Parents have been ridiculed for allowing their four-year-old son to go to school in a pinafore.
The unknown mum and dad were referenced by a woman on a parenting forum, who said she was worried about the boy as he apparently wasn’t being given a choice of what to wear.
Instead, “they haven’t bought a range of uniform items, they’ve bought him pinafores and tights,” she wrote.
The woman on the forum, Mumsnet, said:
“He’s starting primary after the summer and they’ve bought him pinafores rather than shorts or trousers. They’ve always bought him a range of clothes up to now – dresses, skirts, trousers, shorts, pink, blue and every other colour – and he’s picked what he wants to wear every day. He has no concept that garments are gendered and just likes to wear what he likes to wear. I think this is great.
“But they haven’t bought a range of uniform items, they’ve bought him pinafores and tights. Am I being unreasonable to think they are making a statement at the expense of their son’s choice? Shorts and trousers are, for better or worse, much less gendered items than dresses.”
The woman went on to say that the parents are “brilliant” but that she thinks they are “… using their son as a flag to wave to the rest of the school community, rather than giving him the option of being low-key?”
She is also worried that she’s being “judgemental” but ultimately is concerned that the four-year-old isn’t getting a say in the matter, and instead being told to wear a pinafore because his parents want him to.
Mumsnet users expressed that they thought the boy was going to be ridiculed.
“They don’t sound brave and brilliant to me, they sound like a pair of idiots,” said one person.
“They are setting him up for a very tough life,” said another.
However, most people on the forum seemed to be of the opinion that allowing a child to choose their own ‘male’ or ‘female’ clothes was wrong in general – which is not the issue this woman is bringing up.
Clothes are just clothes and if a child wants to wear whatever they want to wear, it shouldn’t be a big deal.
After all, children will only ridicule other children if they hear adults around them doing the same thing.
This comes after schools in Japan decided to make all school uniforms unisex.
The move is being made in the hope that it will make the uniforms more inclusive and comfortable for all students.
