In a society built on patriarchy, you would think that the idea of a holiday celebrating men who had become fathers would be wholly accepted. That wasn’t the case when Father’s Day — specifically in the United States — was proposed, creating what became a hotly contested debate.
Father’s Day became a national holiday in the U.S. in 1972, when it was officially recognized by President Richard Nixon’s administration, six years after former president Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first Presidential Father’s Day Proclamation in 1966, declaring the third Sunday in June a dedicated day to commemorate dads. For nearly 50 years, we have formally celebrated the fathers and father-like figures in our lives, purchasing barbecue-embellished greeting cards and the latest fishing gear without a second thought.
But this mid-20th-century dedication was not reflective of the country’s sentiments on fatherhood during the first half of that century. According to Lawrence R. Samuel, the author of American Fatherhood: A Cultural History, the idea of a holiday exalting fatherhood was inconceivable to most people during the early 1900s.
“Men dominated American society in the early 20th century, of course, making many conclude that establishing a special day to honor fathers was a rather silly and wholly unnecessary idea,” Samuel tells Teen Vogue.
Unlike Mother’s Day, which was officially recognized in 1914 and became a nationally accepted as a day to celebrate the underappreciated services of moms around the country, Father’s Day had a harder time getting men to accept a day dedicated to them. “Many American men found the idea of a Father’s Day too effeminate for their liking, and also believed it was a holiday invented solely for commercial purposes,” Samuel explains.
According to Samuel, the first-ever Father’s Day took place in 1908 in a West Virginia church, after hundreds of men died in the worst mining accident in U.S. history. It was a holiday meant to be etched in thankfulness, and it was Grace Golden Clayton, the daughter of a dedicated reverend, who first proposed a day to honor fathers both alive and dead.
The creator of the countrywide celebration of fathers is often considered to be Spokane, Washington, resident Sonora Smart Dodd. Dodd was brought up by her single father, who raised her and her five siblings after their mother died. To honor her father, she wanted to create a holiday that mimicked the already nationally accepted Mother’s Day, and on Sunday, June 19, 1910, she held her Father’s Day celebration. As it was a more formal gathering, Dodd became the mother of the Father’s Day revolution in the U.S., so to speak.
Samuel refers to Dodd’s Father’s Day creation as happier than the original, West Virginia version of the same holiday.
“What came to be known as Father’s Day was celebrated in various parts of the world and in various ways going back to the Middle Ages or perhaps even before that,” Samuel explains. “Through the early decades of the 20th century, Father’s Day gradually picked up steam to become the popular holiday it is today in the United States.”
As Samuel explains, it wasn’t until the 1930s, when Mother’s Day had been considered highly commercialized, that major retailers set their sites on Father’s Day, aiming to re-create their Mother’s Day success.
“While many consumers watched their pennies during the Depression, they were eager to show appreciation to their loved ones serving in the military during World War II, laying the foundation for the $1 billion-plus spending spree it is today,” Samuel says of Father’s Day’s commercial appeal in its beginning stages.
With hesitation and pushback from fathers across the country, Samuel says, it was various American presidents who played a key role in making Father’s Day the holiday we know and celebrate today.
“Presidents [Woodrow] Wilson and [Calvin] Coolidge each publicly recognized the day, mostly because they saw it as a good way to improve their image among voters. When they tried to make it a federally endorsed celebration, however, Congress turned them both down,” Samuel says. “Jump ahead a few decades, when President Johnson became the first president to officially honor fathers in 1966, and six years later President Nixon successfully established Father’s Day as a national holiday. In 1979, President Carter was compelled to officially redeclare Father’s Day, and he did just that in April of that year in a nationally televised speech.”
Thanks to a publicity boost by various presidents over the course of nearly 100 years, Father’s Day came to be more accepted in American society. As a result, the idea of fatherhood changed as well. According to Samuel, President Carter expected fathers to play a more significant role in raising their children and take greater responsibilities within their family life. More recently, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama used their administration to urge American fathers to place an emphasis on the importance and value of fatherhood.
Father’s Day has since become a recognizable institution, with the modern era celebrating fathers in various forms.
“Father’s Day — like many holidays — has become, beyond the [privacy] of its family observances, a rallying point for marketing, particularly around domestic consumerism,” Tim Marr, a professor and author of the Father’s Day passage in the book American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia, tells Teen Vogue. “It’s helped evolve the category of father, too,” he says, to “include a broad swath of other, and at times multiple, father figures [including] divorced fathers, stepfathers, adoptive fathers, grandfathers, and unmarried men cohabiting in the homes of children who are not their own.”
Samuel echoes Marr’s observance of the evolution of Father’s Day and notes that fathers have since rejected the “feminine model” and transformed the holiday into one that “celebrates their maleness.” He points to gifts like certificates for paintball or race-car driving, as opposed to flowers and neckties, as prime examples of affirmations of this new “masculine parenting.”
“Father’s Day is much more than a ‘Hallmark holiday,’ I believe, as it is a reminder of the important and sometimes overlooked role that dads play in the lives of children,” Samuel says.
“The day is thus a rare opportunity to formally recognize that dads truly matter by bestowing in their children the psychological gifts of confidence, self-esteem, sense of adventure, and sensible risk-taking.”
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Anna Jarvis, The Creator of Mother's Day, Died Hating The Holiday She Created
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