Uccle schools replace Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day with 'Family Day'

French-speaking nursery and primary schools in Uccle will no longer celebrate Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day, notably by creating presents, food or poetry to take home to their families.

Instead, each year there will be just one "Family Day", the commune has decided.

Traditionally, Mothers’ Day falls on the second Sunday in May and Fathers’ Day follows this coming Sunday - the second Sunday in June – except in Antwerp, which celebrates Mothers’ Day on 15 August and Fathers’ Day in March.

But this year, Uccle schoolchildren only carried out activities in honour of their parent/s on Family Day, which was last Sunday, 1 June.

There are two reasons for this, according to Uccle’s alderwoman responsible for education, Carine Gol-Lescot (MR).

First, there is the “contemporary reality of family structures”, in other words, single-parent families, same-sex parents, "recomposed" families after divorces/separations and new relationships and foster families.

Celebrating Family Day “offers a new, more inclusive framework that respects the diversity of different family backgrounds,” Gol-Lescot said.

Secondly, since the reform of the French-speaking holiday dates, Mother’s Day falls during school holidays, “which makes it difficult for the schools to organise something around it”.

Not everyone welcomes the decision. “The word ‘inclusion’ is used everywhere these days to justify the detriment of our traditions,” said Marc Cools, chair of the right-leaning opposition party Uccle En Avant.

Cools argues that “inclusion” should not mean that "the experience and choices of a minority are imposed on a majority".

He added: “By giving up our traditions, we break the bond between generations. In this way, we lose our identity and evolve into a hyper-individualistic society without reference points.”