Parents Celebrate Their 5-Year-Old Son's Birthday At Hooters: Is It Bad Parenting?

Hooters is an American restaurant chain infamous for its scantily clad female servers whose dress code is tight hooters t-shirt that shows a lot of their cleavage and orange shorts. The dress code is considered to attract male audience due to its sex appeal.

A video of a couple is going viral on social media in which they can be seen celebrating their five-year-old son's birthday in Hooters. The little boy can be seen enjoying his birthday in a video surrounded by the restaurant servers or 'Hooters girls' (as they are called) as they sing him a birthday song. The seemingly harmless video is gaining a lot of backlash on the internet as the netizens criticised the parents for taking the child to a sexually explicit restaurant. Netizens shamed and schooled them on how they are surrounding their child with bad influence at such a young age.

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Is Celebrating Birthday At Hooters Appropriate Parenting Or Not?

This incident calls for a discussion on what society considers a bad influence and bad parenting. According to social media users who are going against the couple for their act, girls wearing short clothes and showing off their cleavage are a bad influence on children. This would mean that any place where girls wear short clothes is a bad place for children. This means that children should also be kept away from beaches where women move around in bikinis. But nobody slams any parent for taking their kids to the ocean but in fact, it is one of the most common places for vacations and play dates.

If these people have a problem with their kids being around girls showing so much skin, they should also prohibit their children from watching Walt Disney movies. That is because characters like Tinker Bell, Little Mermaid and Jasmine show off so much of their skin that they will be a bad influence on their kids. So bad and inappropriate parenting can be avoided by keeping kids away from female cleavage.

However, if we look at the agenda of Hooters' super scant outfit, the motive behind it is considered to attract more male customers. So aren't such men a bad influence as well? Sexualising women just because they wear short clothes and labelling it as 'asking for it' isn't a bad influence as well? Instead of blaming women for wearing short clothes, we should try inculcating a better mindset in the males and spend time making them understand that a women's clothes are her choice and they should respect that and not consider it as an invitation. Appropriate parenting is keeping your children away from the influence of people with misogynist and sexist mindsets.

If you develop good behavioural practices and a progressive mindset in your child the scantily dressed women will be just another human for them and not an eye candy. Appropriate parenting is telling your children to respect everyone's choice and not create stereotypes or sexist and misogynist ideas. So whether it's Hooters or any other such restaurant, it is not bad to take your kids there and the only thing stopping you from going there should be bad food, not short clothes.