Putting our schoolchildren in little suits kits them out for a non-existent adult world

With office life relaxing and fewer professional adults wearing suits, we may soon end up in a scenario where our children are the most formally attired among us

Wearing skirts makes playing sport or cycling to school difficult and potentially embarrassing to do.

Right at the top of last weekend’s To Do list was a task of major developmental significance: getting the uniform for my four-year-old daughter’s impending debut in the local Junior Infants class. So, with 30 minutes between the designated shop’s opening time and swimming lessons, we made our approach.

Hers will be a sensible uniform: a green cotton tracksuit with white polo shirt (both which — pending non-ruination — will serve her little brother in a few short years) and runners (model’s own). It’s sensible, that is, until she hits first class, when, like many of her unsuspecting cohort, she will be expected to wear a collared shirt, plaid skirt, and woollen(ish) jumper.

While she weaves between my legs and the racks of school and sporting apparel in the uniform shop, I watch a boy I think is about eight model his uniform for his mother. In a whimsical weekend mood, I can’t but be struck by how funny he looks in these garments, which, if we strip away the normalising context, are really the elements of a miniature suit. 

I genuinely believe this part of the institutional clothing landscape is weirder and funnier than is given credit.

My reaction to the boy reminded me of a verse by the 18th-century poet Mary Barber. Barber was Irish, a friend of Jonathan Swift, and a mother of nine who wrote a lot about and to her children. The following lines are from ‘Written for my Son… at his First Putting on Breeches’, which is a lament about the titular son’s move from looser garments into the more tailored “breeches” popular at the time.

WHAT is it our mamma's bewitches,  
To plague us little boys with breeches?

 To tyrant Custom we must yield,  
Whilst vanquish'd Reason flies the field.

 Our legs must suffer by ligation,  
To keep the blood from circulation;

 And then our feet, tho' young and tender,  
We to the shoemaker's surrender;

Who often makes our shoes so strait,  
Our growing feet they cramp and fret;

 Whilst, with contrivance most profound,  
Across our insteps we are bound;

Which is the cause, I make no doubt,  
Why thousands suffer in the gout.

Leaving aside the worries about paediatric gout, Barber is obviously well attuned to the total unsuitability of trousers modelled on adult fashions to the lifestyle of a child.

I’m actually fairly ambivalent on the ideologically grander question of uniforms versus no uniforms. Decent arguments can be found on either side of the issue, and it seems irritatingly plausible to me that the balance might well be tipped by individual character traits in kids. 

Children with issues in the box once described as “fussy” might benefit from the morning’s what to wear negotiation being taken off the table, in a way that could be expected to yield harmonious consequences for all involved. 

And certainly, in these times of rampant inequality in Ireland, it’s easy to worry that individual school clothing choices might become yet another signifier of economic difference that could leave some kids feeling they are sticking out for the wrong reasons, or worse, actively picked on.

On the other hand, shy or self-conscious children may like to have more control over what they wear, especially where uniforms are austere or heavily gender differentiated. 

Ditto for kids with sensory issues or sensitive skin, since affordable multipacks of school shirts are likely to be worth their weight in polyester and rayon. An itchy child is not necessarily an attentive child. 

Uniforms a colonial hangover

A further spiritual gripe could be raised about the fact that uniforms are probably yet another lingering colonial hangover. Most European countries have moved away from uniforms in state schools, with three exceptions — Britain, Ireland and Malta. 

What does seem obviously silly is the chasm between the formality and cumbersomeness of the formal uniforms and the costuming tendencies of the modern workforce. Certain professions used to dress in a manner much closer to a uniform — suits for all, all the time. 

Putting girls in clothes that are impractical for physical activity sends a message about what we think they should be doing with their bodies that can permeate more deeply.

Thus, the school uniform might plausibly have been regarded as aspirational, in styling children in a manner approximating the wardrobes of professions many parents considered desirable. 

But the number of professional adults in suits has fallen off a cliff in recent years, where office life has relaxed considerably. And that’s before accounting for the fact that fewer people than ever spend most of the week in an office setting anyway.

So, we may soon end up in a scenario where our children (whose days should be much less sedentary than many of us in the workforce) are the most formally attired among us. Before long, the only shirts may be in the courtroom and the classroom.

A knock-on impact of this formality is that the parents and guardians of primary schoolers — who, it must be owned, aren’t renowned for their independence — are tasked with running a more demanding laundry service than is absolutely necessary. 

This is especially unwelcome in a phase of life, where such people are intermixing the, let’s say, somewhat capricious timetabling of the primary school calendar with other valuable hobbies like being employed or managing full-time caring arrangements.

Another disadvantage of the formal uniform styles is their heavily gendered nature. Girls, who might prefer not to wear skirts, are often forced to choose an alternative that history and convention have designated “the boy option”. 

Thus, deciding what to wear becomes a bigger and more sociologically loaded thing than it should be. And there are a lot of reasons to avoid skirts:

• Reason 1: Ireland’s meteorological realities;
• Reason 2: Ireland’s grim recent cosmetic tendencies. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping we can keep worries like “are these leg hairs obvious” or “do I need fake tan?” off the table at least until secondary school; 
• Reason 3: Wearing skirts makes doing many things I want my daughter to be doing — practising cartwheels at lunchtime, eventually cycling her bike to school, etc — difficult and potentially embarrassing to do.

In Throwing like a Girl, political theorist Iris Marion Young wrote about the struggles women face in developing a natural way of engaging with the world using their bodies. 

The essay opens with an observation that, unlike boys of the same age, who throw their bodies fully into physical pursuits, “the girl of five does not make any use of lateral space. She does not stretch her arm sideward; she does not twist her trunk; she does not move her legs, which remain side by side. All she does in preparation for throwing is to lift her right arm forward to the horizontal and to bend the forearm backward in a pronate position… The ball is released without force, speed, or accurate aim.” 

Whether or not that same observation would be true today, there’s no denying young girls experience especially acute anxieties about their bodies. The insights Young offers are complex and rooted in deep theoretical concepts spanning everything from compromised phenomenology to reification of the body. 

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But I wonder if we could point a further, simpler finger at the ways we often dress girls. Putting them in clothes that are impractical for physical activity sends a message about what we think they should be doing with their bodies that can permeate more deeply.