FUN MOTHERING FACTS

(mothersdaycelebration.com) We've scoured our sources and gone to the corners of the Web to collect these fun mommy facts.

Key Mom Stats:

• 2 billion in the World (82.5 million in the U.S.) 
• First-time Moms: Average age of new moms is 25, vs. 21 in 1970 
• Kids: Modern moms average 2 kids (1950s: 3.5 kids; 1700s: 7-10 kids) 
• 4.3 babies are born each second 

Working Moms

• 72% of moms with children over 1 year old work (about the same as childless women), vs. 39% in 1976 
• 55% of moms with a child under 1 year old work, vs. 31% in 1976 
• Moms with a full-time job spend 13 hours working at the office or at home on family chores 

Baby Chores

• Diaper Changes: 7,300 by baby's 2nd birthday 
• Diaper Changing Speed: Moms take 2 minutes, 5 seconds (adds up to 3 40-hour work weeks each year!), vs. 1 minute, 36 seconds for dads 
• Giving Attention: Preschooler requires mom's attention once every 4 minutes or 210 times / day 
• Taking Care: Preschooler moms spend 2.7 hrs. / day on primary childcare, vs. 1.2 hours for dads 

Household Chores

• Chores: Women average 2.2 hrs. / day, vs. 1.3 hrs. / day for men 
• Laundry: 88% is done by moms, totaling 330 loads of laundry & 5,300 articles of clothing each year 
• Least Favorite Chore: Vacuuming the stairs 
• Bathroom Multi-Tasking for Moms: Reading is the most common activity, followed by talking on the phone, meditating, watching TV, drinking coffee, eating and balancing the checkbook 

Mommy Records

• Most Kids: Mrs. Vassilyev of Russia gave birth to 69 children between 1725 and 1765 
• Oldest Mom: Rosanna Dalla Corte gave birth to a baby boy when she was 63 years old in Italy in 1994 
• Heaviest Newborn: Signora Carmelina Fedele gave birth to a 22 lb 8 oz boy in Italy in 1955 

Mother's Day

• First Mother's Day: May 10, 1908; Founded by Anna Jarvis; made a national holiday in 1914 by President Wilson 
• Busiest Phone Day: 68% of people plan to call Mom on Mother's Day, totaling 122.5 million phone calls 
• Card Giving: 50% of households give Mother's Day cards, totaling some 152 million cards 

Misc. Mommy & Baby Facts

• Most popular birth month: July 
• Most popular birth day: Tuesday 
• Most popular birthday: October 5 
• 30 Pounds: Average weight gain during pregnancy 
• Baby Gender Gap: 105 boys born for every 100 girls 
• First Year Baby Costs: $7,000 of baby items before 1st birthday 
• Cost of Raising a Child: Middle-income families spend $242,070 to raise a kid to 18 (not incl. college!) 
• Most Popular Names of 21st Century 
• Baby Girls: Emily, Madison, Hannah 
• Baby Boys: Jacob, Michael, Joshua 

Mother's Day Fun Facts and Trivia:

• Mother's Day is the third most popular holiday, after Christmas and then Easter. 
• The carnation is the special flower for Mother's Day. Tradition calls for wearing a red one if one's mother is alive, and white if she has died. 
• Mother's Day is the third biggest day of the year for sending cards. 
• Mother's Day is the busiest day of the year for restaurants. Be sure to make reservations ahead of time. For a list of restaurants offering Mother's Day brunches in Atlanta, click on Open Table.com. 
• There are more phone calls made on Mother's Day than on any other day of the year. An AT&T survey estimated that 122.5 million phone calls to Mom are made on Mother's Day. Other Mother's Day findings revealed that 11 percent never call their mothers, and 3 percent of the 68 percent planning to ring Mom up called her collect. 
• 24.8 is the median age of women when they give birth for the first time - meaning one-half are above this age and one-half are below. The median age has risen nearly three years since 1970. 
• Chinese family names are often formed (begin) with a sign that means "mother". It's a nice way of honoring their moms long past. 
• Some tribes of people, like the Assam in Africa, don't call themselves families. They call themselves "maharis", or "motherhoods." 
• Julia Ward Howe wrote the Battle Hymm of the Republic and was a staunch fighter for women's rights. She staged an unusual protest for peace in Boston, by celebrating a special day for mothers. Julia wanted to call attention to the need for peace by pointing out mothers who were left alone in the world without their sons and husbands after the bloody Franco-Prussian War. 
• George Washington once said, "My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her." 
• There are 84 million moms in the United States. 
• The odds of delivering twins is 1-in-33. For triplets, it's 1-in-539. 
• August is the most popular month for having babies. About 4 million women will have babies this year. Tuesday is the most popular day of the week for having babies. 
• 4.3 babies are born every second. 
• The average woman in 17th-century America gave birth to 13 children. 

Famous Mothers in History:

• Jayne Bleackley is the mother who holds the record for the shortest interval between two children born in separate pregnancies. She gave birth to Joseph Robert on September 3, 1999, and Annie Jessica Joyce on March 30, 2000. The babies were born 208 days apart. 
• Elizabeth Ann Buttle is the mother who holds the record for the longest interval between the birth of two children. She gave birth to Belinda on May 19, 1956 and Joseph on November 20, 1997. The babies were born 41 years 185 days apart. The mother was 60 years old when her son Joseph was born. 
• The highest officially recorded number of children born to one Russian mother is 69. Between 1725 and 1765, in a total of 27 pregnancies, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets. 67 of them survived infancy. 
• The modern world record for giving birth is held by Leontina Albina from San Antonio, Chile. Leontina claims to be the mother of 64 children, of which only 55 of them are documented. She is listed in the 1999 Guinness World Records but dropped from later editions. 
• Bette Nesmith Graham, mother to Mike Nesmith, one of the Monkee's, was the inventor of Liquid Paper correction fluid. She sold the rights to the Gillette Corporation in 1979 for $47.5 million and when she died in 1980, she left half of her fortune to her son. 
• Signora Carmelina Fedele gave birth to a 22 lb. 8 oz. boy in Italy in 1955. Ouch. She currently holds the record for delivering the heaviest baby. 
• On November 28, 2008, 70-year old Rajo Devi of India gave birth to her first child, a baby girl, after IVF treatments.. 
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Mother's Day Trivia: On Women and Motherhood

• 24.8 is the median age of women when they give birth for the first time - meaning one-half are above this age and one-half are below. The median age has risen nearly three years since 1970. 
• A woman becomes pregnant most easily at the age of eighteen or nineteen, with little real change until the mid-twenties. There is then a slow decline to age thirty-five, a sharper decline to age forty-five and a very rapid decline as the women nears menopause. 
• The odds of a woman delivering twins is 1-in-33. Her odds of having triplets or other multiple births was approximately 1-in-539. 
• When the female embryo is only six weeks old, it makes preparations for her motherhood by developing egg cells for future offspring. (When the baby girl is born, each of her ovaries carries about a million egg cells, all that she will ever have). 
• Tuesday is the most popular day of the week in which to have a baby, with an average of more than 12,000 births taking place on Tuesdays during 2001. 

Mother's Day Trivia: Strange But True about Celebrity Moms and Kids

• Katherine Hepburn's father was a surgeon and her mother was a dedicated suffragette and early crusader for birth control. 
• Elvis Presley, was a mama's boy. He slept in the same bed with his mother, Gladys, until he reached puberty. Up until Elvis entered high school, she walked him back and forth to school every day and made him take along his own silverware so that he wouldn't catch germs from the other kids. Gladys forbade young Elvis from going swimming or doing anything that might put him in danger. The two of them also conversed in a strange baby talk that only they could understand. 
• Many of the sweaters worn by Mr. Rogers on the popular television show, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, were actually knitted by his real mother. 
• Eric Clapton was born to an unwed mother and to shield him from the shame, Eric grew up believing that his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister. 

Mother's Day Trivia: From the Animal Kingdom

• A female oyster over her lifetime may produce over 100 million young. 
• A mother giraffe often gives birth while standing, so the new born's first experience outside the womb is a 1.8-meter (6-foot) drop. 
• Just like people, mother chimpanzees often develop lifelong relationships with their offspring. 
• Kittens are born both blind and deaf, but the vibration of their mother's purring is a physical signal that the kittens can feel - it acts like a homing device, signaling them to nurse.