic boundaries around fatherhood and motherhood.