A kindergarten canceled Mother’s and Father’s Day celebrations and renamed the holiday “Family Day” in a bid to be more inclusive.
Early Childhood Management Services (ECMS), which runs dozens of kindergartens and daycare centers in Melbourne, sent an email to parents just three hours after school ended for the year on Thursday.
The email from St Helena Preschool in Eltham North explained that the two holidays would be celebrated differently, renaming both days “Family Day”.
“Next year we will celebrate Family Day to honor all caregivers or important figures in your children’s lives,” the email said.
‘Children will be encouraged to express their gratitude and recognize those who play a supportive role in their lives.
“We won’t have celebrations titled Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, but we will have a fabulous Family Day celebration.”
The change applies to more than half of Melbourne’s 69 private centres.
ECMS chief executive Kieran Kearney said people sometimes found it difficult to accept the change, but Family Day was a more inclusive holiday.
Parents at St Helena Preschool in Eltham North (pictured) received an email notifying them that Mother’s and Father’s Day would be renamed “Family Day” in 2025.
ECMS chief executive Kieran Kearney (pictured) said the change “is difficult for everyone” and insisted Family Day would be more inclusive than Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
“This is not just a micro issue, but it’s about recognizing that family means different things to different people in different communities,” Mr. Kearney said. 7news.
“Change is hard for everyone and it’s hard for us too, so it can be hard to accept.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted ECMS for further comment.
Parents with children in nursery said they were “surprised” by the decision and that they were not consulted about the new holiday.
Some took to social media to share similar sentiments, with one parent calling the rebranded celebration “ridiculous.”
‘Ridiculous. It is not inclusive if it does not include people who want to celebrate Mother’s or Father’s Day,” they wrote.
‘What could be more inclusive than excluding 97 percent of the population?’ commented a second person.
But others defended the measure.
‘But isn’t it already inclusive? We generally thank all the fathers and similar figures in our lives,” they wrote.
It comes after several early learning centers replaced gender-focused words like “mother” and “father” with gender-neutral words like “parents,” “special person” and “family” (file image)
‘It is not an exclusive question of biological mother and father. If replacing it with a “Family Day” is your idea of inclusivity, then you’ve never understood why we have those days in the first place.’
Others argued that having one celebration instead of two was easier for working parents and that the holiday included everyone raising children.
“To be honest, as a working parent with a child in daycare, this would be fine for my household,” one person wrote.
‘If kindergartners don’t have parents or people who look like them in their lives, who will raise them anyway?’ “God forbid an adult should feel left out of something that happens in a kindergarten,” said a second.
It comes after an elite private school in New South Wales swapped a Mother’s Day stall for a “Family Day” stall in May this year.
Students from kindergarten to year 6 from Hunter Valley Grammar School, 310 kilometers north of Sydney, were invited to shop at the gender-neutral stall.
Last year, several early learning centers hosted events that replaced gender-focused words like “mother” and “father” with gender-neutral words like “father.”
The mindset shift was sparked by a new resource from Australian Early Childhood advocacy group, which provided educators with a guide to including diverse families on Mother’s and Father’s Day.
The resource urged educators to give children the option of giving a gift for a “special adult” other than their mom or dad and avoid gender stereotypes.