Proud Mom Shares 8-Year-Old Son’s Response to a "Sexist” School Question

Being able to "read the room" with proper context is a vital skill for anyone to have, and although no one really expects a young child to know that asking for a bag of Doritos from the vending machine and throwing a fit over the fact that they can't find their Peppa Pig pop-it while they're in the same hospital room that their grandma is dying in is wrong, that kind of skills have to be taught at a young age.

Kids ultimately learn the most from whoever raises them: their reactions to things, how they handle/process their emotions, their first exposure to that is from their parents/guardians.

Of course, when they go to school, we can only hope that whoever is teaching them is simultaneously reinforcing good habits while they're learning math, history, phonics, and how Amelia Bedelia is going to get herself out of whatever mess she's gotten herself into again.

And it can be pretty darn refreshing to see their takes on answers to the questions that they're proposed in school just because they come at them from a place of 100% naivete. Like this response from Stephanie Parks Taylor's 8-year-old son to a worksheet question that asked whether or not a woman in a drawing was a "Miss, Ms., or Mrs.?"

The worksheet picture depicts three women: Sarah, who is jumping rope. Marry, who is holding a sign that says "unmarried or unknown marital status" and Lara, who is holding up her hand with an arrow pointing to her ring finger. At the bottom of Lara's photo, there is text that reads: "married or widowed."

It appears to be a lesson on context clues. Sarah appears to be wearing clothing that is most closely associated with a more "youthful" sense of style and the fact that she's jumping rope would lead someone to believe that she's a child, because adults don't really do anything fun as they're more concerned with paying their mortgage/rent, and scrolling aimlessly through their phone while a Netflix show plays on in the background to distract themselves from the fact that they don't know what they're doing with their lives.

We can easily glean that Mary is keen on keeping her relationship status a mystery because, well, she's walking around carrying a gigantic sign that says as much.

As for Lara, she has an incredible posture and really long hair and likes holding her left hand up despite the fact that a large magical arrow follows her everywhere she goes to signal whether or not she's wearing a wedding ring.

Stephanie's 8-year-old son wasn't too concerned with whether or not Lara decided to spend a down payment on a home for a massive celebration where her loved ones are forced to dress up and eat banquet hall food and give her envelopes of paper currency and/or mail gifts from an online registry so she can have pictures of herself looking happy to share on social media.

For him, he decided that the photo indicated Lara was a doctor, something that tons of Twitter users loved. It also started a conversation on the various honorifics women have in the English language.

While men can be called "mister" regardless of their relationship status, women go by Miss, Ms. or Mrs.. Ms. is used by both unmarried and married women, Mrs. is a hard indication that someone has entered holy matrimony but "Miss" indicates that someone has never been married.

Many folks were puzzled as to why children were being taught this in 2022 in the first place, while others called for more gender neutral honorifics to be introduced in schools.