Childrens' Day And The UN Convention On The Rights Of Children

Associated with the UN Convention on the Rights of Children is a Universal Childrens' Day.  It is November 20, the date that in 1959 the UN adopted the first version of the Convention, which had 10 articles.  It is celebrated in many nations, but not in the US.

A competitor is International Childrens' Day, also called the International Day for the Protection of  Children.  This is June 1 and was declared in Moacow in 1950.  It is also widely celebrated, mostly in former or current socialist or communist nations, and is a big deal in Russia in particular even now, a national holiday.  It is also not celebrated in the US.

Curiously there is an official Childrens' Day in the US, although almost nobody pays attention to it.  It is  the second Sunday in June, a week before Fathers' Day, which way dominates it, although MOthers' Day way dominates both of them.  Ironically, given its current obscurity, the US one was the first one established, back in 1857 for that date by a Universalist minister, Rev. Douglas Leonard in Chelsea, Masssachusetts.

At least 90 nations have an official Childrens' Day, with a variety of dates for this.

The matter of the US starting Childrens' Day but then coming to ignore it has a parallel with International Womens' Day, founded in 1909 in Brooklyn by socialist Clara Zetkin. It is widely celebrated around the world, and a big deal in many nations, including Russia.  But it is only barely recognized, mostly by feminists, in the US now.

Mothers' Day was founded by pacifist and Methodist, Anna Jarvis, in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 on its current date.  The US Fathers' Day was started the same year nearby in Fairmont, West Virginia.  Jarvis would later come to be unhappy with the crass commercialization of Mothers' Day.

There is a much older Fathers' Day celebrated  by Roman Catholics since the Middle Ages.  It is on St. Joseph's Day, March 19.

Anyway, I think there may be a link between the ignoring of Childrens' Day in the US, even thought it was started here compared with how it is treated in many other nations, and the bizarre refusal  of the US alone among UN nations not  to ratify its Convention on the Rights of Children.

Barkley Rosser