Respect for Parents Day is a holiday observed on August 1st and is used as a teaching tool to teach children the importance of showing respect for their parents. It’s also a good day for adults to show respect to their mother and father. Parents do a lot for us from the day we are born, so why not repay the favor by showing them the respect they deserve?

The History of Respect for Parents Day

This holiday was created by Marilyn Dalrymple from Lancaster, California, in 1994. She created this holiday because she felt that having a strong relationship with one’s parents strengthens the family unit and maintains strong bonds between parents and their children.

Fun and Interesting Facts About Respect for Parents Day

Now that we’ve talked a little bit about Respect for Parents Day, we thought we’d turn our attention to some of the fascinating parenting facts that we came across during our research. Although all of the following facts are interesting, quite a few of them are also pretty surprising. Let’s take a quick look at them before we talk about how this holiday is supposed to be observed.

• In Bulgaria, some parents historically believed that praising a child could make the devil jealous, so parents would often spit on their babies.
• Helicopter moms and soccer moms are terms that gained popularity during the 1990s.
• It has been estimated that parents in the U.S. send about 3.5 million tons of diapers to landfills every year.
• In Japan, children as young as four years old often have to run errands for themselves and walk to school.
• Before World War I, parents would dress girls in blue and boys in pink. At the time, pink was seen as more of a masculine color than blue.
• During the Victorian Age in England, it wasn’t uncommon for parents to calm their children with medicines that had been laced with narcotics such as opium.
• Children who grow up in homes with strict parents tend to be better at lying than those born in more permissive homes.
• American and European babies at the turn of the 21st century were often given lard baths by their parents.
• During the 19th century, it was common for American women to use boric acid on nipples that were sore from breastfeeding.
• According to recent research, British and Canadian babies cry the most, while German and Japanese babies cry the least.
• A popular parenting trend is to make a pendant out of the baby’s umbilical cord stump.

Observing Respect for Parents Day

Celebrating this day is as simple as children showing respect to their parents. Children of all ages can be taught the value of respect and can extend some of that respect to their parents. People observing this holiday can also use the hashtag #RespectForParentsDay on their social media accounts to spread the word about it.