The Costumes Parents Choose For Their Family On Halloween Reveal How They View Their Kids
Make your kids the main characters, always.
Evgeny Atamanenko | Shutterstock For Halloween, many families choose to dress up in coordinating costumes with characters all from the same movie, TV show, or book.
When kids are little, they obviously can’t choose their own costumes. Or, perhaps, they just can’t argue with their parents over it. But it makes sense that parents would want to make their child the center of attention on any holiday.
Some parents choose not to do that, however, keeping the spotlight firmly on themselves.
One woman thinks that the characters parents choose for their family’s Halloween costume reveals a lot about how they view their child.
A content creator named Annie shared her thoughts on parent and child Halloween costumes.
“Listen, I’m not really one for parent-shaming or mom-shaming,” Annie said. “I truly believe that raising a child is hard enough, especially in this day and age. That being said, if you post a family Halloween couples costume, I will judge you accordingly.”
“I will judge you accordingly based on what character you are and what character you make your children be,” she continued. “I’m not even judging based on the movie you pick."
The woman admitted that she judges parents who make themselves the main characters and dress their children as less important side characters.
Annie showed some examples in her TikTok of family Halloween costumes done wrong.
One, which she called “the most outrageous,” featured parents dressed as Belle and Gaston from "Beauty and the Beast." One of the children was, admittedly, the Beast, a title role, but the other two were dressed as Lumiere (a candlestick) and Cogsworth (a clock).
"This little boy is probably six," Annie noted. "I hope to everything that is good and holy that they did not make this little boy trick-or-treat as the candle."
She then showed what she considered to be a much better option — a family who dressed up as characters from "Monsters, Inc." The three children were dressed as the main characters, Mike, Sully, and Boo, while the parents were side characters, Celia and Roz.
“But do you see how the children are the main characters, and then the parents are helping the children with this child-centered activity, such as Halloween?” she asked rhetorically.
There’s nothing wrong about parents dressing up with their children, but the kids should be the center of attention.
"I respect [parents] that take a supporting role," Annie added, questioning how the kids will feel years from now when they look at pictures of their childhood Halloweens, and see that they were irrelevant side characters.
Parents taking the spotlight off of their children on Halloween, a Holiday that is centered around kids dressing up to go trick-or-treating, is, frankly, uncalled for. As Annie argued, parents should play a supporting role and let their kids shine.
Thankfully, according to recent data, this is not an issue for the majority of kids, as most adults don't dress up at all.
A 2023 Yahoo/YouGov poll found that only 22% of adults planned to dress up for Halloween. Another 14% of respondents remained undecided.
If these numbers hold up, then it will only be a small fraction of children dealing with spotlight-stealing parents on what is traditionally a children’s holiday.
Alliance Images | Shutterstock
Still, it does seem that more parents wear costumes with their kids on Halloween now than they did, say, 20 years ago. An opinion piece in Vogue written by Michelle Ruiz noted that this coincided with “the rise of Instagram.”
In case it wasn’t bad enough that parents are now dressing up as the main characters while their children remain sidekicks, it seems that they’re doing it all for some likes on Instagram. Those can’t exactly be described as pure intentions.
“I feel like it's indicative as to the way that you view your child, honestly,” Annie said.
And she’s right. What was once a holiday for kids to have fun has now become a chance for parents to capture the perfect social media moment.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.