finds himself emasculated. The third concern is that it affects the woman vis-à-vis her children by harming her dignity in their eyes. Indeed, from a very young age children are sensitive to the way their mother dresses. They sense that she is different from their father, but this needs to be confirmed by her apparel, that is to say, a more dignified, feminine and modest way of dressing. Seeing young mothers in shorts with their little children grabbing their legs is most unedifying. Worse, it lodges within the child’s psyche that Mummy is not any different from Daddy or their friends. Some will object that when a mother has small children, if she is wearing a dress, there can be embarrassing and unedifying moments when the children will pull up her dress. This of course is true, but it is an extra reason why a long dress, and not just one down below the knees is preferable. But it is also true that the wearing of a dress dictates gestures and attitudes that are not required when wearing trousers or shorts and which of their very nature make for more dignity and honour in the way one does things, such as bending down the knees to attend to a child, instead of bowing over in an unseemly way in the presence of others. This example is crucial for small children, for Christian modesty begins at that age. Children must be taught from a very tender age to be fully clothed in the presence of others and to never expose their body to others. Parents (and those who assist them) have a special responsibility to guard the modesty of children and to provide a good example. Parents must not allow them to run around halfnaked. Those who do not take this responsibility seriously will have to answer to God for their conduct. Pope Pius XII had these sober words to say to Christian mothers in particular, concerning both their own dress and that of their children: “The good of our soul is more important than the good of our body; and we have to prefer the spiritual welfare of our neighbour to our bodily comforts. If a certain kind of dress constitutes a grave and proximate occasion of sin, and endangers the salvation of your soul and others, it is your duty to give it up... O Christian mothers, if you knew what a future of anxieties and perils, of ill-guarded shame you prepare for your sons and daughters, imprudently getting them accustomed to live scantily dressed and making them lose the sense of modesty, you would be ashamed of yourselves and you would dread the harm you are making for yourselves, the harm which you are causing these children, whom Heaven has entrusted to you to be brought up as Christians.”39 77
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