Mother’s Day will mark the beginning of a new tradition: Pasta necklaces, bouquets with flowers and other sweet attention will be given to mothers Sunday. This tradition, which has been enshrined by law since 1950, may not make sense in certain homes. Teachers have made the decision to rename Mother’s Day, or to not celebrate it at all, in order to protect children from single-parent families, heteroparental families, orphans, and victims of domestic violence.
This phenomenon has gained momentum over the past few years, and Le Parisien wrote an article about it. The Ile-de-France newspaper took as its example several schools in France where Mother’s Day and a fortiori Father’s Day have been made into a “day to the people we love”.
This topic isn’t new. However, the article by our colleagues has created a new controversy in social media. Many Internet users protest against what they sometimes consider the absurd elimination of a tradition. Marine Le Pen is the first to speak out: “They want everything taken from us, even Mother’s Day. Let’s stop it happening!” On Twitter, the National Rally candidate for presidential and legislative elections said the following:
Julien Aubert (deputy of the Republicans), shares the same indignation. “So they deleted “mother”, on account that some didn’t have one. He quips that we should celebrate “parents 1”, which is Sunday. “Parents 2” will be celebrated on June 19. Others argue against this idea. A teacher also posted on Twitter that she wanted to celebrate “the day of the people who love” in regard to “a little boy without his father”, “a child with a very tense relationship to her mother” as well as “a student who doesn’t have a dad”.
Is Mother’s Day in decline? It’s hard to say. It is difficult to know the exact number of schools that have a Love’s Day or Parent’s Day. These are local initiatives. The Ministry of National Education assures that they do not issue any instruction on the subject. It also refers to the “pedagogical freedom of educators”.
Although the phenomenon may be difficult to quantify, it’s normal for teachers to “evolve[ent] with society”, according estimates in The Latest News From Alsace Francois Schill (trade unionist at Snuipp FSU). Nora Bouaziz (child psychiatrist) recalls in Le Parisien the importance rituals as “vectors for transmitting values to a group”.
