American moms: What makes a mom in the US? Take our quiz

Mother's Day began on May 10, 1908, as the project of Anna Jarvis. Observed only in Grafton, W. Va., and Philadelphia at first, Ms. Jarvis asked Congress to set aside a day to honor mothers. It took four years, but finally in 1914, little over a month before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Mother's Day proclamation on May 14. 

What made a mom then is certainly different than what makes a mom now. In the pursuit of understanding who our mothers are in America today — their age, their marital status, how many babies they have — take our quiz and expand your understanding of the American Mom. 

9. What percentage of women age 16 to 50 who gave birth in the past year were in the labor force?

(AP Photo/The Wichita Eagle, Jaime Green)
Abby White, 17, right, recently got her pilot's license. At left is Abby's mother Dianne White who is also a pilot.They are in front of their Cessna 172 at Stearman Field in Benton.

60 percent

40 percent

80 percent

35 percent

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About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

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The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

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