In some parts of the world, the second Sunday in May is dedicated to expressing appreciation for motherhood. It would be entirely appropriate to devote many more days and many more expressions of gratitude as we contemplate the importance and contribution of mothers and women.

The Lord has expressed His love and respect for motherhood and women through His prophets and apostles.

In the April 1978 general conference, President Spencer W. Kimball said, "I want to express my appreciation for the wonderful women of the Church. We love the women of our Church. We love them as deeply as our own wives, our mothers, our grandmothers, our sisters, and our friends. Someday, when the whole story of this and previous dispensations is told, it will be filled with courageous stories of our women, of their wisdom and their devotion, their courage, for one senses that perhaps, just as women were the first at the sepulchre of the Lord Jesus Christ after His resurrection, our righteous women have so often been instinctively sensitive to things of eternal consequence."

In the same address, President Kimball said, "God has placed women at the very headwaters of the human stream. So much of what our men and our institutions seek to do downstream in the lives of erring individuals is done to compensate for early failures. Likewise, so much of life's later rejoicing is a reflection of a woman's work well done at the headwaters of the home.

"Finally, when we sing that doctrinal hymn and anthem of affection, 'O My Father,' we get a sense of the ultimate in maternal modesty, of the restrained, queenly elegance of our Heavenly Mother, and knowing how profoundly our mortal mothers have shaped us here, do we suppose her influence on us as individuals to be less if we live so as to return there?"

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has sponsored the advancement of women from its very outset. It was the Prophet Joseph Smith who set forth the ideals for womanhood. He advocated liberally for women in the purest sense of the word, and he gave them liberty to fully express themselves as mothers, as nurses to the sick, as proponents of high community ideals, and as protectors of good morals.

President Boyd K. Packer, Acting President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, observed: "The woman, by her very nature, is also co-creator with God and the primary nurturer of children. Virtues and attributes upon which perfection and exaltation depend come naturally to a woman and are refined through marriage and motherhood." (Conference Report, October 1993.)

He cited a statement of the First Presidency, given in 1942 general conference, which said: "Motherhood thus becomes a holy calling, a sacred dedication for carrying out the Lord's plans, a consecration of devotion to the uprearing and fostering, the nurturing in body, mind, and spirit, of those who kept their first estate and who come to this earth for their second estate 'to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.' (Abraham 3:25.) To lead them to keep their second estate is the work of motherhood, 'And they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.' " (Abraham 3:26.)

The statement continued: "This divine service of motherhood can be rendered only by mothers. It may not be passed to others. Nurses cannot do it; public nurseries cannot do it; hired help cannot do it — only mother, aided as much as may be by the loving hands of father, brothers, and sisters, can give the full needed measure of watchful care." (Conference Report, October 1942.

President James E. Faust, now second counselor in the First Presidency, expressed his view on womanhood: "I affirm my profound belief that God's greatest creation is womanhood. I also believe that there is no greater good in all the world than motherhood. The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation. Single parents, most of whom are mothers, perform an especially heroic service." (Conference Report, April 1993.)