Homecoming Photos Reveal Which Parents Have Given Up

If you’re on social media, you’ve likely seen photos of your friends’ daughters this week that left little to the imagination. You’ve probably thought, “I didn’t need to see that.” And yet, your friends have posted these photos of their daughters, their girls, for their entire social networks to see.

Over the last decade, homecoming dresses have transformed. They are no longer the gowns that prior generations wore, with a corsage on your wrist or pinned to the dress. They now resemble the swimsuits of the 1940s and 1950s: strapless or spaghetti-strapped, skin-tight, with the hem falling just below where the thigh meets the buttocks.

This generation of girls isn’t the first to wear revealing clothing or test the boundaries of acceptable attire. Girls have always worn their real outfits under the clothes they walked out of the house in, or stuffed their real dresses in their purses to change in a public bathroom before an event.

Their parents, however, are the first generation that hasn’t and won’t say, “You’re not leaving the house like that.” They aren’t just allowing the outfits to be worn, of course. They’re also the ones putting their credit cards down on the counter and buying them. They’re the first generation of parents that hasn’t just given up parenting, but has proudly advertised to everyone they know that they have relinquished authority.

That is the underlying message of every parent who posts photos of her daughters looking like they’re auditioning as Julia Roberts’ “streetwalking friends” in the 1990 movie “Pretty Woman.” These parents are telling their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members: I have absolutely no control in my own home; my kids run the ship.

Any casual observer of parenting trends over the last two decades isn’t surprised by that revelation. Thanks to the rise of permissive and gentle parenting, parents have lost the ability to say no to a toddler who hits them or throws food on the ground. They’ve lost the willingness to tell a seven-year-old, “That’s not how you speak to an adult.”

An entire generation of children was raised without the normal boundaries previous generations had. They weren’t formally told, “You’re the captain,” but it felt like it.

Parenting “experts” told parents that, to keep the household running, kids had to buy into every decision — even to agree to put on shoes and leave the house. You can’t just say, “Let’s go, get out the door” if your child is screaming. Instead, you have to get on his level and reason with a small person whose brain is still developing. When reasoning doesn’t work, that’s when negotiations come in. Parents are left bargaining with their own child for the right to leave the house to run errands.

If parents can’t tell a five-year-old to put on his shoes, how on earth will they tell a 16-year-old to put on more clothes?

This weekend, Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian weighed in on comedian Shane Gillis’s recent “Saturday Night Live” monologue, in which he joked that women at the gym dress wildly inappropriately. Abcarian took issue with his characterization but admitted she, too, is shocked by the revealing clothes teenage girls now wear.

She described telling her 16-year-old niece that her shorts were so short her butt cheeks were hanging out. Her niece explained that this was how they were supposed to look. Did Abcarian insist she change? No. She congratulated herself on not fighting that battle.

That’s the problem for parents stepping in to play the modesty police: A generation of mothers has embraced the same revealing clothing they might otherwise object to their daughters wearing. It’s hard to lecture your daughter about modesty when you’re heading to the gym in leggings and a sports bra that leave little to the imagination.

Parents, however, are uncomfortable saying the simple fact that mothers and daughters aren’t equals and parents are in charge. A grown woman can decide how she presents herself, and she isn’t required to let her teenage daughter do the same. That’s not being mean or hypocritical; it’s just parenting. Every homecoming season, we can see clearly who’s actually parenting and who has given up.

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Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a homeschooling mother of six. She podcasts at the Mom Wars and writes for its Substack.

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