Timeline of moms, dads and changing families

Ancient times: The Greeks hold spring festivals dedicated to Rhea, mother of the gods. The Romans celebrate mother goddess, Cybele, with offerings, parades and revelry.

Early Christianity: Goddess worship is out and Christians begin honouring the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, on the fourth Sunday of Lent. Fathers are honoured at the Feast of St. Joseph, the patron saint of fathers, on March 19, a date on which fathers are still celebrated in Italy, Portugal, Bolivia and Honduras.

1850s: West Virginia women’s organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis organizes Mother’s Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and reduce infant mortality, and later tended wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and brought the mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers together to promote reconciliation. 1870: American Julia Ward Howe, the composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, issues a popular “Mother’s Day Proclamation” urging women to promote peace.

1901: One-third of Canadian households include people who aren’t part of the immediate family, including other relatives, boarders and servants

1908: Ann Reeves Jarvis’s 1905 death inspires her daughter, Anna, to create a day for people to honour their own mothers and the second Sunday in May is set aside as Mother’s Day in 1914. For decades, she’d zealously fight efforts by florists, greeting-card makers and confectioners to commercialize the day. We don’t know what Jarvis thought of brunch.

1908: The first Father’s Day is held in a West Virginia church, organized by a woman who was one of more than 1,000 children left newly fatherless after the Monongah coal mine disaster, the worst in American history.

1910: Inspired by a Mother’s Day sermon, Sonora Smart-Dodd of Washington State, one of six children raised by single father, encourages churches to institute the first Father’s Day observance. In 1972, it becomes a national observance in June.

1920s: Hallmark sells its first Mother’s Day cards.

1921: One in 10 Canadian children have experienced the death of one or more parent, compared to less than one per cent in 2011

1931: Almost the same number of children are living in single-parent families — more than one in 10 — as there will be in 1981. By 2011, one in five children lives with a lone parent.

1936: A Winnipeg woman who had seven sons fight and two die in the First World War becomes the first Silver Cross Mother, placing a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier on behalf of all Canadian mothers who lost a child in military service.

1961: Married couples are more than nine-in-10 Canadian families, the highest proportion in the past century. By 2011, they’ll make up two-thirds of families.

1965: Canadian mothers have an average of 3.2 children — by 2011, it’s 1.6 children.

1968: New divorce legislation makes it easier to dissolve a marriage without proving a “matrimonial offence” such as adultery or cruelty. The divorce rate rises from 14 per cent of marriages in 1969 to a peak of 36.2 per cent in 1987.

1971: In a controversial move, the federal government introduces maternity leave, allowing women to claim up to 15 weeks of unemployment benefits. Leave was extended to adoptive parents in 1984, and to fathers in 1990.

1976: Less than a third of women with children under six are employed, compared to more than two-thirds by 2012

1981: The census counts commonlaw couples, six per cent of families, for the first time. Their numbers almost triple by 2011.

1990: Alberta is the first province to declare Family Day a holiday. Other provinces follow, including Ontario in 2008

2006: Same-sex married couples are included in the census for the first time following the 2005 federal legalization of same-sex marriage, with 7,500 of them counted, a number that nearly triples to 21,000 in 2011.

2011: The census starts counting foster families and step-families, finding that 13 per cent of families with children are blended families and 17,000 households contain at least one foster child.

2014: Hallmark releases its first two-dad Father’s Day eCard.

2015: There are 1.5 million loneparent-led families in Canada, or about one in six families. August 2017: Statistics Canada is set to release information on families, households and marital status based on the 2016 census.