Beyond Moi is the family blog of Jessica and Jeremy Martin-Weber, who currently live in Portland, Oregon, with their 6 daughters.
The duo are enjoying life together in an egalitarian marriage, where both Jessica and Jeremy share the responsibilities of providing for the family financially, contribute to home schooling, and co-parent their active and busy children.
Recently, the couple shared a very interesting post about modesty, and how they go about allowing their daughters dress.
“We were asked yesterday and have been asked before what are our standards of modesty in how our children dress and how do we enforce that,” Jessica began the post, which included a photo of herself and two of her daughters in summer clothing.
“Here’s the short version: we don’t teach or enforce any standards of modest dress for our children,” the mum-of-six (soon to be seven) explained in the post.
Jessica goes on to explain that the family follows dress code guidelines of places they visit, like schools, but outside of that they do not believe in “modesty” as a concept.
“Modesty is too subjective and true modesty is about attitude and our heart. To us, enforcing modesty standards is about controlling people and we have found that is counterproductive and undermines our commitment to respecting bodily autonomy,” she says.
Jessica says that she does not enforce a code when it comes to dressing her daughters, but she does use practicality - and whether or not certain outfits will allow for certain activities.
“Can you participate in the activities you will need to do without worrying about your clothing?” and “Is it practical for the weather?” For older children, the conversation might include something like: “Are YOU comfortable with the parts of your body that are showing and that others may notice those parts and though we are not responsible for the actions of others, how will you feel if someone says something about that?”
Jessica explains that the couple are frequently quizzed about how they manage to get their daughters to dress appropriately.
“We really just wanted to show that there is another option in how to approach this topic without promoting toxic ideas that the human body, specifically the female body, is dangerous and to be controlled, hidden and punished for being sexual,” she told the HuffPost.
We are loving this mum's approach to raising strong and beautiful women.
What do you think?
