PLANT MEDICINE SECTION
A HAPPY, HEALTHY FATHER’S DAY by J. Garnet
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ast month, Americans celebrated Mother’s Day. This month the celebration refocuses on Father’s Day. Both holidays are a time when people can show appreciation and say thank you to the individuals who shaped lives, planted dreams and nurtured, no matter the sacrifice. There is a difference between the two holidays, however. Mother’s Day became nationally recognized on May 9, 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the declaration. Fifty-eight years later, in 1972, President Nixon declared the third Sunday of every June to be Father’s Day. It took more than half of a century for Father’s 30
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Day to gain the same national honor and recognition as Mother’s Day. Sociologically speaking, there are a few reasons for the time disparity. Father’s Day did have its origin far earlier than 1972; it just wasn’t nationally recognized until then. The first known Father’s Day came to be because of the efforts of one woman, Sonora Smart Dodd. She and her five siblings, from Spokane, Washington, were raised by their father, a widower and a Civil War veteran. Dodd witnessed what an immense job and responsibility it was for her father. In the spring of 1910, Dodd gathered support from churches, businesses
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and politicians for having a day of recognition for male parents to parallel Mother’s Day, which was already being celebrated in 45 states at the time. After that first day of celebration for fathers in Washington State, the holiday sprouted supporters slowly through the country, but there was continual resistance as well. Was support slow because people thought that having a Father’s Day would diminish the celebration of mothers taking place just a month prior? Another reason why there was a lag in becoming a holiday is that fathers weren’t generally seen as being sentimental enough, certainly when compared to a nurturing mother. Maybe it was the male population themselves who stalled the holiday from becoming nationally recognized. Men were raised to be strong and hardened in the face of difficulty and could not afford to be sentimental. Physiologically speaking, men do tend to be bigger, stronger, more muscular and less interested in soft, cuddly sentimental activities. Whatever the reason for the delayed declaration, it’s certain that many men believed that men should be men and not be pampered and gifted with flowers. Men felt that they didn’t need to be celebrated for their masculinity. The divide between gender and stereotypes doesn’t only relate to sentimentality, emotions and holidays, but it’s also present in the realm of health. As a population, women tend to be healthier than men. Women live longer than men, see physicians more regularly and take active roles in overall health. According to the Harvard Medical School publication, Harvard Health Publishing, the life expectancy for women is between 80 and 82. For men, that number drops to between 75 and 77. There are biological factors which can account for the difference in lifespan, but there are
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