So many women in Belfast take their children to and from school while still dressed in their pyjamas that a headmaster has appealed to them to show some respect.

Joe McGuinness, principal of St Matthew’s primary in Short Strand, a Roman Catholic working-class enclave of East Belfast, was moved to action after seeing as many as 50 mothers arriving at the school gates in their nightwear.

In a bulletin to parents, Mr McGuinness wrote: “Over recent months the number of adults leaving children at school and collecting children from school dressed in pyjamas has risen considerably.

“While it is not my position to insist on what people wear, or don’t, I feel that arriving at the school in pyjamas is disrespectful to the school and a bad example is set to children.”

A casual affair

Mothers in pyjamas on the school run prove codes that once governed how we dressed in the morning have all but disappeared

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Women walking round Belfast estates in all-day pyjama gear is a phenomenon that has been well documented by Robin Livingstone, a columnist in the Andersonstown News, but until now it has been confined to the west of the city.

Mr Livingstone said that he first identified All Day Pyjama Syndrome (ADPS) in 2003. He knows a student at the Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education who is writing a dissertation on the subject.

The women are colloquially known as “pyjama mamas” or “Millies”. Their pyjama ensembles are often complemented by large, gold hoop earrings known as “budgies” – because such cage birds could swing from them. They also sport “scrunchies” to create the “Turf Lodge facelift”, in which the hair is scraped so tightly to the back of the head that it pulls the facial skin taut.

There is even a dress hierarchy among those suffering from APDS: the wearing of silk-effect, baggy pyjamas with fluffy, mule-type slippers contrasts, for example, with the traditional dressing gown and hair rollers.

Mr McGuinness told the Andsersonstown News: “There used to be about 15 to 20 pyjama-wearing parents, but there are anything up to 50 now, and they are all women. People don’t go to see a solicitor, bank manager or doctor dressed in pyjamas, so why do they think it’s OK to drop their children off at school dressed like that? It’s about respect and setting children a bad example.

“There is an old word called slovenliness, which means messy and lazy. I think this can be applied to people who spend the day dressed in pyjamas.”

The Andersonstown News supported Mr McGuinness’s stand in an editorial. “Quite frankly, we believe that Mr McGuinness is absolutely right and we wish other teachers would follow his lead,” the newspaper said.

“Those people all over the city – and they are almost exclusively women – who wear pyjamas as they go about their daily business will argue it is their right to do as they choose and they are breaking no law. Perhaps they do not care what the rest of us think. If so, then they should seriously ask themselves what message they are handing to their children.”

Unexplained urges

All Day Pyjama Syndrome

Ensembles are often complemented by garish slippers and hair rollers

Dr Strangelove Syndrome

Sufferers lose control of one hand, which starts to act of its own free will

Blackberry Thumb

A form of repetitive strain injury linked to overuse of mobile phones and hand-held devices

Jerusalem Syndrome

Visitors start to preach and behave as Biblical characters

Source: Times database

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