Outrage over school's 'woke' move divides online: 'What's the country coming to?'

A private school in the Hunter Valley has angered some of the mothers of its students - and a fair few people online - after making the decision to rename its Mother's Day stall. In order to be more inclusive, the school is opting to call the annual event the 'Family Gift Stall', resulting in an outcry from some mums who see the name change as an erasure of their importance.

'Woke ideology'

One woman told the Daily Telegraph that she was "quite upset" by the decision, while another said she felt it was “woke ideology”. The publication also revealed that the school had explained to parents that the reason for the name change was '“based on feedback from families in the school community, that it was upsetting some of the children from non-traditional families who have two dads or may not have a mum present in their lives.”

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The outrage was not contained to just mums who have children attending the Hunter Valley School with many people on Facebook sharing their thoughts on the situation too.

"Bending over to minority groups, what's the country coming to," one angry commenter wrote.

'Entitled and spoilt'

"Mother's day is to celebrate Mothers, if you don't have one, you don't have one," another said. "Why take away from everyone because it upsets someone else. Learn to adapt and deal with adversities not be entitled and spoilt. Life is a challenge. I've never felt it was everyone else's problem because I had no father to celebrate on Father's Day. Celebrate someone else's mum or role model."

"This is still a way to take something from women probably by a bunch of middle-class white men I said what I said," another added.

"Just another example of how the ‘woke culture’ is destroying the word woman, women and mother," wrote someone else.

Said another, "inclusivity .... at the exclusion of actual mothers. Only ignorant simpletons would suggest otherwise and sadly such weak-minded dullards exist."

One person went so far as to say that she would "literally rip my child from the school" while another still simply said, "Oh come on!... this is just absolute stupidity."

'Nice to see'

Among the outrage there were also plenty of people who thought it was a nice idea to rename the stall, especially for the kids who may not have a mum to celebrate.

"It’s not woke it’s inclusive," one person wrote on Facebook. "Many children these days are not raised by “Mum” I raise my great niece! I know people who raise grandkids, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters. Foster kids don’t always call a carer “Mum”. Changing a name so all kids are included is nice to see!"

"Lovely idea," someone else said. "As a teacher I've seen many a student upset because they do not have a mother to buy for."

Offered someone else, "Taking the ‘woke’ part out of it, some kids aren’t raised by their mothers. Some are raised by grandparents, carers etc. and some have even lost their mothers which makes things like Mother’s Day hard. We need to take a look at it from a different perspective. Everything doesn’t have to be ‘woke’, sometimes it’s the reality…"

"Good..... I am a mother," another person wrote. "And as a mother I'd hate to have children who don't have mothers, who are raised by grandparents, in foster homes, with two fathers, to feel excluded from celebrating a role model. It costs me nothing to have empathy for children who may not have a mother, through no fault of their own. Some people need a little more empathy and kindness in these comments."

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Sadly, her request was not heeded as one person replied, "raising a generation of softies, they need to toughen up for the real world, my mum died too, I accepted it, never asked for things to be changed or renamed for my circumstances."

Yahoo Lifestyle has reached out to Hunter Valley Grammar School for comment.

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